Canadian Film Review: Maps to the Stars (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore, John Cusack

For me, Maps to the Stars is a bit of return to form for David Cronenberg, whose last two films - the decent, but kind of bloodless A Dangerous Method, and the ambitious but dull Cosmopolis - didn't really do much for me. A bit messy, tonally inconsistent, full of "unlikeable" characters, and centering on subject matter that can most generously be described as "uncomfortable," Maps is certain to have its detractors, but I enjoyed it for its dark comedy, its scathing view of celebrity, and its terrific performances. That said, after this film and Interstellar it will be some time before I need to see another film which finds it necessary to have its characters repeat one section of one poem over and over and over again.

Review: A History of Violence (2005)

* * * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt

Violence is something at once abhorred and glorified. The taking of a life in an act of crime is the most grievous of offenses, but the taking of a life in self-defense is something often, even if only implicitly, celebrated. David Cronenberg's 2005 masterpiece A History of Violence skillfully mines this contradiction, focusing on a protagonist who is at once a bad man who kills for bad reasons, and a good man who kills for good reasons. The question isn't whether the man can be reconciled to the two parts of himself, but whether society, whose quaint image belies a foundation of and continuing capacity for violence, can reconcile itself to the fact that the two can exist in one.

Canadian Film Review: Cosmopolis (2012)

* *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Robert Pattinson

David Cronenberg is probably best known for, for lack of a better word, "weird" movies, movies that challenge because they subvert expectations in terms of narrative form and because of the directness with which many of them deal with themes of sexuality and sexual taboo. Although his work has remained challenging and his preoccupation with sex as a theme has remained, in the last decade his output (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method) has been slightly more in line with the mainstream and far less weird. Cosmopolis marks a return to the weird, albeit not an entirely successful one. It has a lot of ideas, certainly, and isn't without its saving graces, but it never really gets itself off the ground.

Canadian Film Review: A Dangerous Method (2012)

* * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen

It was probably inevitable that David Cronenberg would one day make a movie about Sigmund Freud, given his career-long preoccupation with the psychosexual. What wasn't inevitable was how tame that movie would be when he finally made it - well, tame for a movie where one of the central relationships centres on sadomasochism. Elegantly mounted but somewhat lacking in spirit, A Dangerous Method is a fine film, but ultimately minor Cronenberg.

Canadian Film Review: Naked Lunch (1991), Part Two

* * 1/2
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm

Okay, let’s try this again. David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is definitely easier to digest the second time around, though it is still an intensely bizarre film, even when you're prepared for what's coming. Naked Lunch is a very ambitious film and in many respects a technical marvel, though I'm not certain that it totally holds together. Still, it's an interesting film and definitely one that any Cronenberg fan should see.

Canadian Film Review: Naked Lunch (1991), Part One

Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis

... Um...

Canadian Film Review: eXistenZ (1999)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law

Where does the game end and reality begin? If the game is so realistic that the distinction isn't obvious, does the distinction really exist at all? David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is a film of big and intriguing ideas. With the help of a terrific cast (seriously, there isn't a weak link in the bunch) he explores these ideas in an effective and very engaging way.

The story takes place sometime in the near future when a game designer named Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unveils eXistenZ, her new game, to a focus group. Before things can get underway, however, an assassination attempt is made on her and she flees with Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee. Because the assassination attempt took place as the game was being downloaded, Allegra worries that the game may now be corrupted and talks Ted into having a bio-port installed so that he can help her test the system. This involves a gas station attendant - named Gas (Willem Defoe) - shooting Ted in the back with a rivet gun, a fact which understandly makes Ted ill at ease (though he does go through with it). Gas, however, turns out to be more foe than friend and wants the ransom that has been placed on Allegra's head. She and Ted manage to escape and run to Allegra's mentor Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm), who promises to help Allegra save her game.

Allegra and Ted enter eXistenZ and begin following the game's storyline. Things start to go awry, however, when they realize that they may have trusted the wrong person and thereby sent the game into chaos. Coming back to reality they realize that what's happened in the game may have infected the console, which in turn will destroy eXistenZ forever. Or will it? Are they still in the game? The film's spectacular finale involves many reversals and twists that keep you guessing in its final minutes.

Cronenberg, who wrote the screenplay in addition to taking on directing duties, keeps the story moving at a fast and engaging pace, and finds a good balance between action and the intellectual concerns of the story. Though it's primary concern is with the relationship between human beings and technology - and the psychological shifts and crises that can result from the speed at which technology is advancing - the story is more interesting for the way that it plays on ideas of body horror and how it uses those themes to subvert gender roles and assumptions. For example, though science and technology are male-dominated fields, the gaming equipment rather obviously alludes to the female side of reproduction, the cord connecting the system to the player blatantly resembling an umbilical cord. Another example is the bio-port and the scene in which Allegra plugs Ted into the game. She's literally penetrating him, taking the film up to a whole other psychosexual level. It's a film that leaves you with a lot to think about and discuss, but it manages to explore its themes without becoming weighted down by them.

All in all, I think that eXistenZ holds up really well, which isn't something you can say about all science fiction films, particularly those set in the near future. That being said, however, seeing this film for the first time just recently, I couldn't help but be reminded of Inception since both films are built on layers upon layers of story levels. Inception did a lot of things better, I think, and while that really shouldn't reflect on effectiveness of eXistenZ, since it came out a decade earlier and with a much smaller budget, I couldn't help but feel that its impact was ultimately muted. Still, I enjoyed eXistenZ a lot and definitely plan to revist it for future viewings.

Canadian Film Review: Crash (1996)

* * * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Holly Hunter

Some movies stay with you long after you’ve seen them. Sometimes it’s because they’re that good, sometimes because they’re that bad, sometimes just because they’re kind of odd. David Cronenberg’s Crash is a combination of the first and third reason; it’s a good, weird movie and for a lot of people (myself included), you don’t really know what to make of it at first. You just know that you’ve seen something unlike anything else you’ve ever seen.

Crash is about human connections or, rather, the lack thereof. We meet James Ballard (James Spader), a film producer and his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), who are involved in an open marriage. When they’re together they recount their sexual exploits with others to excite each other, though it ultimately does little to repair the disconnect between them. Truth be told, for as much sex as they have together and with others, neither seems to enjoy the act very much and the scenes are underscored with an almost ruthless desperation. What they want, really, is to feel alive, to feel like there’s a reason for being alive.

James begins to find a reason after being involved in a car crash with Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), with whom he begins an affair that deepens the bond forged by their shared experience in the accident. In an effort to make sense of their feelings about each other and the crash, they attend what I suppose you could call a performance art piece by a man named Vaughn (Elias Koteas) in which the crash that killed James Dean is recreated. Vaughn and his followers fetishize car accidents and their aftermath and soon James is one of them, deliberately getting into car accidents and having sexual experiences with various members of the group, including Vaughn.

To say that the film was controversial when it was first released would be an epic understatement. A lot of films are violent and sexually graphic, but few draw a connection between sex and violence as flagrantly as this one does; Crash doesn’t allow you to see one without the other. However, Cronenberg isn’t using sex and violence in a gratuitous way but rather framing it order to comment on how violence is so often sexualized in popular culture generally and films specifically. Consider the James Dean scene, in which James Ballard first experiences the act of watching a car crash in order to attain sexual excitement. By using James Dean’s crash as their template, the group is not just reenacting a horrible event, but evoking an image of glamour, that idea to “live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.” That’s the narrative in which Dean has popularly been framed ever since his death, that the accident was tragic but that he’ll be young and beautiful forever after because of it. Consider as well the actual sex in the movie. Some of it seems shocking because it’s so far outside of what we normally see in cinema, but think about what’s considered normal regarding sex in film. Roger Ebert once said that rape in movies is framed as seduction and often that’s true, either because of the way a film constructs the narrative leading up to the event or because of the way that it implicitly asks us to look at the victim or at the predator. The difference with Crash, I suppose, is that it doesn’t conform to any normalized narrative about sexual violence that lets the audience have its cake and eat it too, but directly and unapologetically asks why violence can be sexual.

If for nothing else, Cronenberg ought to be commended for going all out with this film. I mean, once you’ve set up your thesis that people can be aroused by car crashes, why not show James being turned on by the scars on the back of Gabrielle’s (Rosanna Arquette) thigh, why not show a variety of couplings whether they be heterosexual or homosexual? He’s not shy, I guess is what I’m saying, and goes all the way with it. It helps that he doesn’t rely on sex and violence to carry the film but constructs a strong narrative with distinct characters in order to explore larger questions. I know people who are repulsed by this film and I know people who are fascinated by it and I think that Cronenberg wants to inspire both of those reactions, not just with Crash but with many of his other films as well. He doesn’t just want to explore these themes himself, he wants to provoke discussion elsewhere as well – it’s the sort of thing that separates a director from an artist.

Canadian Film Review: Spider (2002)

* * *
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne

Spider is a creepy and challenging film from director David Cronenberg. I’m going to approach this one in a different way than I normally would, looking first at what literally happens on screen and then at what I believe happens beneath the surface. I do this for two reasons: first, our protagonist, through whose eyes we see everything, is not exactly a reliable narrator. Second, this is the kind of movie that just begs to be interpreted.

What we see is this: Spider/Mr. Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) has just been released from a mental institution and goes to live at a boarding house run by the fierce Mrs. Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave). He begins writing in a notebook, recreating for himself the events that led up to the death of his beloved mother (Miranda Richardson). His father (Gabriel Byrne) takes up with a local pub tart named Yvonne (also played by Richardson, though it’s hard to tell sometimes because she creates two such distinct characters). Mr. Cleg murders his wife and then moves Yvonne into the house. Spider is, obviously, disturbed by this and comes up with a plan to kill Yvonne by turning on the gas stove while she sleeps. Afterwards, he’s sent to the institution.

My reading: Spider (played as a child by Bradley Hall) is a disturbed little boy who lives in an insulated world of which his mother is the centre and his idea of perfection. He is disturbed by displays of female sexuality, particularly in two instances: first when he’s sent to the pub to get his father and is flashed by a female patron (Yvonne), and second when he looks out his window and sees his parents engaged in a passionate embrace in the garden. Seeing his mother in this way makes Spider equate her in his mind with women like Yvonne and thus his perfect mother becomes tainted. In order to purify her, Spider must destroy her, but he isn’t psychologically equipped to deal with this idea and so creates an elaborate fiction in his mind involving the affair with Yvonne and murder of Mrs. Cleg by her husband.

There are a few reasons why I believe this, not least of which is the fact that Yvonne and Mrs. Cleg are both played by Richardson. Richardson will also appear briefly in a third role, stepping in as Mrs. Wilkinson for a few scenes, which demonstrates how easy it is for Spider to project the image of his mother on other women. There’s also the fact that Spider “remembers” a number of events that he did not actually witness, these scenes encompassing both the affair and the murder. Finally, there’s the fact that the woman who falls asleep when Spider turns on the gas is Yvonne, but the corpse brought out of the house afterwards is that of Mrs. Cleg.

I’m of two minds about the effectiveness of Spider as a film. The story is well constructed and Cronenberg creates a palpably grim and grimy atmosphere, but there’s something kind of flat about the film as a whole. At times it feels more like an exercise in psychological immersion than a film, which gives it more of an academic than entertainment value.

Canadian Film Review: Eastern Promises

David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises is as effective and well-crafted a thriller as you’ll ever see. It’s economically told – there are no superfluous scenes here, every single one only adds tension and dimension to the story. The performance by Viggo Mortensen as a Russian hitman is amazing, and the supporting performances by Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl are excellent.

“Sometimes birth and death go together,” Anna (Watts) informs Nikolai (Mortensen) early in the film. This concept is at the heart of the story, which begins with a 14-year-old Russian girl giving birth and dying on Christmas Eve. Anna is the mid-wife who delivered the baby and has the dead girl’s diary translated in an effort to track down her family so that the baby won’t have to go into foster care. She first asks her uncle to do the translating for her and then, in what proves to be the worst mistake she could make, she takes a copy of the diary to a Russian named Semyon (Mueller-Stahl), who at first appears to be just a restaurateur but is in actuality a mobster and the father of the baby. Nikolai, a new recruit to his organization brought in by Semyon’s son Kirill (Cassel) is sent to take care of the situation, but he has a conflicting agenda of his own. Birth and death come together most obviously in scenes between Anna, a giver of life, and Nikolai, a dealer in death, but it’s a trope that runs throughout the film.

Concepts of “family” drive the film – family as a biological, family in the organized crime sense, and also family in the sense of a community of immigrants in a foreign country. All these different understandings of family connect birth and death in ways both natural and unnatural. There are a number of vicious deaths in this film beginning with a man named Soyka, whom Kirill has paid to have killed for spreading rumours that he’s gay. “Soyka had brothers,” Semyon warns when he finds out and, indeed, the brothers are soon in London, looking to take out everyone who played a part in Soyka’s death. To save Kirill, Semyon arranges to have Nikolai set up which leads to a memorable and bloody knife fight in a bathhouse.

The fight scene is one of many instances where the film displays its fascination with the male body. Prior to this scene there’s a ceremony where Nikolai is given his stars – tattoos that mark his affiliation to Semyon’s organization. He has many other tattoos, each other which tells part of the story of his life. The other mobsters in the film have similar collections of tattoos. The fixation on the body feeds into a fixation on concepts of masculinity within the Russian community. Kirill has someone killed for saying that he’s gay, and he orders Nikolai to have sex with a prostitute in front of him to prove that he’s not gay. Throughout the film there is a consistent concern with Kirill’s sexuality, and whether or not he actually is gay, he is impotent with women and attempts to mask it through overt and aggressive displays of heterosexuality when he’s around other men. Semyon and Nikolai are "real" men as defined by the standards of their community, but Kirill has something to prove both as a man and a member of the crime syndicate. He's born into the crime family, but as a criminal he's also rather impotent and overcompensates for it by ordering Nikolai around.

Vincent Cassel’s performance as Kirill is excellently layered, and Armin Mueller-Stahl is a chillingly effective villain. Naomi Watts is outstanding as always, adding dimensions to a character whose place in the story ultimately doesn’t give her much to do. As for Viggo Mortensen, not enough can be said about how great he is here as he slips completely into this tricky role. Accents can be difficult to pull off for actors who are famous enough that the audience knows the accent is adopted, but here you don’t even think about it as Mortensen opts for a very subtle and subdued accent, aided in no small part by the way he carries himself. He sells this character so completely that you never see Viggo, just Nikolai. It’s a quiet, intense performance that perfectly complements the tone of the film.