Porn to be wild
Always thought David Cronenberg had a gift for granting the people in his films at times obvious at times cheesy often memorable names-- Seth Brundle; Stathis Borans; Murray Cypher; Nola Carveth; Max Renn; Brian O'Blivion. Even his more realistic films (A History of Violence) feature the odd evocative moniker-- Tom Stall-- and he continues to indulge the quirk in his latest Crimes of the Future: Saul Tenser (has Cronenberg read The Demolished Man?); Detective Cope; Investigator Wippet; Caprice.
O and don't let the marketing campaign mislead you: this isn't Cronenberg's long-awaited return to full-on body horror but his sexiest funniest film to date.
Well that's not true either; Cronenberg has always been deadpan funny, and best part is how his routines often fly over folks' heads. Call this his return to form as horror cinema's driest satirist, the constant running gag in his films being that he incarnates (in all sense of the word) his metaphors in the oft pulsating flesh. "Surgery is the new sex!" Timlin (a quietly off-the-wall Kristin Stewart) confides to the aforementioned Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), in a tone and manner you wish beautiful young women would use when confiding with you. The words incidentally could be a new catchphrase, or password, or catechism for the new faddish philosophy, or revolutionary movement, or underground religion-- fill in the blank for the desired form and function.
The film is a Frankenstein creature stitched together from several previous Cronenbergs: Dead Ringers (the semi-organic surgical instruments); Videodrome ("I believe that the growth in my head... is in fact a new organ"); The Fly (Tenser's increasingly debilitating state, and the strange strangely poignant way he lets his sleeves flop over his hands, as if he was cold or couldn't trust his fingers to keep a tight grip on things); and Crash-- not just the director's adaptation of JG Ballard's novel but the whole approach and ambience of Ballard's works.
Ballard? Well yes. Common trait is a dearth of psychology in the characters Ballard describes (transcribes, more like)-- the abnormal psychology of humans in the process of being warped by abnormal circumstances (the end of the world (through wind, water, or crystallization); the entropic alienation of humanity; the Japanese military's haphazard attempt to conquer much of Asia). Actually the reader's/viewer's eye may have been misdirected: Ballard's surreal landscapes (and Cronenberg's bizarre creature effects) often reflect the character's inner psychology and introverted obsessions, hence the writer/filmmaker's relative unconcern with traditional niceties such as characterization and forward momentum. If critics complain there's not much recognizable humanity in the film, that the filmmaker is 'aloof' and 'clinical,' that the narrative has little drive or dramatic impact-- well those are qualities Ballard and Cronenberg have shared through most of their careers, with a measure of success.
Arguably the most striking aspect of Ballard's early disaster novels (The Crystal World in particular) was their lack of urgency. Not that there's any reason not to be urgent-- Ballard usually makes it clear what's at stake, and how quickly everything can go under-- but the protagonists don't seem to care. They're more curious than appalled, they plunge deeper into the jungle instead of seeking escape. For Ballard's people-- and often for Cronenberg's, particularly in this film-- the coming apocalypse isn't so much a calamity as a fascinating new condition to explore and exploit, even embrace. This is the New Flesh, nor are we out of it.
Amazing how assured the film is. Much of the effects are on-set prosthetics, and the mucuslike textures and throbbing tubing often have a fetid just-butchered look to them; the digital effects are low-key and near-seamlessly integrated to the on-camera effects. Douglas Koch's cinematography is darkly dankly handsome and Howard Shore's music beautifully understated, to match Cronenberg's understated storytelling. As for the director himself-- I've noted before how Cronenberg presents his body horror with the explicit sobriety of a pornographer, lighting and photographing his subjects so that every filigreed tissue or severed vein is properly exposed; it's what distinguishes him from lesser (and more hysterical) practitioners of the genre.
And the film's damned funny (emphasis on 'damned') if you allow yourself to tune into its wavelength. Tenser lies in the SARC (Short for sarcophagus?)-- a former autopsy machine turned (as Caprice (Lea Seydoux) puts it) 'artist's canvas'-- and when the knives start slicing you see him close his eyes to savor the sensation and it's clear we're seeing what may be a new kind of porn ('may' because I'm not up on the latest trends in adult videos). Cronenberg skewers the avant-garde performance art scene six ways from Sunday along the way, from the pretentious performers to the credulous audience to the condescending critics evaluating the scene ("he's a better dancer than a conceptual artist" one pundit sniffs) to even the harried government officials (mostly working for the National Organ Registry) desperately scurrying to keep on top of everything that's going on.
Part of the humor stems from the actors' performances. Kristin Stewart as Timlin is the film's dizzy dame playing timid bureaucrat, with Don McKellar as her fumblingly eager partner-in-crime Wippet; Yorgos Pirpassopoulos as Dr. Nasatir encourages Tenser to join an 'Inner Beauty Pageant' and suggests (with glittering eyes) that he would be a sure winner (by way of inducement he sutures a zippered opening to Tenser's abdomen-- the better to see one's intestines with, my dear). Viggo Mortensen as Tenser does the most with less, either curled up or lying down or slouching in a Mechano Chair (an ergonomically designed seat made of what looks like human bones meant to help a man swallow his food)-- premise is his organs are evolving and he can't walk steadily or eat properly or speak easily any more; his gurgles and throat-clearing are like an alternate music score, expressing his evolution over the length of the film from human to something else entirely.
The satire does have a serious vein running through it: the question of defining art-- is it what Tenser does (grow a new organ) or what Caprice does (cutting said organ out)? Where are the ethical boundaries (are there any left?)? And that hairy old chestnut: what does it all mean?
O one can read a political subtext-- humanity is developing in esoteric directions and the government seeks to slow down that development, perhaps stop it on its tracks entirely. Tenser straddles both sides of the issue: he prunes extraneous organs the same time he speaks and is sympathetic to other artists coping with their own extraneous growths. When Detective Cope (Welket Bungue) manipulates the latest show involving an actual corpse into revealing the last possible transgressive act in this most permissible of times (promising virgin flesh only to realize the government has been there first) Tenser is nudged into responding by finally choosing a side; he chooses quietly but he does choose.
The film is actually as ambivalent on the issue as Tenser. It's revealed that Brecken (Sozos Sotiris) is the first human born with the ability to digest polymers and you think-- O how reasonable: on one level it's our last best hope of coping with all this single-use plastic, turning waste into resource, eating our way out of the problem. On another level it's a repulsive idea, turning humanity into a race of dumpster divers-- is that the best we can aspire to, consuming crap (metaphoric and literal) for our survival?
Some scenes may feel excessive to those unfamiliar with Cronenberg; for me the true source of horror is a development mentioned early in the film, in a throwaway line: that mankind has lost much of its ability to feel pain (No pain no infections? It's as if we're being invited to remake ourselves). Without pain, it's pointed out, we lose our early-warning system but I'd submit that without pain-- source of much of our daily suffering-- we also lose much of what makes us human. If viewers find the film low on emotion or drama this (no one can really get hurt) is likely the real reason-- but then Cronenberg is proposing what the next level in human evolution might look and act and think like, and this film could be addressed to them, not primordial holdovers like us. We, Cronenberg might be suggesting, aren't evolved enough to appreciate the joke.
Cronenberg doesn't make much of that observation-- which is my one real problem with the film-- but does stay true to his vision, taking the gag as far as it can logically go, beyond the funny into the distinctly uncomfortable-- the difference, in my book, between the merely brilliant and the great. If the film implies more than it can properly handle, Cronenberg may (possibly, hopefully) be leaving the subject open to a possible sequel.
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