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| A limo ride to nowhere. |
If
you read Don DeLillo in your formative years chances are you were a bit fucked
up in the head, but that yielded only the urge to understand the hypocrisy of
the world to a better degree…you probably read a lot of Bret Easton Ellis along
with that. Now, if you watched Cronenberg growing up, congratulations you’re
probably smarter than 95% percent of the world’s population, and moreover if
you actually understand all of his films on body-horror, pan-existentialist
levels, then you’re a fucking genius.
A
few of his newest films have been rather polarizing. A Dangerous Method (2011) was schmaltzy crap the whole way through.
And Cosmopolis (2012) got all kinds
of black and white reviews, it’s the kind of film Armand White loves to write
about. The kind of film that gets a mixed reaction at Cannes, and Rotten
Tomatoes has a meltdown over because film critics turn into 5 year olds; All
having something to say each at a louder more obnoxious volume than the other.
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| Sarah Gadon plays the wife of Billionaire playboy Eric (Robert Pattinson) who promises that one day they will indeed have sex, but never delivers. Probably a smart move on her part. |
I
had heard a shit ton of bad press about this film, but it was mostly from
people that didn’t ‘get it’ and were faux film critics to begin with in the
tradition of Ben Lyons who just tear it to shreds because they don’t understand
allegory and post-capitalist theory and still manage to make 6-figure salaries
(Fuck Ben Lyons is basically what I’m saying) he’s probably never watched
anything of Cronenberg’s past Dead
Ringers (1988)).
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| A prostate exam during a meeting with his financial advisor yeilds the metaphor that Eric has an asymmetrical prostate, take it for whatever you think it might mean. |
This
is a film that combines sexual frustration and depression of fear of
being-in-the-world, particularly of being powerful, both sexually and
otherwise, and the inner struggle that exists in the responsibility which that
power comes with. Also, the boredom that comes from knowing that everything is too
easily accessible weather it be billions of dollars or seriously hot French tail.
It is a Jean-Paul Sartre manifesto on film, and no one better to understand
that and make it erotic than David Cronenberg. I thought the film was
fantastic, and thought most didn’t and it barely got distributed, it finally
landed on Netflix, so good for it, a bunch of teenagers can now be either
confused as fuck or take up reading DeLillo and start speaking with a French
accent. Either way, it’s one of
Cronenberg’s more complex and erotic films, which is exactly how he initially
made his name in the business, mixed with some political pathos, it makes for
one hell of a mindfuck.
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