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DAVID CRONENBERG SECTION
Cronenberg is THE Canadian nut. Even though his work is uneven, I find him to be one of the most interesting directors around. He always places this dark, chilly atmosphere for his characters to dwell in (although filming in Canada probably contributes to this) with blueish tones; places biological explanations for even the most bizarre behavior; uses gore as if it were very natural, as well as for shock effect, without trying to shock the audiences through overkill (unlike Lucio Fulci, for example); explores the dark side to sexuality and often shows sex or sexual behavior on the screen or implies it; he employs lots of references to "the flesh" and orifices; and films everything while deleting any traces of when reality started becoming an alternate reality. Other than that, he tries to really draw out a main character, and compare him with 1-D or 2-D bizarre characters, while employing good actors (except for his first films, and Stephen Lack) in different performances than their usual fare, all of whom have bizarre dialogue, ranging from Oliver Reed to Jeff Goldblum to Christopher Walken to Jeremy Irons. He always starts the films with a blank sequence where only the title and credits role in an interesting way while the score plays on. He also employs good scores by Howard Shore in all his films since The Brood. Finally, his films are about obsessions. One or more characters become obsessed with some concept (usually a sexual one or something about becoming superhuman) to a mortal level; the characters become addicted to a strange pleasure... Plus all the films have fucked up endings, where at least one of the main characters dies a violent death. And it is fun to try to figure out the parts that don't make sense in his film. Well, okay, except for Naked Lunch...
Sometimes Cronenberg REALLY messes up your mind. Have you seen one of those commercials where an egg is fried or shattered and someone says "This is your brain on drugs"? Well, you could make a similar one about this director's effect, one where there's this naked Canadian weirdo inserting his penis into an egg, and someone would say "This is your brain on Cronenberg". In other words, he fucks with your mind.
Aside from the listed films, this great director/scriptwriter has done the cool horror/sci-fi films Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, The Dead Zone, The Fly, and the drag racing film starring B-movie stars (don't ask; it was the 70s) Fast Company.
Author: Parca
Mortem
[Page under construction]
Starring: James Spader (Stargate, Sex, Lies, and Videotape,
The
New Kids), Deborah Unger (The Game, Highlander III),
Elias Koteas (The Thin Red Line, Fallen,
Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles, The Prophecy), Holly Hunter (The Piano,
Raising
Arizona,
Broadcast News), Roseanna Arquette (Nowhere to Run,
Desperately
Seeking Susan, Pulp Fiction), among others.
Written by: Cronenberg, based on J.G. Ballard's novel (also
author of Empire of the Sun and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth).
Genre: Suspense/Drama
Duration: 1 hour 40 mins
Availability: Just about any video store/rental in most parts
of the world, or at least the R-rated version. But the NC-17 is easy
to come by in cult video stores or on DVD.
Hey, have you seen the tag line of this film, that says its about sex and car crashes? Well guess what? That's a very precise description of the film. The only things that go on are people crashing cars, people watching car crashes, and people having kinky sex (a lot of it in cars). There's no real plot, and there's no real ending, but there are several demented interesting characters pushing everything to the limits.
Here's what is called the plot: James Ballard (Spader) and his wife Catherine (Unger) pass their time openly fucking anyone they can. They also like to look at the highway (the view from their balcony) and hope that a crash happens, and she takes flying lessons because it stimulates her erotically. One day James is driving home, loses control of the car on the highway, and flies into the lower lane filled with cars rushing in the other direction, and crashes head on. During the crash the male occupant of the car is flown into James' car and left dangling dead upside down, but James notices that the female occupant starts to masturbate immediately after. While in the hospital, James finds out that the woman is Dr. Helen Remmington (Hunter). He tries to talk to her but she avoids him. However, they encounter one day in a lot for trashed cars while he's looking at the wreck of his car, and wind up having sex in the car. She proceeds to introduce him to a group of people who are equally sexually obsessed about car accidents, led by the maniac Vaughn (Koteas), a guy who lives in his car, spouts a lot of pseudo-philosophy related to cars and humanity, constantly photographs the gory aftermaths of car crashes, and as an obsessive passtime recreates famous car accidents. And the people in the group have some screws lose as well, as they for example watch films of cars being tested and crashed as if they were porno films, and they like to have sexual games with each other (if you are wondering who Rosanna Arquette plays, she's a member of the group called Gabrielle). The film just goes on from there as James also draws Catherine into the group, and as the characters try to get to a new extreme every time in this automotive sexual experience.
On some levels there are similarities to previous work by Cronenberg. For example, Vaughn originally mentions that his objective is the reshaping of the human body by modern technology (flashbacks to Videodrome, The Fly, The Brood, and Dead Ringers). Then there's a scene in which James and Catherine are in bed lying sideways with him fucking her from behind while she talks about some of her obsesions that are the center of the film, which is almost identical to a scene in Videodrome that involved James Woods and Deborah Harry. But that's about it. Here Cronenberg doesn't add any sci-fi nor questioning of reality but instead chooses his more "plain" odd character studies such as he did in Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly.
Here's what makes the film stand out: Cronenberg directs this as a horror film. Everything moves along in a cold, relaxed atmosphere, surrounded by dark blueish colors in dimly lit sets, while this great haunting score by Howard Shore plays on (imagine a cross between the one in Nightmare on Elm Street, the theme of Unsolved Mysteries, and the one from the hallucinogenic sequences in The Doors, played on what sounds like an electric guitar). The sex scenes do not only seem kinky and the characters odd, but everything is made to look and feel psychotic. And of course for the crash scenes Cronenberg gives you every gory detail available. It also helps that Debora Kara Unger keeps on wandering around with a drugged look in her eyes, that Elias Koteas is slobbering and acting very well as the maniac, and that Rosanna Arquette walks wearing this creepy steel structure holding together her scarred legs.
On the other hand, here's what will decide if you like the film or not. It is whether you view this as a soft core porn film in disguise and just see all the strange sex in it as abhorent, in which case you will hate it, or if you view this as an interesting view into the lives of several people that are missing several bolts, in which case you will like it. I fall into the latter group, although the lack of plot did leave me unsatisfied, as it doesn't have a real ending.
A little history on this film. Originally Cronenberg released
this in Cannes in 1996, where the jury gave him a special prize for audacity,
but the crowd of critics, snobby filmakers, and Frenchmen (lovely crowd
to have a bomb drop on) booed him. A greater irony of this is that
Cronenberg headed the jury 3 years later. Anyway, the original distributors
of the film dropped him, hoping that this flick would never make it to
daylight, despite that it also gave Cronenberg his fourth Genie for Best
Direction (and another 5 awards for the film). Fortunately at last
Cronenberg got it released in the US in March 1997, although only in 393
screens, and slapped with an NC-17 rating. Controversial enough for
you?...
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
Dead Ringers
(1988)
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold, Stephen Lack (Scanners)
The question of the week is: what the heck happened to Genevieve Bujold? She was not only a talented actress, but a very good looking one as well. Suddenly, she pretty much dissappeared after this movie, appearing in films so small, they never got released beyond Europe. Then she resurfaces in supporting roles or in lead roles in generic late night cable thrillers, but she's unrecognizable. I mean, she's blown up and aged incredibly. She's still talented, but looks more like Camryn Manheim than her old self. I guess she took the same substances that made Malcolm McDowell suddenly age 20 years as soon as the 90s came around, not to mention John Carpenter.
Take a look at her in this film. She's 46 or so, yet still sexy and well maintained. And heck, she was playing a junkie!
[review in progress]
Bizarreness level: 5 shots out of 10
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Starring: Jenniffer Jason-Leigh (Single White Female,
The
Hudsucker Proxy), Jude Law (Gattaca), Willem Dafoe (The English
Patient, The Last Temptation of Christ, Clear and Present
Danger), Ian Holm (Alien, Charriots of Fire), Christopher
Eccleston (Elizabeth, Jude), among others.
Written by: Cronenberg
Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi/Suspense/Black Comedy
Duration: 1 hr 37 mins.
Availability: Should be hitting video rentals by October '99
After 14 years of his departure of his particular brand of horror/sci-fi flicks, Cronenberg serves up another one of his twisted "bio-horror" tales. And what a great return it is! Cronenberg created a film that not only contends with Videodrome for the throne corresponding to his best movie, but that is definitely going to be among the year's best. Speaking about Videodrome, it is similar to that film and Naked Lunch in the sense that it toys around with reality to the extent that you don't have the slightest idea what is real and what is not. It is also similar to those films in that most machines are organic, some of them seeming to be creatures by themselves.
Of course, this film has yet another strange history. Cronenberg
was trying to make a film about the history of the Ferrari cars, yet was
not able to get the financing to do so. So instead he went on to
do this one, a film easier to sell. His inspiration for it came from
two sources. The first one was watching his kids playing virtual
reality games, which he foresees are going to have a great role in the
future. The other was after having an interview with ol' controversial
Salman Rushdie. The result is a film about a society were VR games
rule the masses, and its inventors are being chased by murderous fanatics...
done Cronenberg style.
Of course, after getting Dimension Studios to hand over $30 m. for
this project, the film got a rather limited release. You see, it
got an initial run through arthouse theatres and a few mainstream theatres
in some cities (but not more than 270 theatres), getting great reviews
from the both the critics and the audience (except for some idiots like
the one is violently shaking his head while reading this) and making good
money. But its planned expansion to more theatres got delayed, for
unexplained reasons. However, one must notice that its release happened
during the Colombine high school murders, and in a time period just slightly
after The Matrix was released, and just slightly before The Thirteenth
Floor was to be released, so that may explain why only about 900 theatres
in the US got it. Ironically, at the same time Cronenberg was heading
the jury at the Cannes film festival (and fighting off the snotty French
and movie critics - pardon the redundancy), and had just won a Silver Bear
at the Berlin festival for this flick (for outstanding artistic achivement),
plus a nomination for the Golden Bear for best film in the same festival.
The plot is as follows: Allegra Gellar (Leigh, who got cut out of Eyes Wide Shut to do this film) is, in a near future, the top videogame designer in the world. However, videogames are played rather differently then. The game consoles are made out of flesh and plug directly into your spinal cord through something that looks like an umbilical cord, creating the ultimate virtual reality experience. These games of course are extremely popular, to fanatical levels. So of course one day during a test/demonstration of Gellar's latest game (called guess what), some guy wanders in with a strange tooth-shooting gun made out of bones and tries to kill Gellar while shouting "Death to the demoness Allegra Gellar!". Gellar is saved by Ted Pikel (Law), a new employee of the marketing division of her company, whom gets immediately appointed as her bodyguard and ordered to take her to safety. So they shack up at a motel in the middle of nowhere. Of course the first thing that Allegra wants to do is test eXistenZ, her little baby, to see if it is alright after the shooting. To do so first they wind up going to a gas station where the attendant (Willem Dafoe in one of his craziest roles) does a plug into Ted's spine, and then they head to the place of a fellow game technician (played by a kind Ian Holm) who performs surgery on the pod to repair it. Then they both plug into the game and the really strange part starts. You see, Ted and Allegra have to play the assigned roles in the game, only that they don't know what they are, what the game is about, or what is what. And, if they don't say the correct lines, the characters they are speaking to will keep on saying the same lines and doing the same movements like a broken record. Or they may become insane and attempt to kill them (kind of like fanatical fundamentalists from most religions, huh?)...
I would spoil most of the fun if I were to reveal all that they go through. Let's just say that Ted and Allegra figure out that they are either terrorists against an enemy game pod company, or members of the company itself, which makes them wind up paranoid. To screw things up more, after they wake up from the game, they are still not sure if they are in the game or not (everyone, repeat after me: "WHAT IS REALITY?") and are unsure of their actions. Furthermore, Cronenberg adds a spoof of a Chinese food restaurant (wait for the special!), as well as a large one of inhuman factory conditions and industrial pollution, with people dismembering on an assembly line mutant fish, frogs, snakes, and other creatures. And of course, everything goes into gory, disgusting detail (but mind you, entertaining gory and disgusting detail), including some hilariously bizarre shoot outs and what not. As in every Cronenberg flick, there are some sexual overtones, particularly in a scene where Ted and Allegra start groping each other and kissing to a very erotic extent (while claiming that they aren't doing it, their characters are!). To top it off, the film has a great finale (one that tops the ones of The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project for best finale of 1999), which is reminiscent of both The Usual Suspects and Total Recall.
Cronenberg expertly strings this film along. He sets the mood
from the title sequence (featuring another great score by Howard Shore),
and is able to blend the horror, sci-fi, and suspense aspects seemlessly,
adding a lot of black humor (none of it overdone or overemphasized) and
his usual touches. He always keeps us in suspense and makes us more
interested in what follows next in the abstract maze that he invents, which
he can back by not only the locations and the storylines, but particularly
through the ever-changing characters (with good performances from every
actor), catching you off guard all the time. But what is more interesting
is the world he created. Just like there were the bug-typewriters
in Naked Lunch and the breathing tapes in Videodrome,
in eXistenZ you have all sorts of organic machines, from game pods
to cell phones, and even the non-organic devices are oddly shaped.
Yet there are no watches nor clocks, computers, TV sets, or everyday household
appliances. People are addicted to videogames not in a metaphorical
sense, but in a biological sense, which causes many to go insane.
And, as usual, Cronenberg holds no contempt for companies nor organizations
of any sort... As for those ironically addicted to Cronenberg's visual
style, yes, he does keep the chilly look with the blueish tones and calmed
camerawork, letting the bizarre images and characters impact by themselves.
Heck, EVERY Cronenberg trait shows up in this film. Trust me, this
is a nearly orgasmic experience for most die hard Cronenberg addicts...
And one of the best films released so far in 1999.
Bizarreness level: 8 shots out of 10.
Rating: 9 out of 10.
Naked Lunch
(1991)
[REVIEW COMING SOON!]
Bizarreness level: 10 shots out of 10.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
M. Butterfly
(1994)
[REVIEW COMING SOON!]
Bizarreness level: 4 shots out of 10.
Rating: 6 out of 10.
Videodrome
(1983)
Starring: James Woods, Deborah Harry (yep, Blondie), Sonja Smiths
(TekWar, The Pit), Peter Dvorsky (The Dead Zone, The
Kiss, Barbarians at the Gate), among others.
Written by: Cronenberg.
Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
Duration: 1 hr. 29 mins.
Availability: Most videorentals. It also gets shown from
time to time on Sci-Fi and TNT.
"The Clockwork Orange of the 80s", declared Andy Warhol once, regarding this film. This is perhaps Cronenberg's best effort, or any case a prime contender for his best. Just after his breakthrough hit, Scanners, Cronenberg started to get picked up by US producers to direct films in the US (the same year that he got recruited for The Dead Zone), and this, one of his own scripts, became his first US film, at a $5 m budget, set in (where else in the 80s?) New York. The story goes on like this: Max (the great Woods) co-runs a popular pirate TV station, and is always on the lookout for something new, the more controversial the better (imagine a future Fox TV programming exec). One day he encounters a signal for a station called Videodrome (not to be confused with Tunnelvision), which just shows what may or may not be snuff films all day. The problem is, the more he watches it, the more he likes it, and the more he has to watch more of it. Same thing goes for his kinky girlfriend (Debbie Harry). Max tries to track down the station, only to find a lot of secrecy and mystery around it, not to mention a cult leader-like figure at its head. The odd things start when his girlfriend dissappears after trying to audition for Videodrome. Then Max sees her on Videodrome, being tortured, and speaking at him in his living room, as if she could observe what he's doing at the moment. Not only that, but Max begins to hallucinate big time, seeing for example a rubber like humanoid trying to crawl out of his TV screen and into the real world.
Of course, Max knows that nothing is right, and he tries to find the people behind Videodrome itself. And that is when it gets VERY strange, with Max discovering double crossers among his friends, a tumor growing in his brain, a cult that worships the effects of the videos and that say "All hail the new flesh!" while following a messiah that remains alive through videotapes, and tapes that breathe and sigh erotically that get inserted into orifices created in people's stomachs after which they start playing. And later on there's the part when Max goes completely insane and one of his hands becomes a gun made out of his flesh and bones and he goes on a killing spree. Got enough?
This is a great film, although the last 30 minutes do not make much sense. Woods turns in another good performance, and the cast is appropiate. Cronenberg paces this very well, and can make the film scary without having to have someone suddenly jump out with a knife. Also notable are the effects by a rising Rick Baker and the score by Howard Shore. Plus, this is one of the first films to explore the possibility of TV influence on the masses, only that taking it to another more demented level, without placing any "morals" or "religious" propaganda into it. In fact, it is a clever look into several aspects of the 80s, such as the growth of the media, the changes in values, the popularizing of cults, and the revolution of technology and the possibilities that represented the then fairly new videotapes. On a final note, I consider this to be the older brother of Naked Lunch and eXistenZ, which are sort of a trilogy of Cronenberg screwing around with reality.
Bizarreness level: 8 out of 10.
Rating: 9 out of 10.
