Disclaimer: it often takes some time for me to come to terms with a new Cronenberg film. I didn't much care for Crimes of the Future either, the first time I saw it, but now find it rather delightful -- Cronenberg playing himself for comedy, almost, but with some strikingly visceral, kinky weirdness along the way. I've seen it a few times now, and while I still can't fully unpack it, I have more fun with it each time, find myself thinking new thoughts about it; it's probably the most enjoyable film Cronenberg has made in "self-referential" mode, maybe my favourite of his films since Eastern Promises.
I liked The Shrouds far less, even comparing with other first viewings I've had of Cronenberg films, and suspect that it may be among the ones (Maps to the Stars is another) that I may never actually choose to revisit (I saw Maps first run and still haven't gone back to it, though I do have it on blu ray, unseen by me in that format). Even by Cronenberg standards, The Shrouds is a very chilly, very talky film, often with stilted dialogue, Guy Pearce aside; one wonders if Cronenberg had some sort of Bressonian agenda to get the flattest line readings possible out of his characters, because frequently, the cadences seem off, alienated, emotionless (or possibly under-rehearsed). There's far too much information conveyed through dialogue, too, from a key character who we never see until after he's dead, another character who appears only in a promotional video for the company he represents (what's that about?) and a plot between feuding forces that have almost no physical presence on the screen (consider what Videodrome might have been like if there were no Brian O'Blivion, no Barry Convex -- if we just heard about them and their plots in the third person). It's like many of the films he's written entirely himself in the latter half of his career -- eXisTenz was the first film of his that felt this way, that had that "Cronenberg's greatest hits" feeling, as Adrian Mack once put: this self-referentiality whereby it seems to deliberately riff on elements of other things he's done, as if his awareness of what it means to be "Cronenbergian" seems to actually be guiding his hand as a writer, like he's not just making a film, but following some sort of preconceived playbook of what it means to make a Cronenberg film. Does that self-referential quality itself now become an aspect of the Cronenbergian? His films pre-Videodrome didn't feel that way at all, but increasingly, since that movie, especially in terms of the ones he's written himself -- they have.
And that self-referential quality certainly gets pushed to new extremes here. Cronenberg has always cast actors who look a bit like himself in lead roles, but Vincent Cassel even has the man's haircut, this time out. Weirdly, there's even a character (played by Guy Pearce) who channels Harlan in Videodrome, and who in fact turns out to be playing a similar role (there's no Convex or O'Blivion but there is a Harlan). There are sex scenes that are framed in ways that evoke sex scenes in both Crash and Videodrome, from scenes involving women with surgical wounds to others with the man framed behind the woman, with both lying on their sides -- a position Cronenberg seems partial to, at least as a filmmaker. There is also a gimmick already used in Naked Lunch with Judy Davis, where one actress plays multiple characters, though I was actually briefly unsure whether Diane Kruger was in three or four roles, this time out. If there is any filmmaker you don't want to disappear up his own arsehole, it's David Cronenberg: he'll be examining each polyp with a flashlight, then trying to sell non-fungible tokens based on it...
All of which is somewhat a shame, because there's also a fascinating premise at hand -- technology that allows you to watch your loved ones decompose. It's brilliant, and when you realize that we're asking questions about how one moves on in relationships when your greatest attachment to another human body is to the dead flesh of your spouse... It's potent stuff. The sex scenes have a weird power to them, too -- it's probably the first time that watching a Cronenberg film has given me an erection, though I swear to you I did not welcome it and wished it would go away. But the moments that work in the film work so well, are so potent that you actually start to resent the talky, plotty, super-self-referential stuff that ends up threatening to take over the story at times, without ever really getting you invested. It's like a distraction from the real meat of the film -- like the filmmaker has failed to effectively craft a vessel to carry the ideas and images in the movie that are compelling and gripping, and instead is just... repeating himself, phoning in a plot when what he cares about is elsewhere. He had a great premise, great images in his head, but no hook to hang them on, so he auto-cannibalized, just to keep things moving forward, even if that momentum wasn't really what he was interested in...
Near the end I almost nodded off. I caught myself, and rallied, but even still, when I was feeling myself starting to disengage, there were moments that struck me, that surprised me. Maybe it will all cohere more on a subsequent viewing?
Time will tell if I even want to go there.
Bummer.
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