Few filmmakers mercilessly slip into their heads directly into their heads like David Cronenberg. For decades, he has pushed the boundaries of big-screen entertainment by disturbing the audience, upsetting genre expectations, exploding his head, gasping his wounds, coveting, suffering, and transforming his body. I did. As a modern augur, he opens up the character with a cool, female-like cinematic technique that is separated, both mentally and physically, and sacred the prophetic meaning of what is inside (and Fester). ).
His latest work, “Crimes of the Future,” is very tough and creepy, but probably relaxing. It’s a modest dispatch from the end of the world. Set in an uncertain future, we are mainly working on two artists (Viggo Mortensen as Saul and Léa Seydou as Caprice) who perform surgery as a performance. Caprice uses a colorful controller to scrutinize the internal organs of the sole and grow inside the body, with the sole lying on its back on a biological device while the viewer is staring at it from the bystander. Remove new organs. The audience is quiet, attentive and respectful (movie fans may yell). On his side, Saul looks ecstatic.
The movie takes place in a depopulated waterfront town where rusty barnacle-covered ship carcasses sink to the shore. There, in shadowy streets and abandoned buildings, men and women often roam without obvious purpose, as if they were badly drugged or perhaps blown up by the collective devastation called reality. I am. There is a characteristic lack of influence of Kronenberg, which is embarrassing to most of them, even when they are chopping each other in dark corners and performances-few people experience pain anymore. Times have changed, but human desire for violence and sight has not been compromised.
The story gradually appears in a scene that appears to be drifting even though it is fixed in place. Between performances and business talks, Saul and Caprice are drawn into overlapping plots, including a dead child and an inner beauty pageant. An interesting Kristen Stewart appears with Don McKeller in the dilapidated office once used by Philip Marlowe, but now the front door is engraved with the disturbing word “National Organ Registration”. There is also a policeman (Welkeet Bunge) who sculpts with Saul in the shadow of a dead child’s father (Scott Speedman) lurking in the mystery.
In most cases, the world of “Crimes of the Future” looks like the everyday life of the not-so-distant future, defined by our own miserable needs, decline, violence, extreme entertainment and environmental disasters. Make something similar to what you imagine. It’s terrible and eerily familiar. But Cronenberg does not make decisions about it or wave his fist in the sky. Instead, with visual accuracy, dry humor, subdued melancholy, and a very original vision of tomorrow that embarrasses the futurists of most films, he can be painful to see. Reveals a world of humor, exposing its flesh-filled internal organs as Caprice opens the sole.
Mortensen and Seydoux are the combined minds and souls of “Crimes of the Future”, which infuse a wave of emotions into the film and warm the overall cold considerably. His eyebrows appear to be shaved and his face is often covered with a scarf. Saul is a curious person, as well as an artist, a ninja, and a religious ascetic. His hands and feet appear to be undamaged, but the placement of cables on his appendages, and the many amputations Caprice makes on his body during performance, are the wounds of Christ crucified. Awaken the stigma. And Saul is clearly suffering, but for whom? For him, Caprice, us?
“Crimes of the Future” is about desire and death, pain and joy, transformation and transcendence, and much more. The sole is the centerpiece. You first see the structure in which he hangs from the ceiling in his bed at home, like a suspended cradle. Impressive, but really eye-catching are the bed cables, the medical tubes that look like elephant trunks and are attached to the pale bare hands and feet of the sole. The bottom of each cable resembles a small webbed hand, a clearly anthropomorphic vision that looks like it’s being cared for by an extraterrestrial nanny.
The attentiveness of Saul’s care, including Caprice, is a painful contrast to the horrific indifference shown to one child in the film (Sotiris Siozos). The “future crime” begins with the murder of this child. It’s a visceral and disastrous shock that drives at least some movie fans out of the theater. Opening a story with the shock of violence is an obvious way to start an event, create a plot, and captivate an audience. We are used to it. But killing a child is more disturbing than most screen violence. Partly because of that horror, movies show us a lot of horror, but we like to package violence, have sex, and make it look like a movie. They resist showing us the real worst.
Strictly functionally speaking, murder acts as a danger signal, a kind of trigger warning to a movie audience, an announcement of intent or at least the limits of the story. I think Cronenberg is telegraphing the type of movie you are trying to watch. He does not take prisoners or dull the end of the story. The murder is really terrible and it shakes you at the heart of it, creating a low, unwavering heartbeat of deep anxiety that remains intact throughout the turns and tone shifts of different stories. Most violent films dismiss it with empty anger and empty moral attitude. Here, violence is bothering you.
With its theme, bodywork, and violence, “Crimes of the Future” evokes some of Cronenberg’s other films, especially “Videodrome.” This is a shocker about (especially) lost men. This new movie feels more melancholic than many previous movies, but it probably changed me. Again, people are evolving, evolving, transforming into familiar ones, and transforming into another horrifying one. Still, despite the morbid laughter and beautiful smiles that can illuminate Saul’s face like Teresa of Avila, the “Future Climb” feels like a requiem. Cronenberg has always been a diagnostician of the Human Condition. Again, he feels like a funeral director.
Future crime
It is rated R for murder of children, surgery, and violence with power drills. Execution time: 1 hour 47 minutes. At the theater.
