Crimes of the Future

Lea Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen, and Kristen Stewart in Crimes of the Future

The times have finally caught up with David Cronenberg. His body horror films may have seemed outré in the 80s, but the realities of the 21st century have given his work, like that of  Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler, the weight of prophecy. Body modification is so commonplace in my burg of Portland that when I see someone with devil's horns or piercings in the double digits, I nary bat an eye. Cronenberg has had such a long and successful enough career that he has spawned cinematic progeny: not only his actual son Brandon, but such acolytes as Julia Ducournau and Carlo Mirabella-Davis.

Crimes of the Future marks a return to the theme of body horror that dominated his work in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, the script dates back to the 90s. What resonated with me was the self-identification of Cronenberg with his protagonist, the performance artist Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortenson. Tenser and his partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux) engage in body modification and ritualized surgeries. We are shown rival performance artists engaging in similar work. However, years of dedication to his art have taken a toll on Tenser. His health and diet are poor. He shuffles around in a magus like shroud, bemoaning his waning powers and confessing that he is jealous of younger artists. His name (which could be read as "anxious Jew") and the presence of Mortensen, the director's leading man of choice since A History of Violence, stress the identification of the aged director with his protagonist. 

Furthermore, the acolytes of his work are regarded ambivalently. Caprice and an official from the "National Organ Registry", played by Kristen Stewart, revere his body of work, but both seem to want to use Tenser's approach as a springboard for their own artistic aspirations. Tenser is wary of them both. Though Caprice is his partner in life and work, Tenser keeps aspects of his self hidden from her. The scene where Caprice unzips his torso and starts licking his internal organs suggests, perhaps all too obviously, the vampiric nature of their relationship.

The film is far from flawless. The rusted ships and decayed buildings of Athens are appropriate to the fallen nature of mankind in the film, but are too reminiscent of the Interzone of Burroughs and (Cronenberg's) Naked Lunch. The paranoid and predatory mix of government officials and business representatives seems fuzzily drawn here; as it does to me in Burroughs' oeuvre (too much bug spray, perhaps). Seydoux, a fierce talent, is stuck with more expository dialogue than is good for an ESL thespian. My wife, a lifelong Cronenberg fan, found his rehash of themes to be tired. Certainly, he has explored fetishism to death.  This is always the paradox of auteurist cinema, though. Is an old director lamely recycling his old tropes or intriguingly reinvestigating lifelong obsessions. It is no surprise to me that the American critics least receptive to auteurism (Ann Hornaday, Mick LaSalle, Rex Reed) are the ones that have graced this film with its most negative reviews.

I think Crimes of the Future is middling Cronenberg (like his Naked Lunch), but my esteem for his vision and the complexity of its thematic reach make it the best new film I have seen in 2022. It contains yet another superb Howard Shore score.  Mortenson and Stewart are both excellent and the ending, too abrupt for some, ranks as one of his most fascinating. Is the ending an act of suicide or a new form of communion; or both. Neither the red pill nor blue one, but purple. The old flesh is dead. Long live the new flesh!

In Cronenberg's work, secular institutions are shown as having usurped the ritualistic trapping and communal bonding of religion. (see especially The Brood, Dead Ringers and Eastern Promises) The unease of this transition is one of Cronenberg's most important themes. In his early films, revulsion had been the primary response to the horrors of the flesh in our new secular, technological world. In Crimes of the Future, the mood is one of serene acceptance, one of the last stages of a human contemplating mortality. The techno, medical, performance art (aka sexless sex) is presented in a blasé manner. Stylistically, Cronenberg has never been a showy director in utilizing his camera. Nor is he a moralist. This is why the film seems undynamic and boring to some. 

Cronenberg has always been queasy about the human body and its twin signifiers, sex and death. One proclaims fertility, the other seemingly barren nothingness. One of our least romantic artists, Cronenberg displays supreme self-knowledge when Tenser intones, after an abortive and deeply unsatisfying tryst, "I was always bad at the old sex." Not an epitaph, but, hopefully, the start of a new stage.

Electric Boogaloo, Angel, Nymph-Light

The preternatural in a puddle: Joseph Cornell's Angel

Electric Boogaloo is an entertaining history of Cannon Pictures. The film is rather sparse in its detailing of the personal lives of Messrs. Golan and Globus, but that may have been because their professional lives were all consuming. The cheesy clips were well edited and the interviews were acerbic; my kind of combo.

If this enjoyable documentary won't leave much of an impression on me it is because of the revelatory color shorts by Joseph Cornell I watched beforehand: Angel and Nymph-Light, both from 1957. Cornell's pair of films are an expression of his faith (he was a devote Christian Scientist), a celebration of the patterns of the divine found in the natural world even in the heart of Gotham. The tattered parasol and frilly frock of the titular nymph are for Cornell just the transient fancies of our day to day lives. By the film's end, the parasol is in a waste bin, soon to be carted away.

Cornell is more taken with transcendent and less artificial signifiers of the Creator's plan, namely birds. They exist without self-consciousness or care, emblems of the divine found even in our most Babylonian metropolis, New York City. The birds are paralleled with the human denizens of a park, both watching the passing scene. While the birds seem to revel in nature's transcendent splendor, the humans, wrapped up in their day to day struggles and estranged from the natural rhythms of existence, merely bide their time.

Angel reminds me of a quote cited by my old professor, Larry Hall, on the Romantics, "...they could find the preternatural in a puddle." The fountain reflections and flowers in the film conjure a sense of mystery and mute beauty that spring from Cornell's spiritual yearnings. Cornell is one of the least chthonic artists of the modern era. The shot of the clouds that ends the film, with the angel in the foreground, expresses his desire for eternity in a world above ours.

I always enjoy seeing old color footage that shows how cities looked in mid-century America. I feel a nostalgic pang seeing the old fashions and people no longer walking the earth. I'm struck by the vividness of the advertising colors. I wonder if colors in advertising have changed in the last half century, more muted greens and oranges and less stark primary colors. A window into a past I only dimly remember. (2/4/16)

Licorice Pizza

Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza is a fine work of nostalgic Americana circa 1973. The film concerns a mismatched romance between a fifteen year old actor named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and a stunted twenty five year old cameraman's assistant named Alana (Alana Haim). Set amidst the sights and sounds of the San Fernando Valley, the film is an awkward romance leavened with satiric comedy. A largely pleasant effort, the film does not reach Anderson's previous heights, but will reward his fans.

As I've noted before, Anderson's films are variably Altmanesque ensemble films that celebrate alternative families (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Inherent Vice) or colder, Kubrickian films featuring an egotist at war with the world (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread). Licorice Pizza belongs to the former category and its strong supporting cast gives the film a new shot of juice every five minutes or so. Christine Ebersole, Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Skyler Gisondo, Isabelle Kusman, and Jon Beavers all contribute memorable bits. As in all Anderson's work, making a living in a rapacious system requires a hustler's cunning. Gary Valentine knows his time as a child actor is running out, so he engages in side hustles like selling water beds, running a P.R. firm, and operating a pinball arcade. Similarly, Alana, despite being drawn to Gary, strives to keep her options open both romantically and economically. 

The film is weakest when satirizing the racism and sexism of the era. Anderson's touch is so leaden with the racism of the owner of a Japanese restaurant that it brought accusations of racism upon Anderson himself. A tracking shot of motorists waiting in a line for gasoline falls flat, a faint echo of Godard's traffic jam tracking shot in Weekend. Still Ms. Haim and Mr. Hoffman are well-cast and appealing romantic leads. Licorice Pizza is certainly the sweetest film in Anderson's impressive canon.