Dead Ringers

I watch David Cronenberg films for one reason and that is to have my eyes opened. Whether it is through the gore of an early film like Scanners or the beauty of a more recent movie like A Dangerous Method, his visuals are always striking and his themes, challenging. Few film makers can claim to have been as influential as Cronenberg while also avoiding the trappings of mainstream Hollywood and whatever he turns his attention to, something weird and unique will invariably be formed. Dead Ringers is his 1988 film which looks at the connection that twins share; biologically, mentally and physically. It straddles the gap between body horror and beautiful cinematography but was made firmly during his body horror era. For the director it is a somewhat restrained film but one which runs deep with ideas although doesn’t boil over into all out gore.

Elliot and Beverly Mantle (Jeremy Irons) are brilliant gynaecologists and identical twins. Working out of their Toronto office, the two men specialise in fertility and their methods are both effective but daring. The twin’s lives are blurred by their frequent interchanging. The two impersonate each other at dinners, awards ceremonies and even with women. Early on in the film, the brothers begin to share the life of an actress called Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) and when the quieter Beverly begins to fall for her, his more aggressive brother Elliot suspects that her presence is harming their relationship.

The Brood

The second half of Grimm Up North’s recent David Cronenberg double bill was 1979’s The Brood. Creepier and less funny than Scanners, the first film on the bill, The Brood stars a late period Oliver Reed as a Psychotherapist who specialises in the field of ‘Psychoplasmics’, a method in which patients let go of suppressed emotions through physiological changes in their bodies. One of Dr. Raglan’s (Reed) patients is Nola (Samantha Eggar), the wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle). Frank is worried about his wife’s treatment at the hands of Dr. Raglan and begins to suspect something else is wrong when their young daughter returns from a visit covered in scratches and bruises. Frank is right to worry as an unwanted side effect of Nola’s treatment is the creation of The Brood, childlike monsters who feed off her negative thoughts, attacking and killing based on her emotions.

Unlike Scanners which I enjoyed all the way through, The Brood takes its time to get going. There are large swathes of the film where I was feeling a little bit bored by what was going on and I wasn’t sure where the film was going. What kept me interested was an early appearance of one of The Brood. The confusion about what it was and where it came from helped me to remain focussed throughout the less interesting moments before a final half hour which was full of excitement, action and terror.

Scanners

Last night I was fortunate to take in a David Cronenberg double bill at the lavish Plaza Theatre in Stockport. The evening was run by the Grimm Up North people who put on an excellent show which attracted a decent crowd. The first film on the bill was Scanners, Cronenberg’s 1981 science fiction horror which was for him at the time, a fairly conventional film. Throughout North America there exist people who are ‘scanners’. Scanners are able to read people’s minds and move objects through telekinesis. Weapons manufacturer ConSec are attempting to use scanners as weapons but rogue scanner Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) halts the programme by killing ComSec’s scanners and forming his own group who wish to rise up and stamp their authority on ‘normal’ people. ComSec uncover Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) and train him to take down Revok.

I thought Scanners was great fun. The movie has a pretty decent story behind it and I was engaged by the espionage and war that the plot created. The central idea is interesting and manages to sustain the plot for over 100 minutes. There are conspiracies and twists which add to the excitement and occasional action sequences which gives you more bang for your buck. In addition to this there are a couple of well written characters although the acting is frankly dreadful. Lead Stephen Lack is quite literally laughably awful. I can’t remember seeing a central performance which was so wooden and cringe worthy. No one really shines although Michael Ironside isn’t terrible and Robert Silverman is actually quite good. He was the acting highlight in a film full of poor performances.

A History of Violence

I first saw A History of Violence at the cinema in 2005. This wasn’t because it was the latest David Cronenberg film but was rather because the nineteen year old me thought it would be cool to see the new film “with that Lord of the Rings guy in it”. I’ve changed substantially in the last seven years and have since grown to love film but for me what was great about the film on my first naive viewing is still great but unfortunately what is poor, remains so.  The film was released to universal critical acclaim but for me at least it is nowhere close to Cronenberg’s best work.

Tom Stall (That guy off of The Lord of the Rings) is a mild mannered diner owner in a small town in Indiana. He has close ties to the community and a loving family which includes his wife (Maria Bello), son (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter (Heidi Hayes). One day two crooks come to town and try to rob Tom’s diner but after fending them off in an act of self defence Tom gains a little local celebrity. This attracts the attentions of East Coast gangster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harri) who seems convinced that quiet, shy Tom is a former gangster called Joey.

Cosmopolis

"It's not the sex I've had, it's the sex I want that you can smell"

Young billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) decides to take his stretch limo across New York City for a haircut. Along the way he conducts business, meets friends, family and acquaintances before being mobbed by anarchists and confronting someone who has malicious intent to harm him. 

This film reminded me of a good Shakespearean play; I only understood about half of it but enjoyed it a lot. There are long elongated stretches of duelling dialogue which are spoken in a half alien language of metaphors and double meanings. The word ‘this’ takes on new meanings and is used in – it feels like – almost every sentence. Much like a Shakespearean play there are odd comic moments and in keeping with Director David Cronenberg’s cannon, brief scenes of extreme violence. These few instances ignited some of the more drawn out and dare I say duller scenes to keep the audience on tenterhooks. Despite these flashes this wont be a film for everyone and a man next to me in an early afternoon screening fell asleep while a couple on the row in front left about half way in.

The Fly

"Your stocking has just been, teleported"

Eccentric scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meets journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) at a party. Attempting to impress her he shows off his latest invention, a teleportation device. Suitably impressed she shares the idea with her editor and ex-lover Stathis Borans (John Getz) who thinks the whole thing is a windup. After convincing Veronica not to run a story as the device is not yet complete the two enter into a relationship. One night after discovering that Veronica and Stathis are ex-lovers, Brundle gets drunk and decides to step into the machine. What he doesn’t realise is that a fly is also in the teleporter and when he and the fly are teleported they are merged at a molecular-genetic level. Over the coming months Brundle transforms into a human-fly hybrid which he names ‘Brundlefly’.

The film opens with the orchestral boom of a 1950’s B-Movie in perhaps a nod to the original film upon which it is loosely based. The film retains very little of the original and is much more a metaphor for disease and the process of aging than the original. In my opinion the film owes as much a debt to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis as it does to the 1958 version. The film is also thematically very similar to Italian Giallo Horror, especially in its depictions of madness and alienation.

Crash

WARNING - Adult themes. Do not read if you are under 18 or read the Daily Mail.

David Cronenberg’s 1996 thriller Crash is a film that looks at the phenomenon of Paraphilia, the sexual arousal of people in response to objects, situations or individuals that are not part of the normative stimulation and can cause danger or harm to those involved. These can include arousal, fantasies and behaviours involving non-human objects, children, non-consenting persons and shamefully up until 1973, homosexuality. Crash looks at the idea of people who are sexually aroused by car crashes.

James Ballard (James Spader) is a film producer living in Toronto with his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger). While driving home one night, James is involved in a head on collision with another car which kills the driver of the car he hit. While trapped in the wreckage, James looks across to the passenger of the other car, Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) who suddenly exposes her breast to him. While in hospital recovering James meets Helen again and she introduces him to Vaughn (Elias Koteas), a man who likes taking pictures of scars and people in accidents. Helen and James begin an affair and visit a performance put on by Vaughn in which he fetishises the car crash which ended the life of James Dean. James becomes a man who is aroused by car accidents and meets more people like himself through Vaughn. The rest of the film follows the group as they search out car crashes and enjoy themselves in various car related scenarios, often becoming involved in crashes themselves and sometimes purposely.  

Given what is in the previous paragraph it shouldn’t be too difficult to see why this film generated such considerable controversy upon its release. It is one of the strangest film’s I’ve watched and I actually thought I was sitting down to watch the 2004 Oscar winner of the same name at first. I can’t say that I liked it as the film’s focus was primarily on what the characters were doing rather than the reasons behind it. I’d loved to have seen the film delve into the psychoanalytical reasons behind the fetish but it generally stays away from that side of the story. This is a shame as psychoanalysis is a subject which Cronenberg dealt with marvellously in A Dangerous Method. Having said that, it did piss of the Daily Mail a lot which is a good thing in my book!

One of the reasons the film attracted so much controversy, aside from the fact that it is about people trying to crash cars for a sexual thrill, is the amount of sex contained within it. Just looking at the cast list which includes Holly Hunter, James Spader and Rosanna Arquette should give you some level of understanding as to the graphic sexual nature of the film but it is much more graphic than you are thinking. I’m a bit surprised that it got through the censors to be quite honest. The film begins with a woman rubbing a nipple on a car bonnet and the first three scenes all contain sex. In fact about half of the scenes in the entire film do. One in particular is shocking and involves a large scar (you can figure it out for yourself).

I think that this is a bold film which tries to look at a controversial subject but it fails to live up to the interestingness of its subject by skirting around the psyche behind it. What the film does make evident is the desire the protagonists have towards their fetish. This is not more so than when the group are watching a video of car crash safety tests. The whole group become visibly excited and their excitement swells until it is about to reach bursting point when the tape freezes. Holly Hunter’s character jumps off the sofa in a fit of rage and nearly pulls her hair out at missing out on the videos climax (as well as her own).

The film has many more negative than positive points unfortunately. The most glaring hole in the plot is that there is no police investigation after a man kills another by driving on the wrong side of the road. What is also very strange is that seconds after seeing her husband die, Holly Hunter’s character is exposing her breasts to the man who caused his death. While this can be explained by her fetish, it is still quite bizarre. During the group’s trip to visit and photograph a car crash that has just taken place, not one policeman or paramedic asks why they are there or tries to stop them. The acting is for the most part wooden and the script is clunky and robotic.

I wasn’t bored by this film but I think that is more down to me trying to understand what was going on and why than because it is a great film. I’ve read that Martin Scorsese ranked it the 8^th best film of the 1990s and while I don’t want to argue with my favourite living film maker, I found it confusing and while it showed plenty of the taking part, it lacked the explanation of why.

5/10

A Dangerous Method

David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method is a visual joy that charts the birth of Psychoanalysis in the early part of the 20^th Century. Michael Fassbender stars as Carl Jung, the father of analytical psychology opposite Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. In between these great historical figures is Keira Knightley who plays Sabina Spielrein, a young Russian woman who is sent to Jung for analysis as she is suffering from hysteria.

Cronenberg is known for intertwining the physchological with the physical and in a way that is the shortest description of this film that one could conger up. The relationship between the psychology and the principle characters personal and physical relationships are wonderfully played out here. Cronenberg’s use of focus is masterful. He is able to create a better 3D effect that I have seen in even the best 3D films. Quite often, and especially when two people share a scene, the focus is set on the actor in the distance with the actor closest to the camera out of focus. Occasionally, this setup is reversed. The rest of the frame is in very soft focus and this can also include the actor’s clothes. The audience’s eyes are drawn to the actor’s faces in an exceptionally clever and visually pleasing way. The background is always beautiful but Cronenberg wants the audience to know that it is what is being said is the focus, not where they are saying it.

An example of the soft focus used by Cronenberg

The story itself is fascinating and rekindled my interest in psychology which first developed during my A Levels. I felt as though I could listen to Freud and Jung talk for hours or even days. I understand that the subject matter is not for everyone however and this is perhaps why we had to travel to our local Art House Cinema rather than our usual multiplex. In addition to the absorbing psychological debate the audience are also treated to a magnificent personal story which revolves around Jung and Spielrein. It has anticipation, romance and heart and is full of twists and turns.

Many scenes are shot with unusal acting positions

All three principle actors are fantastic. Keira Knightley delivers a wonderfully outrageous and over the top performance as the confused and frenzied Spielrein. She is as accomplished as I have ever seen her. It was a pleasant surprise to see her push her physical acting abilities in ways which I had not seen in the past. Fassbender gives a somewhat subdued performance but he too is more than competent. Mortensen’s Freud is understated but occasionally vicious and calculating. His voice is both relaxing and seductive, a cross between John Hurt and The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Mortensen and Fassbender are at their best when sparring opposite one another. The three leads are joined by an able supporting cast which includes an all too brief cameo from Vincent Cassel who is excellent here as the sex addicted Otto Gross.

I am unable to think of a single facet of this film which I didn’t enjoy or thought could have been improved in some way and am utterly delighted that I took the time to see it. It has been one of the highlights of an already stellar couple of months at the cinema.

9/10