The movie of the night is David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”. Naturally being Cronenberg it’s a weird body horror movie. This is based on a story Cronenberg was working on 20 years earlier, but never got around to making. The movie also shares a name with another Cronenberg film from 1970 having no direct relation to it (Though I suppose they could be considered part of an anthology series, just an odd one with a 52year gap between entries). Since this was Cronenberg’s second feature length movie maybe it’s intended as a return to his roots or maybe he just liked the title. Anyway the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux with support including Kirsten Stuart.
October Review Challenge – Day 20
The film opens with a young child eating a plastic bin and then being murdered by his mother. Yes, it’s that weird. None of this gets an explanation until later in the movie, instead the scene switches to our protagonist Saul Tenser and his partner Caprice who are a world-renowned performance artist couple. Saul has a condition that causes him to rapidly grow new organs in his body, organs whose function is unclear. Instead of letting them grow he makes their removal part of his performance art but the changes are also causing him to have issues sleeping and eating.
At this point it is important to know a few things about this world. This is set some undefined period of time in the future. Humanity has started to develop strange mutations, which has lead to most people no longer having a sense of pain and being immune to disease and infection. This has lead to surgery going from a dangerous, uncomfortable procedure requiring aesthetic to something you can basically perform on yourself. Indeed it’s become a sexual kink and this is where the performance aspect comes in.
Preserving Humanity.
It also triggered a reaction from the worlds governments (or at least this undefined countries government) to protect the status of humanity and as such it seems it is a crime to deliberately modify your own biology and all new organs must be catalogued and tattooed. Into this we find an underground faction that consider it a mistake to turn against evolution to preserve a fixed idea of what it is to be human.
Saul and Caprice come into it when the father of the child from the start of the film asks them to use the modified autopsy machine which they use for their performance to do an actual autopsy on his son as part of their performance. The father wants to expose how his son was born with these modified organs to prove the future of humanity is embracing the change. The performance and it’s aftermath form the conclusion of the film, so I’ll leave that there.
But What Does It All Mean?
Unsurprisingly the movie is weird, gross and yet sexual since this is Cronenberg’s MO. There seems to be quite dense subtext here and the movie asks questions about what is art, what is beauty and what does it mean to be human? Alongside that there is hints at an environmentalist message, an examination of how far a jaded species will go to find their next high and a look at how we influence the next generation even outside passing on our genes (Manifested by the child inheriting the body modifications of the parent).
The trouble I feel though is none of these questions are that distinct and the answer not that clear. Indeed I’m not totally sure some of them are even meant to be questions. I do feel accepting inevitable change, including at a biological level is key part of this story as this feeds to the movies conclusion, which is based on a revelation that the viewer will have figured out already. I don’t however think it was meant to be a twist though and rather just to show the protagonist finally embracing inevitable change.
Conclusion.
My biggest issue with the movie is it just isn’t very entertaining. There is nothing really to the movie other than the dense layers of subtext. By Cronenberg standards the body horror is mild, the characters are uninteresting the plot sort of goes nowhere. This is all art and message with no entertainment and I’ve never been a fan of movies like that. As a Cronenberg film this is a long way down in the ranking and pales when placed next to a masterpiece like Videodrome. As a movie in general I don’t think many people will find anything here worth turning up for. That said, it’s not a terrible movie so I think a 4.5/10 is a fair verdict.
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