The Cronenberg Thread

I feel like those rankings were picked out of a hat

every fetishist has his reasons

the write-ups aren't bad at all

i really, really like history of violence, which in its own way is perfect

it's really interesting to watch older cronenberg movies, esp. those from the mid-80s and earlier. he doesn't quite have his style mastered, and there are awkward moments and scenes that don't come off even as you admire what they are trying to do. but in some of the recent films you have a sense that he knows /exactly/ where to put the camera, /exactly/ when to cut, etc. there's a classical precision that's almost breathtaking.

The way Viggo Mortensen seems to change the very structure of his face through a change in expression when he acknowledges his past identity in AHOV is still one of my favorite scenes

some of his recent films remind me of the moment when a lot of people felt hal hartley went off the rails.... (ca. no such thing and later). there's a sense that having achieved a summit of critical favor, the director wants to tackle projects of an appropriate sociological heft. and what results is satire that's somehow both extremely idiosyncratic and kind of obvious (in a way that seems unbecoming of such smart directors).

xxxp Almost boring.

Give me the shagginess of his early stuff and the emerging thematic clumsiness of his most recent few any day.

the big confrontation in front of the house in "history of violence" (where viggo first shows his "true colors" to his family) is incredible. it's really kuleshovian, too -- it's not until over halfway through the scene, i think, that you get a shot that actually shows ed harris and his goons in the same frame as viggo and his family.

also really striking (and i guess derived from the graphic novel?) that history of violence begins with the bad guys, kind of like a lot of westerns.

Am willing to give History of Violence another shot, but I found it more uninvolving than clinical.

the obviousness is in "spider," too. the big climactic reveal is beautifully engineered as visual storytelling, but it's also, disappointingly, exactly what you might have feared/expected. cronenberg is much smarter than i am, so i probably shouldn't second-guess why he's sometimes drawn to material like that.

Give me the shagginess of his early stuff and the emerging thematic clumsiness of his most recent few any day.

and, for the most part, give me the meat in the middle.

you guys are being really glib

I love "milking cows and shit" from Hurt in History Of Violence.

hurt in "history of violence" is definitely a take-or-leave thing. when i first saw the film i thought he was playing too broadly, too cartoonishly. but each time i've seen it since (probably a dozen times) i figure there's really no other way to play it, and he's pretty perfect.

well it's all been said, and gets resaid (starting w/ Shakey) with every goddamn bump

xp

i mean doing an al pacino brooding intensity thing just wouldn't have been appropriate... it would have been too close to viggo's performance.

of his six post-2000 features (haven't seen Eastern Promises) what i really plug into is a pessimistic old-man vibe -- the world of the film is either revealed as a fraud or illusion, or is littered with multiple deaths, or both. Sure this is true of earlier work too, but seems upfront and obsessive now.

Essential: Videodrome, Stereo, Crimes of The Future.

I haven't seen anything recent by him though.

well it's all been said, and gets resaid (starting w/ Shakey) with every goddamn bump

oh now *I'm* the broken record? physician heal thyself etc

i think we shd do a podcast/commentary where Eric and I watch Crash and Cosmopolis with you and point out the funny parts.

Whatever gains Cronenberg has made w. the 'classical precision' of his recent(ish) films - and I'm w/ Eric, give me the rough edges of his first and best movies over the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method - its been accompanied by a fatal loss of that energy given off by the wild ideas zinging round Shivers, Brood etc

the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method

gahhh, this is such a misunderstanding of ADM. 19th-c furniture does not equal stodgy. also Merchant-Ivory made *some* pretty good films.

I haven't watched Cosmopolis (or Maps to the Stars yet), I'm a bit wary with all the bad reviews

xxp

i think we shd do a podcast/commentary where Eric and I watch Crash and Cosmopolis with you and point out the funny parts.

One thing's for sure, we'd never be talking at the same time.

xp my take on latter-day Cronenberg seems to be very much inverse to the general levels of critical enthusiasm

So I don't really know if it's a "recommendation" to say I loved Cosmopolis and really liked Maps.

well it's not like those two received the critical enthusiasm of the previous three

Cosmopolis is pretty bad.

I agree with Morbs about A Dangerous Method--it's excellent and not at all "stodgy". Aside from the setting it's very much of a piece with the rest of his ourvre. Also Viggo Mortenson is a lot of fun as Freud.

Cronenberg features ranked:

Videodrome
Dead Ringers
The Brood
eXistenZ
The Fly
They Came From Within
A History of Violence
Naked Lunch
Scanners
Rabid
The Dead Zone
A Dangerous Method
Maps to the Stars
Spider
Eastern Promises
Crash
Cosmopolis

Have yet to see M. Butterfly.

the blurb in Morbz link about M. Butterfly is v otm - it's totally inert

The Brood
The Fly
Videodrome
Crash
The Dead Zone
Cosmopolis
Dead Ringers
Maps to the Stars
Scanners
They Came From Within
Spider
A History of Violence
Rabid

Haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to accurately judge: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method

it's strange that after a century+ of film and Freud, the two best portrayals are probably Viggo and Alan Arkin.

Shakes, don't call me physician, i'm a philologist as my movie clearly states.

Eric, always exaggerating our differences, u tease

eg Crash car salesman: "This is very bad."

Can you locate any common ground between us in this thread?

My ranking:

The Brood
Videodrome
The Fly
Naked Lunch
Eastern Promises
A History of Violence
Dead Ringers
Scanners
The Dead Zone
eXistenZ
Rabid
They Came From Within

The bottom 5 are all kind of tied:

A Dangerous Method
M. Butterfly
Spider (hated this)
Crash (walked out of the theater, but finished it years later)
eXistenZ (one of the worst movies I've ever seen by anybody)

Haven't seen Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company or Cosmopolis.

Morbs/Eric/Shakey rifftrax-style comment podcast would be hysterical, at least for an episode or two.

Can you locate any common ground between us in this thread?

top 5 on Slant list, i think. (haven't seen The Brood in long time)

I mean aside from that!

take what you can get, Brundlefly.

誤訳侮辱 - how did eXistenZ end up in the first list too if it's one of the worst films by anybody?

You guys! Merchant-Ivory don't have "mise en scene": they have a camera, in front of which actors walk or get posed. No way on hell did Cronenberg aspire to their level of third-rate craft.

Some other funny bits that stick out.

Eastern Promises, "he looks like a fucking icecream".

I enjoyed Maps To The Stars but it didn't linger enough in my head, though the one thing I thought was really funny was how the boy was so threatened by the younger boy and said he was "chewing up scenery".

Dead Ringers
The Fly
Naked Lunch
Videodrome
The Brood
AHOF
Eastern Promises
The Dead Zone

I enjoyed A History Of Violence more after reading J.G Ballard's review of it : http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/23/jgballard

The 1983-1991 run is unfuckwithable.

you could stretch that back to '79 imo altho Scanners would be the weakest of the lot

Naked Lunch, the first I saw in the theater, is my favorite cinematic gloss on a novel. He wrote good dry-as-sand dialogue that I can imagine Benway and Joan saying, Peter Weller and Roy Scheider are quite well cast, etc.

I keep coming back to Scanners remembering that cold, beige, terminally '70s look it has, but then getting disappointed it doesn't do as much with the material as the two films on either side of it.

v true