Criterion Premieres: The Shrouds

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Cronenberg to re-team with Vincent Cassel for The Shrouds

La Haine star and French icon Cassel will play Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art – though controversial – cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time. Karsh’s revolutionary business is on the verge of breaking into the international mainstream when several graves within his cemetery are vandalized and nearly destroyed, including that of his wife. While he struggles to uncover a clear motive for the attack, the mystery of who wrought this havoc, and why, drive him to reevaluate his business, marriage and fidelity to his late wife’s memory, as well as push him to new beginnings.

Filming is set to begin next March.

[swo17]

Another great Cronenbergian concept!

[dadaistnun]

Teaser for David Cronenberg's The Shrouds.

[Ribs]

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the rights to David Cronenberg's The Shrouds

[hearthesilence]

At the NYFF screening of The Shrouds, Florence Almozini mentioned that the film will open theatrically at Lincoln Center early next year. She told Cronenberg she hopes he will return for that occasion, to which he immediately said he'd be happy to do that. She then said they would want him to curate a program (adding that he did something like that when he had a turn in the Criterion Closet) but he immediately balked at the idea, saying he doesn't like to do that type of thing. Still, here's hoping.

[hearthesilence]

Caught The Shrouds today. The political intrigue written into the plot runs into some blind alleys, but that's not the core of this movie which is mostly about the physical and sexual aspects of grieving that's often ignored in movies, and Cronenberg does it with much of his characteristic wit and intellect (not to mention the visceral displays he's known for).

Annoyingly, it was disrupted by an Extinction Rebellion protest that added another 20 or 30 minutes to a screening that already started pretty late. Cronenberg addressed this with some bemusement, recognizing that they must not be aware that he was already on the same page with their ostensible goals. They also held a protest during Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada, which I guess is further indication that they have no clue of what they're doing.

[therewillbeblus]

Caught The Shrouds today. The political intrigue written into the plot runs into some blind alleys, but that's not the core of this movie which is mostly about the physical and sexual aspects of grieving that's often ignored in movies, and Cronenberg does it with much of his characteristic wit and intellect (not to mention the visceral displays he's known for).

There's a tremendous sadness to the film - a devastating fatalism in its double whammy of loss - but I also thought it was by far Cronenberg's funniest work yet. The degree to which he imbues self-reflexivity is deprecating to the point of being parodic of all that is his self and life, from Cassel's look to nearly every action he takes. I have to imagine that the hilarious first date sequence is an exaggeration of some familiar set-up.

[Matt]

The political intrigue written into the plot runs into some blind alleys

I've only just seen it and definitely need at least a second viewing, but I think there's room for an interpretation that all the political conspiracy and espionage stuff is Karsh's own paranoid fantasy. There are so many dreams and hallucinations in the film, including the opening scene, and paranoid fantasies (which may or may not prove true) are as much a Cronenbergian trope as altered bodies. Cronenberg generally considers himself more of a writer than a director (he says as much in the Meet the Filmmaker interview on the Criterion Channel), and it doesn't seem characteristic of him to leave loose plot threads unless they're intentional. It seems appropriate that Karsh would be so grief-addled—even his teeth suffer from his grief—that he's become disconnected from reality.

Spoiler

He sees his late wife everywhere—in dreams, on the GraveTech screens, in a digital picture frame on his desk, in his AI companion, in her sister, and in his new lover. Even his eventual escape to Hungary, the final scene of the film, culminates in a dream/hallucination of his dead wife's body and a renewed vow to be buried next to her. The whole vandalism plot could just be an all-too-common case of Anti-Semitic gravesite desecration that Karsh spins into an international surveillance conspiracy in his mind, egged on by his conspiracy fetish sister-in-law. We never even see the alleged villain, Dr. Eckler, before the GraveTech image that she discovers. Was there perhaps some conspiracy between her and Maury to wrest control of the company from Karsh? That recording she made of his suicide threat seemed awfully staged. Wait, am I the paranoiac?

[Mr Sausage]

It’s hard not to miss, too, how small the film is. Most paranoid thrillers open up to contain the whole world, but this one shrinks down. Like The Fly and Cronenberg’s novel, the larger world disappears to only a few people in rooms. Our few lone glimpse outside Toronto in The Shrouds is seen only on a screen, so despite the distance we’re still just in a room in Canada. Even the conspiracies are just related in conversation. No details are discovered by anyone really going anywhere. It’s a bare, cloistered movie. So the whole paranoia plot lacks substance; it’s abstract or purely verbal. It’s hard to imagine its reality outside the principal characters. Like Karsh, it’s hard for the viewer to see what a globe spanning military-industrial espionage plot would ever find important in this small set of grief-stricken people in their graveyard.

[colinr0380]

Similarly I seem to remember the commentary on Dead Ringers saying that the final walk outside of one of the brothers does before he gives up and returns to his sibling near to the end of that film is one of the few outdoor shots in that movie.

On conspiracy theories, Cronenberg's Consumed novel is also very much like that, with a lot of discussions of mysteries and disappearances until the main characters themselves go missing. Or eXistenZ where everyone's identities are fluid, and there is no identity left any more, just the interactive game. We could also perhaps trace this all the way back to the Debbie Harry character in Videodrome taking a one-way trip to Pittsburgh, or rather one that ascends her into a new plain of existence. Lots of characters in Cronenberg's films just exist in memories too. People who left on their journey to the beyond, leaving the other characters behind them in a state of limbo, unmoored from a grounded sense of reality - that's Shivers, Crash, M Butterfly, Naked Lunch, Spider. In a way that is what makes A History of Violence so strange, as that involves a character who had escaped being dragged back to face the consequences of their actions on the rest of the supporting characters of their life.

[Matt]

It struck me while watching this how good Cronenberg is at getting great (and brave) performances from actresses, even though his protagonists are always men. I suppose a lot of this comes from excellent writing and casting, but think of the throughline from Marilyn Chambers in Rabid, through Samantha Eggar in The Brood, Debbie Harry in Videodrome, Geena Davis in The Fly, Judy Davis in Naked Lunch, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette in Crash, Miranda Richardson in Spider, Maria Bello in A History of Violence, Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method (though some would argue with me on that one), Kristin Stewart in Crimes of the Future, all the way to Diane Kruger's triple performance here. Most of these women are already extremely talented actresses, and Cronenberg does not rehearse, so I'm sure a lot of it comes down to their own abilities and their take on the script, but he always has meaty roles for women in his films, often more than one.

I guess I don't have more to say about that except to make the observation, but this film does feel like a quintessential "late style" film that brings together so many stylistic and thematic threads from Cronenberg's career, more so than Crimes of the Future which would seem, on paper, to be the most Cronenbergian of Cronenberg films.

On another note, has there been a more shocking moment of body horror in his last several films more disturbing than

Spoiler

the moment when Becca's hip breaks as she and Karsh are making love? Never mind the scars and staples and amputations, the loud CRACK in that moment truly made me jump and wince.

[redbill]

On another note, has there been a more shocking moment of body horror in his last several films more disturbing than

no, there has not. and you can even widen that net.

[Roger Ryan]

This feels like Cronenberg's Eyes Wide Shut with a similar approach to conspiracies which may or may not be there. The difference being that Cassel's character has a lot less trouble with consummation. This film's penultimate scene mirror's the tone of the concluding scene in Kubrick's film quite closely...

Spoiler

... in that it is a conversation between a couple uncertain of the next steps following a seemingly harrowing encounter with dangerous forces. The scene even ends with a recommendation for the characters to engage in the same action suggested in Kubrick's final lines.

Cronenberg adds another scene to conclude his film which only serves to make everything that came before that much more ambiguous. The often-comedic tone and non-committal approach to the plot distanced me as a viewer. The strongest scenes are those that are dealing directly with grief and how to move forward; when I reflect back on it, I keep wanting the film to focus on that aspect instead of spending so much time on a conspiracy plot that is so difficult to grasp.

[Finch]

BD coming in October:

Long fascinated by the ways that technology is transforming our bodies and minds, David Cronenberg returns with one of his most profoundly personal films, an audacious, elegiac exploration of grief, mortality, and love wrapped in the guise of a corporate-espionage thriller. Karsh (Vincent Cassel) is the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a new tech package that allows bereaved relatives to view their loved ones’ decomposing remains. When his futuristic cemetery is vandalized, he begins to suspect a conspiracy is at work, forcing him to confront the trauma of—and mystery surrounding—the death of his beloved Becca (Diane Kruger). Conceived in the wake of his own wife’s death, The Shrouds finds Cronenberg exploring heady ideas around sex, surveillance, and the ultimate body horror: the physical decay that awaits us all.

Criterion Premieres is a selection of new theatrical films presented on Blu-ray and DVD, released in association with the Criterion Channel.

Film Info
Canada, France
2024
119 minutes
Color
1.85:1
English
SPECIAL FEATURES
Meet the Filmmakers: David Cronenberg, a Criterion Channel original interview
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Notes by critic Beatrice Loayza

[dadaistnun]

There's a French 4K + Blu-ray edition coming in September. Looks to be exclusive to Fnac.

[Finch]

Getting a 4K from Vertigo in the UK in December.