criterionforum.org

June?! Wasn't expecting this to turn up until fall at the earliest.

"Surgery is the new sex." Cronenberg is a treasure. This looks better than I'd even hoped. Please be good!

This looks like the most Cronenbergian Cronenberg movie yet.. though I'm not sure what that will yield. It appears to include a lot of his interesting strengths in perversity and creative psychological mystery but I'm also detecting remnants of the repelling tones from his more recent low-budget awful shorts, so we'll see

I am out of my mind with excitement. Cronenberg definitely went back to the well on this one, but it has been a long time since he's been there, and no one goes to it like him.

For all of my wondering about the visuals because of Koch, this basically looks like a lovingly crafted Cronenberg movie. Everything I could hope for in terms of the lighting and production design.

Having an extremely tough time focusing on work today!

I had not been expecting the film to look quite so H.R. Giger-esque!

What colin and persona said. Thrilled that we can see the film for ourselves in June!

New full length trailer is mostly an expansion of stuff we've already seen but it's wonderful.

Haven't been this excited about a movie in years.

The film fared pretty well in the latest issue of Cahiers. I have not read their review but it garnered 7 three-stars in the staff section, with one two-star from Olivia Cooper-Hadjian.

Well, yup, the inevitable happened.

I loved this.

As a metaphor for the creative process, it's unparalleled in the nature of its approach. What Cronenberg ends up achieving is something that seems both wholly satirical, wholly serious in how it looks at the intricacies of human survival with human expression. It's incredibly realized and unique, the way this film surveys how we adapt to an increasingly denaturalized environment and become creatures desperate to feel something, anything. To paraphrase Seydoux's Caprice, the film's body being splayed open here through piercing genre gestures... it's "juicy with meaning." Tenser and Caprice's mantra that "body is reality" would seem to have bleak implications, and it does, but Cronenberg still searches methodically, compulsively for ways in which to surprise himself (and us) with a hopeful thought or two. There's a line that Viggo speaks towards the end of the film about believing that reminds of a subtle duality in Cronenberg's own work. It rarely feels like a duality because it is so unified in purpose, so intentional and thought out. Cronenberg fully reconciles science and art, skepticism and existentialism like no other filmmaker I can think of. But I feel like this movie is the first time Cronenberg has spoken to that, recognized it, and proclaimed its worth. I found it very moving.

The film is very much a companion to eXistenZ so it's no wonder they were written around the same time. The former dealing with questioning reality and can we trust our senses with this movie trying to mine the bedrock of our realities by cutting into the blood and guts of our bodies and examining their processes, from which spring how we experience living. There's this very sharp and textured richness to how everything is designed, staged, shot, lit. The sound design is impactful and Howard Shore's gorgeous and quite tonally varied score is evocative of a whole emotional tapestry the film only shows us in glimpses because its characters are so fundamentally lost or searching for what it is they're even feeling. And to that note the performances were very game and yet also distinct from each other. There are some wonderful contrasts going between the sardonic and weary from Mortensen, the artist/idealist from Seydoux, the nervy and pointed Stewart, and all other sorts of colors from the surrounding cast.

Some are going to find this film quite tedious if they don't click with the wry humor in the rather abundant dialogue or find the movie's themes either inscrutable or irrelevant. I have already read multiple reviews who seem to lack any sense of how to engage with what the film is doing. And that's fine, not every temperament or intellectual disposition is going to get something out of this, certainly. But for fans of Cronenberg's work, I think it's a very rewarding new text and one of his most aesthetically accomplished films. And it's possibly my favorite movie of the past few years. Last year only THE CARD COUNTER came close to how I feel about this, these CRIMES OF THE FUTURE.

I found it too verbose and ended up mostly feeling indifferent to it (the only other two Cronenbergs I didn't care for are Eastern Promises and Naked Lunch; my favourite Cronenberg/Mortensen collaborations still are A Dangerous Method and A History of Violence). I'm open to revisiting it at some point when it hits home video or streaming. I'll second the praise for Howard Shore's music, though: really excellent work.

Verbose, yes, but hardly moreso than many Cronenberg films.

What I love about the dialogue is how dense it is but it's characters trying to understand their various places in a world that is rejecting them. Themes are conveyed but always within the variance of their different perspectives.

I think there is a lot to be said for the transcendent narrative that exists on the outside of these different verbosities, connecting them, driving them, but ultimately existing separate from them.

Based on the box office take (about $1 mil), it seems this will be a very short run in the theater. See it while you can. It looks and sounds great in the cinema.

I only wish I could have turned subtitles on during a couple scenes.

I went with my brother and a mutual friend yesterday after a few of our other friends dropped out at the last minute, and it seemed like a telling foreshadowing for the turnout of a handful of mostly older audiences. Which is a major pity because while this film is certainly operating in a more explicitly elegiac tone than some of Cronenberg's earlier work, it's bursting with enough world-building that would satisfy anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into the headier realm of science-fiction. I teach high schoolers who know and love Julia Ducournau's work, so I would be keen to hear what they'd make of Cronenberg's fusion of philosophy and viscera.

I love the comparison you made to eXistenZ, Persona, and I think the strength of this new work is in the pleasure it provides both for longtime Cronenberg acolytes as well as filmgoers looking for a film which eruditely refracts contemporary anxieties swirling around ecological devastation, social isolation, and a pervasive specter of mortality gripping both a collective and interpersonal consciousness. But the the key theme of the film, I'd argue, is reconciling complex questions related to autonomy and the difference between freeing ourselves of our corporeal limitations and imposing stringent normative expectations upon the children who inherit the ruined world their parents have left behind. The film's opening subplot seems, at first, incidental to the dynamic between Saul and Caprice, but it completely establishes the political and emotional power of the film in a way that haunts the film and, inevitably, resurfaces in a way that resonates in the horrifically timely wake of such current events in this country involving filicide and restrictions placed upon women's reproductive rights. The register of this denouement, I felt, isn't one that is a scabrous screed, but one that tries to take a holistic view of how we as a species can still transcend our venal impulses through art that honors a genuine dialectic between one another. Cronenberg isn't trying to say his is the art that will be the thing that provides us our salvation, but he is attempting to take responsibility as an artist in the midst of times riddled with a sorrow and grimness that seems only slightly analogous to his fictional world.

Persona wrote: Sun Jun 05, 2022 11:20 pm Based on the box office take (about $1 mil), it seems this will be a very short run in the theater. See it while you can. It looks and sounds great in the cinema.

I only wish I could have turned subtitles on during a couple scenes.

NEON makes it too easy to slam their distribution foibles, but points given when it finds almost 800 theaters not showing Top Gun 2 or Doctor Strange 2 and elbows something this giddily gross, blathery, and self-involved (as a bout of art criticism and self-reckoning probably should be!) into them. There were three other people at our showing, and two of them walked out in the middle of a thick speechy back-and-forth. No one else was laughing throughout, which made me sad. If nothing else, you'd think the committed performances would be enough to captivate. But this did occupy a very weird place in the multiplex.

brundlefly wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 5:39 am

Persona wrote: Sun Jun 05, 2022 11:20 pm Based on the box office take (about $1 mil), it seems this will be a very short run in the theater. See it while you can. It looks and sounds great in the cinema.

I only wish I could have turned subtitles on during a couple scenes.

NEON makes it too easy to slam their distribution foibles, but points given when it finds almost 800 theaters not showing Top Gun 2 or Doctor Strange 2 and elbows something this giddily gross, blathery, and self-involved (as a bout of art criticism and self-reckoning probably should be!) into them. There were three other people at our showing, and two of them walked out in the middle of a thick speechy back-and-forth. No one else was laughing throughout, which made me sad. If nothing else, you'd think the committed performances would be enough to captivate. But this did occupy a very weird place in the multiplex.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but I wonder what it would take for a film to stir up Crash-level controversy these days. (And therefore make controversy money.) This no doubt has more visceral imagery (although I haven’t seen it myself to confirm), but from the outside it also feels more acceptable and, dare I say, rote.

soundchaser wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 6:47 am Perhaps slightly off-topic, but I wonder what it would take for a film to stir up Crash-level controversy these days. (And therefore make controversy money.) This no doubt has more visceral imagery (although I haven’t seen it myself to confirm), but from the outside it also feels more acceptable and, dare I say, rote.

I don't know how much money there is in controversy, really; there's publicity, but whether or not that translates into money depends on what's controversial and what kind of market there is for that. Even straight explicit sex probably hasn't made "controversy money" at the box office since the emergence of home video; Cronenberg's cool, surgical fetishism is obviously an even smaller draw. (Crash print ads hilariously used a pull-quote that simply read, "...sex and car crashes" as a tag line, a warning, possibly a comment on movie content in general.) Crash's total domestic gross was $2,664,812, which is just under $5 mill in today's money; it did $738,339 in its opening weekend, or $1,360,487.25 in 2022 dollars, not terribly far from the estimated $1.1 mill that Crimes has done so far.

As to what it might take to be controversial? Since everybody gets outraged about everything these days, you'd think not much! (Personally I'd prefer the outrage cycle stick to gun violence and reproductive rights, but people still find time to get angry about Pizza Hut's summer reading lists or whatever, so...) But it would have to be noticed outside the safe, niche realm of Cronenberg acolytes. I agree that on some levels the world has caught up to Cronenberg. He's an institution, there have been graduates of his school. (Or at least people who've audited a class or two.) But of course he's intelligent enough to know that. Crimes can be, among other things, a self-examination/self-exhumation, and as old as the source material may be, the world in which it's manifested and especially the surprisingly aged and discomforted body of Viggo Mortensen shows someone who's considering his place.

Not that his clinical sensibilities can't still casually provoke.

Spoiler

The movie starts with a mother murdering her child. The climax hinges on a scene where the child's naked corpse is displayed for a crowd and autopsied.

...so maybe it just needs to wind up on a streaming service where people can get as mad as they did for a few days about Cuties.

I actually thought about Cuties as a pot-stirrer, but even that didn't seem to get too many eyes on it. You may be right about the money, though - Wikipedia's claim for Crash's box office take seems a little exaggerated, and the source doesn't really back it up.

Some really strong critical pieces out there now. Particularly liked the interview that Taubin did with Cronenberg for Artforum, as well as the reviews from Brody, Dargis, Chang, and Muredda.

It's a really rich film and glad to see some of the better critics stateside diving in deep with it.

I waited a while after seeing this last Thursday night to write it up, because while my initial response immediately after the credits began to roll was one of cool respect, I assumed that would blossom into a more passionate response upon deeper consideration and further reading. Instead, a week later I feel basically the same: while I've been able to draw more connections between the themes, metaphors, and visual concepts Cronenberg employs, and I'm interested in rewatching and teasing even more out of it, I can't quite muster the enthusiasm that others have expressed here and elsewhere.

Somewhat like the benumbed population of the film, I'm not entirely sure what type of more extreme stimulation I would have needed to feel really energized by Crimes of the Future; usually this type of provocatively gross, perversely sexualized, and deliberately alienating sci-fi would be exactly the type of thing I'd fall all over myself to champion. Part of my remove, I think, is the misplaced focus on Viggo Mortensen's character, who I found the least compelling of the main cast both in terms of character and performance. I understand the allegorical and personal reasons Cronenberg might tell the story primarily through the aging artist figure, but I think I would have been more invested in a version that presents him and his various contradictions through the eyes of Seydoux (or even — in what I admit would be a radically different movie — the underused Stewart, who gave my favorite performance as a twitchy and oddly intense organ registrar).

None of this is to say I didn't like the film or find its means of commenting on the artistic process and the, er, consumption of art often funny and always memorable: I very much did, and deeply appreciate the gift of another entry to the Weird Cronenberg oeuvre, which I had assumed was completed years ago. There's a lot here to pick apart, and maybe I'll one day find the beating heart (or oozing spleen, or whatever) tucked in amidst the viscera that allows me to embrace it to the extent I had hoped to.

MitchPerrywinkle wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:35 amBut the the key theme of the film, I'd argue, is reconciling complex questions related to autonomy and the difference between freeing ourselves of our corporeal limitations and imposing stringent normative expectations upon the children who inherit the ruined world their parents have left behind. The film's opening subplot seems, at first, incidental to the dynamic between Saul and Caprice, but it completely establishes the political and emotional power of the film in a way that haunts the film and, inevitably, resurfaces in a way that resonates in the horrifically timely wake of such current events in this country involving filicide and restrictions placed upon women's reproductive rights. The register of this denouement, I felt, isn't one that is a scabrous screed, but one that tries to take a holistic view of how we as a species can still transcend our venal impulses through art that honors a genuine dialectic between one another. Cronenberg isn't trying to say his is the art that will be the thing that provides us our salvation, but he is attempting to take responsibility as an artist in the midst of times riddled with a sorrow and grimness that seems only slightly analogous to his fictional world.

I largely agree with this, though unlike eXistenZ (which, I mean get the comparisons conceptually, but one is fluid entertainment while the other is.. a bit convoluted), its heady ideas are messily ingrained into the narrative to the point where I'm unsure to what degree this is brilliant and to what degree it's just a stuffed canvas of half-drawn figures. I was waxing and waning on how successfully Cronenberg was meshing together his dual themes (to oversimplify, perhaps unfairly: of how our attractions to art are made tangible via psychosexual and physiological engagement; and the above concepts on evolution, politicizing our emotional responses to opposing perceptions of corporeal fatalism into sterile agendas- fighting our own natural sentimental and spiritual attitudes in the process) but they really came together in the back half, and I have a feeling that a second viewing will be more rewarding, without deciphering information while concurrently trying to appreciate it.

I liked the film though- the playfulness with the noir structure and themes was amusing and poignant, the comedy dry and risky, and a slew of strong supporting work, with Kristen Stewart unsurprisingly giving the clear standout perf across maybe three measly scenes (oh, how I wish there was more of her in this... she disappears for like half the film and this absence is strongly felt- and I suspect there was more of her that wound up on the cutting room floor). Also, the final shot is perfect- captured self-reflexively and methodologically as a performance and yet ostensibly the most organic (no pun intended) expression the character gives in the entire film. I'll lean towards 'brilliant' on this one, even if my rating favors the intelligence far more than my own enjoyment as of this writing.

I think they included about as much KStew stuff as they had. Cronenberg tends to stick to his scripts and Timlin was always a secondary character.

It was only a month shoot (and I think Stewart was only available for a couple weeks of that). I know they cut whatever scene involved Yorgos Karamihos' "Brent Boss" character (and I believe that was a scene shared just with Viggo), but aside from that I don't think there's a lot of extra scenes on the cutting room floor.

There is a feeling for the first hour or so of watching loosely connected vignettes that share a world and characters but I'd say the final act tightens the weave in a really compelling way. I know some people feel the movie ends too soon or isn't fleshed out enough, but aside from the economical considerations of how much time they actually had to get what they got (and with no reshoots), I really do think Cronenberg covered the ground he needed to cover with these characters and this story and with his ending he found a landing point as resonant and weirdly poetic as any in his ouevre.