Like so many artists whose work has been pigeonholed as “genre,” or more specifically “horror,” David Cronenberg has had to become his own greatest advocate. The question people like Cronenberg (and author Stephen King, who has literally written a volume on the subject) are always asked, the question that annoys them to no end with its implied psychological condescension, is inevitably some variation of “Why do you create such sick shit?” In French documentarist André Labarthe’s examination of Cronenberg’s cinematic themes, the Canadian director answers that question—for himself, at any rate—with uncommon grace, erudition and occasional bits of bone-dry wit. For fans, this stuff is pure gold, but even those with only a passing familiarity with Cronenberg will come away with a deeper understanding of a filmmaker who is far more than just a master of the gross-out.
Labarthe’s brief introduction is in French with no subtitles, but the way his camera pans across a map from Europe to the U.S., then veers unexpectedly north to Toronto, says plenty. Cronenberg himself describes his home and native land as a sort of Bizarro-States, like a weird dream that Americans want to wake up from but can’t. Shots of a bleak and wintry Toronto are scattered throughout the film, as if to say that the director’s preoccupation is partly the result of some mysterious Canuck cabin fever. (Labarthe may actually have a point there; Tom Green, the increasingly popular king of “deviant comedy,” also hails from Toronto.)
The rest of the film is a conversation between Cronenberg and Cahiers du Cinéma critic Serge Grünberg. Labarthe employs a triangular platform, at the corners of which are Cronenberg, Grünberg and two video monitors each running different Cronenberg films. Using a camera on a dolly, he can then rotate around the two men as they discuss what they’re watching on the monitors. It’s gimmicky, but it does lend an intimate atmosphere to the proceedings. Too often, though, it means having to listen to Cronenberg talk while one of his films is running in the background. The effect is like listening to a friend on the phone during one of your favourite TV shows—you don’t get to enjoy either.
Distractions aside, half the fun of this film is in listening to Cronenberg lay the intellectual smackdown on his critical interlocutor. It becomes obvious early on that Grünberg suffers from mistaken assumptions about the director. Watching The Fly, Grünberg comments on how it reflects a birth motif common to Cronenberg’s films. With typically Canadian diplomacy, Cronenberg replies “I’m… resisting that,” and goes on to point out that his motif is, in fact, rebirth, the metamorphosis of the human body into something more. Take that, Monsieur High-and-Mighty! Of course, Grünberg isn’t above posing the aforementioned question, although he tries to disguise it by misquoting Goya. Cronenberg’s reply: “A lot has changed since Goya’s time.”
In his less droll moments, Cronenberg does get around to actually answering the dreaded query, at least insofar as it applies to him. Amid some of the more lurid moments from his movies—Shivers and Videodrome figure prominently—he describes his analytical and philosophical fascination with the idea of what he has often called the New Flesh. To Cronenberg, even disease is sexy; he thinks of it as an intimate relationship between species. When Samantha Eggar reveals what’s underneath her dress at the end of The Brood, the audience recoils in revulsion—but Cronenberg wants them to see something new and beautiful. It’s just a matter of revising what is aesthetically pleasing. Cronenberg’s ongoing desire to get this point across on film, to “make the word be flesh,” pervades every one of his films.
As recondite and well-spoken as Cronenberg obviously is, his discourses on organic filmmaking get a bit tedious at times, and he overstates his influence at others (the creepy creatures in Alien were inspired more by the art of H.R. Giger than by Shivers). Grünberg, for his part, fails to coax much out of the director that hasn’t been well documented in past interviews and articles. Still, the film is sheer pleasure for Cronenberg fans, and an illustrative look inside the mind of a truly original writer and director.
(3/4)