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Reviews
Irma Vep (1996)
Fast
This is a fast movie! Shot in 3 weeks with a budget not fit for an ad, Irma Vep has its roots in a silent masterpiece and explodes right in the 21st century. The plot is only a pretext to explore what cinema has become today. It is an excellent ride in the History of this art-form. I loved it. It is subtle and fast.
American Psycho (2000)
A predictable wreckage
It was predictable. The book is such a masterpiece, one really couldn't imagine how ANY director would deal with it. The result is obviously very mediocre and rather dull. Cronenberg was once supposed to attack this monument and even he gave up. The sadistic material is impossible to show in a film and it is at the same time absolutely necessary. Some scenes are not that bad, but it's only because they make you think of the book. Nobody should take the blame for that wreckage, the mission was truly impossible.
Lost Highway (1997)
All is lost but cinema
Lost Highway is undoubtedly one of the most striking movie of all time. It sometimes resembles a contemporary art installation or video, but it's also both an Hitchcockian thriller dealing with identity and an experimental, almost underground film. The photography is superb and the actors, as always with Lynch, reach unknown territories where no one would have expected them to go. The musical score is ironic and modern. Lost Highway is something rare and precious: an attempt by a famous director to explore modern urban mythology without any of the tricks of the trade most film-makers use. It is free as art itself, violent and puzzling. It shows images never seen or fantasized before. It is a masterpiece!
The Brood (1979)
An intimate horror movie
The Brood is undoubtedly the most personal movie Cronenberg ever made : we all know the film describes Cronenberg's vision of his own divorce (and the custody of his daughter Cassandra) ; at that time, his then-wife belonged to what he thought was a cult and he did kidnap his own daughter in order to protect her. Thus The Brood is full of rage, vengeance and death wish
It is a truly frightening story and, in its own way, a candid vision of one's personal tragedy. It seems to be a tale from the Grimm brothers, and, at the same time, a reflection on the powerful link between body and spirit. The script is surprisingly complex and rich, even if, in the end, there is definitely something childish in the movie, but in a positive way: the childish belief that "thoughts can kill" only tempered by the final sequence, when we understand that this little girl, so cruelly abused, will eventually reproduce what her mother developed. The image of this mother (Samantha Eggar at her best, revealing her tortured body that evokes a Roman goddess) is one of the most terrifying one in world cinema. The Brood is a key to understand one of the Cronenberg's major themes: the uncanny
How what is closest to us, family, mother, grandparents, might suddenly become the ultimate horror. What frightens us is not outlandish or alien, on the contrary, it's always part of our intimate universe (as in Videodrome).
L'humanité (1999)
A fascinating catholic horror film
L'Humanité is undoubtedly the best French movie I've seen this year. It's somewhere between Robert Bresson and David Lynch, which is quite uncommon. This is a suspense movie, but the nature of the suspense is metaphysical. The spectator, like the hero (Pharaon de Winter), keeps on following false leads as he tries to discover WHO the murderer could be. He even suspects Pharaon himself to be guilty (which, in a way, is true, if we admit we're all guilty). The characters all seem to be on the thin border line between humanity and animality. Pharaon needs a physical contact with human beings and animal alike; most of the time, men and women are filmed as if they were beasts and vice versa. But the film bears no contempt for anyone. It's not realistic but, on the other hand, it has nothing in common with 99% of the fictions we go and see usually. There is something about empathy in L'Humanité that I had never felt in cinema before. If I had to connect it with a genre, it would definitely be an "ethological genre movie"
The screenplay is brilliant, the actors are so far away from what we expect from actors that they seem to come from another planet until we understand it's actually ours. Here is the riddle of L'Humanité: we live down here among strangers, and the nearer other people seem to be, the farther they actually are. L'Humanité is not made to entertain. If you're not looking for something else in films, don't waste your time, it has nothing in common with The End of Days.
The Straight Story (1999)
A Zen road-movie
When David Lynch thinks he has to prove he's a great director, he makes a film like "A Straight Story": an old man traveling 500 miles on a lawn mower! This is indeed a Lynch film, even if a lot of those who thought EWS was slow won't take it. It is also a sort of Zen meditation on old age, death and the beauty of the universe. By the way, why should'nt we take pleasure in slowness? Where is it written that pleasure only comes from fastness? If you find TSS slow (and EWS as well) I guess you are the kind of people who anxiously look at their watch when they make love and think "My God, more than 30 seconds. it's so SLOW!"
Crash (1996)
Cinema is not always showbiz
What applies for Eyes Wide Shut also does for Crash. A large part of the public is totally unable to see the difference between another Hollywood film and a work of art. Some movies are seen and soon forgotten, some movies are watching you. I've read more than one comment stating than Crash is "the worst movie ever"! People exchanging ideas on Imdb should not go to such extremes. They should, at least, feel uncertain of their assessment, when others found the movie a "masterpiece". Let's try to be a little more serious about the whole matter or the commenting itself is bound to become a trash can of so-called "opinions". Who gives a damn?
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The stuff dreams are made of
'Eyes Wide Shut' could be the best translation of 'Traumnovelle': one should have one's eyes shut to be able to dream. Kubrick gives his own version of cinema being the art-form of dreams, thus the unconscious. True, this middle-class couple is very common and so are their sexual fantasies. This perhaps explains the disappointment of many spectators. In a way, EWS is the opposite to 'A Clockwork Orange' where the hero was forced to keep his eyes wide open in order to watch movies. And true enough, his fantasies were not very common or civilized as the Harford's. The home movie Dr. Harford sees, when his eyes are shut, is always the same: a black and white clip of his wife making it with a stranger. The worse is, of course, that the episode never happened in 'real life'. Perhaps is she only taking her revenge because she saw her husband with a couple of beautiful girls.
He then discovers his wife is a complete stranger, a menacing presence, threatening his quiet existence. And suddenly, his life becomes a nightmare. Girls are HIV positive, or they OD, a father sells his own daughter to strangers, a pianist friend is murdered, he finds himself in the middle of a satanic orgy and, as in a nightmare (where you are naked among dressed strangers) he has to take off his mask. It's not important to know if the film is a nightmare or not. EWS shows the very stuff dreams are made of, which is to say, the very core of films as an art-form. EWS is truly a masterpiece. A very mature reflection on the moving image and its relation to our deepest emotions. The photography is absolutely brilliant: its grainy texture conveys 'life', as it would be experienced under the influence of a psychedelic drug. The technique, as always, is inventive without showing off its total command.
eXistenZ (1999)
At last, virtual "reality" explored from within.
Videodrome was the sci-fi movie of the 80's, eXistenZ is the ultimate sci-fi movie of the coming century. For Cronenberg, as for Bill Burroughs, "There is no 'true' or 'real" reality", thus any reality is another form of virtuality. In eXistenZ, there is no reality from which the narrative would start and, at the end, we still don't know if we are "back in reality". This very ambitious movie is not only a reflection on cinema, and imagination in general, but also a trip that takes the viewer from the superficial reality of his/her senses to the existential angst of the psyche where dreams, fantasies and abstractions are as real as the so-called "real world". It is truly an unique experience in cinema as an art-form, both profound AND entertaining. The acting (J.J. Leigh) is superb. Suddenly, characters are conscious to be characters in a fiction they (perhaps) didn't choose. Cronenberg is miles ahead from the other directors. It is worth it to take the risk of a trip in his company.