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"Please Do Not Forget....Crash and eXistenZ
Two underrated films from the Canadian horror master....
Canadian born, independent filmmaker David Cronenberg has long been known for expanding the scope and pushing the limits of the modern day horror film. He is the rare horror auteur who values a film's subtext as much as its elaborate special effects. At sixty-five years of age, his career has spanned over forty years and shows no signs of slowing down in the near future.
Feminist film scholar, Lianne McLarty divided his career (up until 1989) into three specific parts/themes: 1.) the predatory female body 2.) the invasion of the male mind 3.) the monstrous male mind. These groupings of Cronenberg's works are certainly valid and are key to seeing his films as stories of ideas, and not just mindless gore shows that his detractors might proclaim. What is perhaps most interesting about the director and his extensive filmography is his ability to switch up his style and move towards increasingly difficult, non-commercial fare. Using Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999) as my two primary examples, I will look at how Cronenberg crafted his films, during the 1990s, with a new, intricate, maliciously humorous theme: the desensitized human mind within a technological influenced society.
The dominate roles of evil technology and human bodies as unappealing and deformed specimens have long been incorporated into Cronenberg's works (Scanners and Videodrome are two good examples of this). With Crash, Cronenberg found a way to portray these themes (and expand upon them) from a different perspective, as the novel had been written by acclaimed science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard. "I strongly believe that in order to be a complete filmmaker, you have to write your own scripts," Cronenberg said in an interview with Laurent Tirard, "in the past, I even argued that the filmmaker had to be the author of the original idea that the film was based on. But then I made The Dead Zone, which was adapted from a Stephen King novel, and lost a little of that arrogance".
Ballard must have shared similar fascinations with the Canadian director, as the film plays out like a summary of Cronenberg's work up until that point. Crash is crucially different in one significant regard, however. Its characters have lost the ability to feel, question, and, most importantly, live. They are walking through the world with their emotions turned off as they mistake automobile accidents for erotic, sexual fantasies. The crashes provoke them to feel something, albeit for a brief period of time.
Technology as distraction is another crucial view one could take in analyzing this film's thematic patterns. The character of James, a television director (he's a 1990s, Generation X inspired version of James Woods' character in Videodrome) goes through life lacking passion of any kind. He does not express any sign of love or desire; he's as cold and robotic as the objects around him. He participates in frequent sexual encounters with his wife, Catherine, and a young woman he works with on set, but one gets the sense that he is merely trying to pass the time as his ho hum existence laboriously carries on. Have the machines and gadgets in his everyday world, so precise and calculated, robbed him of spontaneity and excitement?
Everything works seamlessly without mistake, leaving no room for pesky human error. It is not until a man comes flying through his windshield one night on the freeway that he is exposed to something new and invigorating. James receives pleasure out of contact, although it is not specifically of the human kind that gets him off. Cronenberg is portraying an individual's lust for the combining of two machines, fender to fender. That's the new form of sexual foreplay, he may be saying. Due to this technology-based society (and perhaps the Industrial Revolution), human contact is a thing of the past; the ability to "ram" and "penetrate" into another person's automobile is much more exciting and sexually gratifying.
When Crash premiered at the Cannes film festival, many critics condemned the film for its glorification of such a perverse subject. Needless to say, they may have missed Cronenberg's point entirely. Cronenberg is not trying to eroticize these car crashes, but is rather emphasizing the complete lack of feeling that goes into these men and women's desperate pursuits. The only time they can feel alive is when they're near death or, at the very least, pressed up against cold steel in submissive acts. They give themselves over to machinery with the hope that they can get turned on by a complete lack of control. Videodrome, the television program, was created to entice people who lacked a moral structure. Vaughan, the twisted leader of this "sexual revolution" in Crash, seems to be lacking one himself.
In his original review of the film, respected critic Roger Ebert described the piece as, "a porno movie made by a computer: It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original--a dissection of the mechanics of pornography". By presenting the sex scenes in the film as undesirable — Cronenberg is very persistent in keeping his audience at a distance — this pornographic structure that Ebert describes is used to shed light on the mechanics of sex. By consciously taking the passion out of the act, the viewer is desensitized as well, staring at a screen without any emotional investment.
With the belief that technology has conquered not only the human mind, but the human body as well, the character of Vaughan plays a pivotal role in shaping Crash's narrative. With a plethora of scars and scabs across his body, Vaughan's fascination with automobile accidents stems from the belief that machinery can alter one's own physical appearance. He is delighted by the idea of emerging technology and human flesh together, perhaps in order to create the ideal human being. Vaughan (and Cronenberg) are intrigued by a combination of two opposing substances: flesh and steel.
"It is something we are all intimately involved in," Vaughan says to James, "the reshaping of the human body by modern technology." The combination of two different forms (like the shocking birth of the fly baby in Cronenberg's 1986 remake, The Fly) will ultimately rid man of his natural humanity. The desensitized being will not fight back against technology, but will ultimately surrender to it.
In 1999, Cronenberg, keeping this downbeat view of technology's ever increasing power, released eXistenZ, a film which focused on a popular craze within the digital world: video games. No, these were not your everyday, mechanical, battery operated gaming devices. These consoles were rather slimy and gooey, designed to plug right into a hole in the player's back (the holes are known as bio-ports). The holes function as electrical outlets, as a player would plug the console into their backs and be ready to play at a moment's notice. The holes provide a passageway for the consoles' wires, as they need to make their way towards the spinal cord in order for the game to begin. If the player is careless or inexperienced, the process can prove deadly.
Upon first viewing, eXistenZ seems like very typical Cronenberg, using technology to form with the human body, with the hopes of creating a new alternate reality. The opening scene seems taken out of the finale of Videdrome, with a man rushing up on stage with an organic, glossy gun in his hand, attempting to assassinate an important, techno pro figure. Both films also deal heavily with the idea of the body's interaction with outside forces. While it is true that eXistenZ possesses some similarities with the director's earlier works, here Cronenberg seems to be using the desensitized human mind to shed light on a new concept: the separation of mind and body. The main characters in Crash needed to feel an alternative to human contact, but here, the characters aren't trying to feel anything at all. Due to existenz, the game, their sense of reality is diminishing daily as they slowly drift off into a pleasurable realm of the unconscious.
EXistenZ is used by its creator, Allegra, to introduce people to a new way of living out their lives without ever leaving their homes. When they "plug in", their body goes limp, and their mind takes them to some place new and exciting. EXistenZ is a mind altering, role playing experience that isn't so much a game as it is a detour from the everyday world. Everyone who plays the game is somewhat unhappy with their own existence, and so they play to be something different, whether it's a hopeless romantic or a courageous action hero. Unfortunately, they are only free when they are playing; its lack of boundaries and rules make it hard to turn off.
Here, Cronenberg uses the game to as a way to focus on people's addictive nature to technology. Like a mind altering drug, these gamers can't get enough of the freedom they experience while under the influence, no matter the future harm it may cause. They become dependent on the game's existence, for it is their only hope for a satisfying, ultimately fulfilling life. The fact that this life turns out to be nonexistent is beside the point. These players only know how to live within the present, passed out on the couch and hooked up to their bio-ports.
Cronenberg elevates this addictive nature to further extremes by having the bio-port appear as an infected hole in a person's back. As Allegra and Ted consistently plug into their holes (Ted's is still fresh), the bodily theme comes full circle. With a strange resemblance to umbilical cords, these wires go in and out of a person's back, and Cronenberg shoots the penetrations in medium close ups. Is the effect somewhat erotic? It does appear highly sexualized in its insistence on having the viewer observe the insertion repeatedly. One is reminded of the opening in James Woods' stomach in Videodrome, where the character inserts a videotape inside the hole in order to feel replenished.
In eXistenZ, the hole seems more dangerous, as if it were stricken with disease (we discover that Ted's bio-port may already carry an infection). With an opening in the skin, the human body is prone to outside sources that can do more to harm than stimulate. If the hole is seen as sexualized, it is also dangerous and life threatening. When Ted attempts to lick Allegra's bio-port in one scene, the viewer is certainly more grossed out by the visual than turned on.
Ebert writes, "[Cronenberg]'s always filming activities that look like sex, but don't employ any of the appurtenances associated with that pastime. In his previous film, ``Crash,'' the characters exhibited an unhealthy interest in wounds. This time it's bio-ports. And what about those ``MetaFlesh Game Pods,'' input devices which combine the attributes of a joystick, a touch pad and a kidney? They pulse with a life of their own, and Allegra holds her as if it's a baby, or a battery-powered shiatsu machine" .
By describing what the Game Pods look like, Ebert hits on a very interesting point. What is the significance of the warm fleshed, all too realistic game controllers? The player has to "massage" it to start the game up, and then it begins to pulsate, signaling that the game has been activated. The viewer learns that the controller is made up of various amphibian limbs and organs, as they possess worldly sensations that allow the game to come to life. Perhaps Cronenberg is blurring the line between the flesh of the Game Pod and the flesh of its players. Connected to the bio-port, the two fleshes unite (like the colliding automobiles in Crash) and form the ultimate gaming experience. The controller becomes a player's "child", as they are always protecting it and making sure of its safety. When Allegra and Ted have trouble distinguishing real life from reality, the viewer begins to wonder if there's much of a difference between the two; they tend to seamlessly branch off one another. To the obsessed players, the game of eXistenZ is not a break from the real world, but a new life onto itself. Long live the new flesh, indeed.
Throughout the film, Cronenberg plays with the idea of truth versus fiction, fantasy vs. reality. While he did this in Videodrome, here he is not condemning his characters' actions but is quietly expressing empathy for them. In the "real world" seen at the film's conclusion, only Allegra and Ted are psychotic killers, unhappy with the creation of the game. Everyone else seen in the game (Yevgeny, Kiri, Gas, etc.) are regular civilized human beings.
Although Cronenberg is showing that technology can bring out the worst in people, the film seems to imply that we are not doomed if we just shut the game off. There is hope for humans who are not passive. One could see this as Cronenberg's optimism shining through, until you realize that people's natural tendencies cause them to give in to addiction (game play). Cronenberg always gives his characters choices and free will, however corrupt the people may be. His characters' flaws seem to stem out of a lack of understanding for the world around them, as they are either unwilling to adapt or are too eager to adapt. In Crash, James and Vaughan are outsiders because of what turns them on. In eXistenZ, Cronenberg continues this theory within a rapidly fast paced digital world.
Another interesting notion is the idea of what one character calls "God as mechanic." In the real world, God creates life and thus, can take it away. In eXistenZ, the God is the creator in the flesh, Allegra. Though she is responsible for giving players new fantasies and obstacles, it comes at a dangerous price. If the game is too successful and addictive, non players will rebel. Allegra is a woman with too much power, and the film shows that mainstream society will not stand for this. She is constantly under attack from crazy fans and protestors who feel that she does not have the right to control something so powerful. Therefore, she will eventually be killed for creating new life in the form of a Game Pod. Simply put, a God in human form will not be allowed to roam free like the players of eXistenZ.
While the plot of the film focuses on a primarily new medium, eXistenZ is not an "old man's picture" in the sense that Cronenberg is condemning video game usage outright. He is not necessarily against game play as much as he is intrigued by its dramatic possibilities. By creating a story revolving around video game technology, he is using the game of eXistenZ as a MacGuffin. He can further expand his thematic patterns of body and technology by adapting with the new machines and gadgets that are created on a daily basis. If he were to make a film about Ipods, rest assured it probably wouldn't be shown in a very positive light.
If technology doesn't anger Cronenberg, it scares him. Change is not something that is easily accepted in Cronenberg's world and films, although, ironically, it is the ability to adapt that is crucial to many of his characters' survival. Cronenberg isn't encouraging society to stay put but is encouraging his characters to change, grow and prosper. The only way to survive in an ever changing environment is to willingly change with it.
As society continues to develop, so too do Cronenberg's vast array of films. Once influenced by special effects and slimy creatures, the director has now reached a pivotal point of public and critical acceptance. His most recent film, Eastern Promises, featured an all star cast and a very high (for Cronenberg standards) budget. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actor- Viggo Mortensen (a man who also started out in horror with Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990). Cronenberg's previous film, A History of Violence, was a huge hit for New Line Cinema and received two Oscar noms (which came as quite a surprise for a film based on a graphic novel). Everything that Cronenberg has recently touched has turned to gold. Has he finally made it to the top of the mountain in the one place that always eluded him, Hollywood? The verdict is still out.
Although Cronenberg's strong desire to be in full control of his projects will likely cause tension between himself and studio heads, his voice will continue to be heard throughout his films. Although one may accuse of him of "selling out" and going mainstream, Cronenberg, the auteur, will always push the boundaries of social acceptance in whichever project he pursues. Whether they fall into science fiction, horror, dark comedy, or a combination of the three, Cronenberg's films are distinctly and devilishly, his own."
Two underrated films from the Canadian horror master....
Canadian born, independent filmmaker David Cronenberg has long been known for expanding the scope and pushing the limits of the modern day horror film. He is the rare horror auteur who values a film's subtext as much as its elaborate special effects. At sixty-five years of age, his career has spanned over forty years and shows no signs of slowing down in the near future.
Feminist film scholar, Lianne McLarty divided his career (up until 1989) into three specific parts/themes: 1.) the predatory female body 2.) the invasion of the male mind 3.) the monstrous male mind. These groupings of Cronenberg's works are certainly valid and are key to seeing his films as stories of ideas, and not just mindless gore shows that his detractors might proclaim. What is perhaps most interesting about the director and his extensive filmography is his ability to switch up his style and move towards increasingly difficult, non-commercial fare. Using Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999) as my two primary examples, I will look at how Cronenberg crafted his films, during the 1990s, with a new, intricate, maliciously humorous theme: the desensitized human mind within a technological influenced society.
The dominate roles of evil technology and human bodies as unappealing and deformed specimens have long been incorporated into Cronenberg's works (Scanners and Videodrome are two good examples of this). With Crash, Cronenberg found a way to portray these themes (and expand upon them) from a different perspective, as the novel had been written by acclaimed science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard. "I strongly believe that in order to be a complete filmmaker, you have to write your own scripts," Cronenberg said in an interview with Laurent Tirard, "in the past, I even argued that the filmmaker had to be the author of the original idea that the film was based on. But then I made The Dead Zone, which was adapted from a Stephen King novel, and lost a little of that arrogance".
Ballard must have shared similar fascinations with the Canadian director, as the film plays out like a summary of Cronenberg's work up until that point. Crash is crucially different in one significant regard, however. Its characters have lost the ability to feel, question, and, most importantly, live. They are walking through the world with their emotions turned off as they mistake automobile accidents for erotic, sexual fantasies. The crashes provoke them to feel something, albeit for a brief period of time.
Technology as distraction is another crucial view one could take in analyzing this film's thematic patterns. The character of James, a television director (he's a 1990s, Generation X inspired version of James Woods' character in Videodrome) goes through life lacking passion of any kind. He does not express any sign of love or desire; he's as cold and robotic as the objects around him. He participates in frequent sexual encounters with his wife, Catherine, and a young woman he works with on set, but one gets the sense that he is merely trying to pass the time as his ho hum existence laboriously carries on. Have the machines and gadgets in his everyday world, so precise and calculated, robbed him of spontaneity and excitement?
Everything works seamlessly without mistake, leaving no room for pesky human error. It is not until a man comes flying through his windshield one night on the freeway that he is exposed to something new and invigorating. James receives pleasure out of contact, although it is not specifically of the human kind that gets him off. Cronenberg is portraying an individual's lust for the combining of two machines, fender to fender. That's the new form of sexual foreplay, he may be saying. Due to this technology-based society (and perhaps the Industrial Revolution), human contact is a thing of the past; the ability to "ram" and "penetrate" into another person's automobile is much more exciting and sexually gratifying.
When Crash premiered at the Cannes film festival, many critics condemned the film for its glorification of such a perverse subject. Needless to say, they may have missed Cronenberg's point entirely. Cronenberg is not trying to eroticize these car crashes, but is rather emphasizing the complete lack of feeling that goes into these men and women's desperate pursuits. The only time they can feel alive is when they're near death or, at the very least, pressed up against cold steel in submissive acts. They give themselves over to machinery with the hope that they can get turned on by a complete lack of control. Videodrome, the television program, was created to entice people who lacked a moral structure. Vaughan, the twisted leader of this "sexual revolution" in Crash, seems to be lacking one himself.
In his original review of the film, respected critic Roger Ebert described the piece as, "a porno movie made by a computer: It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original--a dissection of the mechanics of pornography". By presenting the sex scenes in the film as undesirable — Cronenberg is very persistent in keeping his audience at a distance — this pornographic structure that Ebert describes is used to shed light on the mechanics of sex. By consciously taking the passion out of the act, the viewer is desensitized as well, staring at a screen without any emotional investment.
With the belief that technology has conquered not only the human mind, but the human body as well, the character of Vaughan plays a pivotal role in shaping Crash's narrative. With a plethora of scars and scabs across his body, Vaughan's fascination with automobile accidents stems from the belief that machinery can alter one's own physical appearance. He is delighted by the idea of emerging technology and human flesh together, perhaps in order to create the ideal human being. Vaughan (and Cronenberg) are intrigued by a combination of two opposing substances: flesh and steel.
"It is something we are all intimately involved in," Vaughan says to James, "the reshaping of the human body by modern technology." The combination of two different forms (like the shocking birth of the fly baby in Cronenberg's 1986 remake, The Fly) will ultimately rid man of his natural humanity. The desensitized being will not fight back against technology, but will ultimately surrender to it.
In 1999, Cronenberg, keeping this downbeat view of technology's ever increasing power, released eXistenZ, a film which focused on a popular craze within the digital world: video games. No, these were not your everyday, mechanical, battery operated gaming devices. These consoles were rather slimy and gooey, designed to plug right into a hole in the player's back (the holes are known as bio-ports). The holes function as electrical outlets, as a player would plug the console into their backs and be ready to play at a moment's notice. The holes provide a passageway for the consoles' wires, as they need to make their way towards the spinal cord in order for the game to begin. If the player is careless or inexperienced, the process can prove deadly.
Upon first viewing, eXistenZ seems like very typical Cronenberg, using technology to form with the human body, with the hopes of creating a new alternate reality. The opening scene seems taken out of the finale of Videdrome, with a man rushing up on stage with an organic, glossy gun in his hand, attempting to assassinate an important, techno pro figure. Both films also deal heavily with the idea of the body's interaction with outside forces. While it is true that eXistenZ possesses some similarities with the director's earlier works, here Cronenberg seems to be using the desensitized human mind to shed light on a new concept: the separation of mind and body. The main characters in Crash needed to feel an alternative to human contact, but here, the characters aren't trying to feel anything at all. Due to existenz, the game, their sense of reality is diminishing daily as they slowly drift off into a pleasurable realm of the unconscious.
EXistenZ is used by its creator, Allegra, to introduce people to a new way of living out their lives without ever leaving their homes. When they "plug in", their body goes limp, and their mind takes them to some place new and exciting. EXistenZ is a mind altering, role playing experience that isn't so much a game as it is a detour from the everyday world. Everyone who plays the game is somewhat unhappy with their own existence, and so they play to be something different, whether it's a hopeless romantic or a courageous action hero. Unfortunately, they are only free when they are playing; its lack of boundaries and rules make it hard to turn off.
Here, Cronenberg uses the game to as a way to focus on people's addictive nature to technology. Like a mind altering drug, these gamers can't get enough of the freedom they experience while under the influence, no matter the future harm it may cause. They become dependent on the game's existence, for it is their only hope for a satisfying, ultimately fulfilling life. The fact that this life turns out to be nonexistent is beside the point. These players only know how to live within the present, passed out on the couch and hooked up to their bio-ports.
Cronenberg elevates this addictive nature to further extremes by having the bio-port appear as an infected hole in a person's back. As Allegra and Ted consistently plug into their holes (Ted's is still fresh), the bodily theme comes full circle. With a strange resemblance to umbilical cords, these wires go in and out of a person's back, and Cronenberg shoots the penetrations in medium close ups. Is the effect somewhat erotic? It does appear highly sexualized in its insistence on having the viewer observe the insertion repeatedly. One is reminded of the opening in James Woods' stomach in Videodrome, where the character inserts a videotape inside the hole in order to feel replenished.
In eXistenZ, the hole seems more dangerous, as if it were stricken with disease (we discover that Ted's bio-port may already carry an infection). With an opening in the skin, the human body is prone to outside sources that can do more to harm than stimulate. If the hole is seen as sexualized, it is also dangerous and life threatening. When Ted attempts to lick Allegra's bio-port in one scene, the viewer is certainly more grossed out by the visual than turned on.
Ebert writes, "[Cronenberg]'s always filming activities that look like sex, but don't employ any of the appurtenances associated with that pastime. In his previous film, ``Crash,'' the characters exhibited an unhealthy interest in wounds. This time it's bio-ports. And what about those ``MetaFlesh Game Pods,'' input devices which combine the attributes of a joystick, a touch pad and a kidney? They pulse with a life of their own, and Allegra holds her as if it's a baby, or a battery-powered shiatsu machine" .
By describing what the Game Pods look like, Ebert hits on a very interesting point. What is the significance of the warm fleshed, all too realistic game controllers? The player has to "massage" it to start the game up, and then it begins to pulsate, signaling that the game has been activated. The viewer learns that the controller is made up of various amphibian limbs and organs, as they possess worldly sensations that allow the game to come to life. Perhaps Cronenberg is blurring the line between the flesh of the Game Pod and the flesh of its players. Connected to the bio-port, the two fleshes unite (like the colliding automobiles in Crash) and form the ultimate gaming experience. The controller becomes a player's "child", as they are always protecting it and making sure of its safety. When Allegra and Ted have trouble distinguishing real life from reality, the viewer begins to wonder if there's much of a difference between the two; they tend to seamlessly branch off one another. To the obsessed players, the game of eXistenZ is not a break from the real world, but a new life onto itself. Long live the new flesh, indeed.
Throughout the film, Cronenberg plays with the idea of truth versus fiction, fantasy vs. reality. While he did this in Videodrome, here he is not condemning his characters' actions but is quietly expressing empathy for them. In the "real world" seen at the film's conclusion, only Allegra and Ted are psychotic killers, unhappy with the creation of the game. Everyone else seen in the game (Yevgeny, Kiri, Gas, etc.) are regular civilized human beings.
Although Cronenberg is showing that technology can bring out the worst in people, the film seems to imply that we are not doomed if we just shut the game off. There is hope for humans who are not passive. One could see this as Cronenberg's optimism shining through, until you realize that people's natural tendencies cause them to give in to addiction (game play). Cronenberg always gives his characters choices and free will, however corrupt the people may be. His characters' flaws seem to stem out of a lack of understanding for the world around them, as they are either unwilling to adapt or are too eager to adapt. In Crash, James and Vaughan are outsiders because of what turns them on. In eXistenZ, Cronenberg continues this theory within a rapidly fast paced digital world.
Another interesting notion is the idea of what one character calls "God as mechanic." In the real world, God creates life and thus, can take it away. In eXistenZ, the God is the creator in the flesh, Allegra. Though she is responsible for giving players new fantasies and obstacles, it comes at a dangerous price. If the game is too successful and addictive, non players will rebel. Allegra is a woman with too much power, and the film shows that mainstream society will not stand for this. She is constantly under attack from crazy fans and protestors who feel that she does not have the right to control something so powerful. Therefore, she will eventually be killed for creating new life in the form of a Game Pod. Simply put, a God in human form will not be allowed to roam free like the players of eXistenZ.
While the plot of the film focuses on a primarily new medium, eXistenZ is not an "old man's picture" in the sense that Cronenberg is condemning video game usage outright. He is not necessarily against game play as much as he is intrigued by its dramatic possibilities. By creating a story revolving around video game technology, he is using the game of eXistenZ as a MacGuffin. He can further expand his thematic patterns of body and technology by adapting with the new machines and gadgets that are created on a daily basis. If he were to make a film about Ipods, rest assured it probably wouldn't be shown in a very positive light.
If technology doesn't anger Cronenberg, it scares him. Change is not something that is easily accepted in Cronenberg's world and films, although, ironically, it is the ability to adapt that is crucial to many of his characters' survival. Cronenberg isn't encouraging society to stay put but is encouraging his characters to change, grow and prosper. The only way to survive in an ever changing environment is to willingly change with it.
As society continues to develop, so too do Cronenberg's vast array of films. Once influenced by special effects and slimy creatures, the director has now reached a pivotal point of public and critical acceptance. His most recent film, Eastern Promises, featured an all star cast and a very high (for Cronenberg standards) budget. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actor- Viggo Mortensen (a man who also started out in horror with Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990). Cronenberg's previous film, A History of Violence, was a huge hit for New Line Cinema and received two Oscar noms (which came as quite a surprise for a film based on a graphic novel). Everything that Cronenberg has recently touched has turned to gold. Has he finally made it to the top of the mountain in the one place that always eluded him, Hollywood? The verdict is still out.
Although Cronenberg's strong desire to be in full control of his projects will likely cause tension between himself and studio heads, his voice will continue to be heard throughout his films. Although one may accuse of him of "selling out" and going mainstream, Cronenberg, the auteur, will always push the boundaries of social acceptance in whichever project he pursues. Whether they fall into science fiction, horror, dark comedy, or a combination of the three, Cronenberg's films are distinctly and devilishly, his own."
Posted by Erik Luers
