Posted on 05/27/2024 12:02:18 PM PDT by jerod
At Cannes, the Canadian director pushes back at those who can’t connect the conspiracies to the grief
French actor Vincent Cassel, Canadian director David Cronenberg and German actress Diane Kruger arrive for the screening of the film "The Shrouds" at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20, 2024. (Loïc Venance/AFP via Getty Images)
In The Shrouds, the new movie from David Cronenberg, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, a widower played by Vincent Cassell invents a new ultrasound-like technology so he can check in on his late wife in her grave. He logs in – much in the same way we might check our Ring app – to monitor her body as it slowly decomposes, finding comfort in the livestreamed images of her decaying flesh.
Only in a Cronenberg movie would that premise feel like a natural, even sentimental, progression. His work often explores how the body merges with technology. Think about the VHS tape entering the torso in Videodrome, the organic pistol that fires enamel in eXistenZ or the way his camera tends to invade the human anatomy in pretty much all his work. It's no surprise then that technology would follow the body into death and beyond in Cronenberg's most tender, vulnerable and emotional movie yet.
Cronenberg is drawing from the loss of his own wife of 43 years, channeling his prolonged grief as she battled cancer into a story that also deals with the latest evolution in technology and modern geopolitical warfare. At one point Vincent Cassel's Karsh, whose white hair and dark suits (not to mention the actor's elongated face) makes him a dead ringer for Cronenberg, expresses the same urge that the filmmaker once described in an interview, an impulse to crawl into his wife's coffin because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her to be alone in death.
"It is my most autobiographical film but it's not really autobiography," Cronenberg told the gathered journalists at a press conference in Cannes, the day after The Shrouds premiered in competition...
He's obviously a tortured genius.
The opening scene of Scanners scared the hell out of me as a twelve year old kid, but it was interesting years later as adult to learn about the behind the scenes work involved creating that famous scene.
That Fly an Videodrone movies are great.
The synopsis of that film sounds beyond morbid, even for me.
I may want to read the book, if it’s a published novel, but not rushing to see this in the flesh and in full color.
I saw David Cronenberg on an episode of Star Trek: Discovery a while back. I looked it up and he’s a regular character on the series.
“Wife of 43 years”. Impressive for a Hollywood artiste.
Very.
Cronenberg. Third favorite director of all times. The first being Kubrick. Second being Friedkin.
I don’t think tortured. He’s pretty chill. Other than a messy divorce in the 70s he doesn’t have a lot of life drama. He just channels his inner darkness into movies well, and seems to leave most of it there. Interviews I’ve seen with him he’s constantly smiling and laughing.
Definitely a genius though. Incredibly talented director. Even his movies I don’t like the craft of them blows me away.
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