Courtesy Argonauts
Certainly by now moviegoers have heard tell of the controversial reception for director David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. Seems Cannes audiences couldn’t decide whether to walk out, conduct a standing ovation or ignore it altogether, but the godfather of body horror’s newest work at least begs one question: Can one really like something they simultaneously hate?
It is the future—or some kind of future, anyway—and most humans have evolved beyond pain and infection. On paper, this sounds great, but when we consider pain as a warning sign and infection as the body’s response to, y’know, bad stuff in our blood or whatever, the idea becomes more harrowing than pleasant.
Surgery has become a bizarre combination of performance art, sex or even both, meaning surgeons and/or the willing-to-be-mutilated become new world rockstars. This is where Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux) come in. Caprice is a former trauma surgeon, while Saul becomes something akin to her canvas. For whatever reason, his body continually produces new organs, though no one ever really gets the chance to figure out what they do as Caprice cuts them out in public performances before they have a chance to operate. Sadly, though, Saul seems to be one of the last few who can experience pain or something like it, and no amount of bio-mechanical beds, repurposed autopsy machines or weird bone chairs seem to be helping. Meanwhile, the father (Scott Speedman) of a recently murdered young boy sees Saul and Caprice as his ticket to understanding his own body’s changes, but an omnipresent oppressive feeling makes doing anything kind of a drag.
Crimes of the Future saddles a strange aesthetic that can best be described as that of the 2004 video game Half Life 2 coupled with Giger-esque furniture design. Folks don’t much seem to be shocked by anything in a pain-free world anymore, even as new variants of evolved humans appear and surgeries, cutting, etc. become psychosexual free-for-alls or fine art exhibits. Crimes delves into light gore and confusingly intermeshed ideas of sex and violence, but ultimately feels more like a warning: If the body were to become the last frontier for art, and there are no more physical barriers, what is too far? Further, do those who consume art bear a responsibility for so regularly upping the stakes, and why do we worship at the feet of those who go too far like it’s nothing?
This is a gorgeous film, but doesn’t much have the answers to its own admittedly interesting questions. More notable is how it sticks with you. Dialogue and plot become secondary to concept, which is strangely refreshing, though you have to wonder whether Cronenberg is saying art should bear no limits, if it should in some cases or if he’s just trying to start a conversation. If it’s that third thing, mission accomplished.
7
+Interesting concept and aesthetic; impossible to look away
-Dialogue seems unimportant; pointless side characters
Crimes of the Future
Directed by Cronenberg
With Mortensen and Seydoux
CCA, Violet Crown, R, 107 min.
