Crimes of the Future: Creative Evolution
The challenge of describing David Cronenberg and his body (heh, heh) of work in new and exciting ways has become an exercise in futility. “Genius!” they cry. “Visionary!” they hail. “The King of Venereal Horror!” they shout with glee.
Long ago, these descriptors felt unique enough to properly encompass his perpetually beguiling talent. But time has eroded their effect, rendering such sentiments old-hat and cliché. Indeed, what sparkling words are there to describe a filmmaker whose modus operandi is to consistently show the audience that which they have not seen before?
The paradox is, there are as many words as there just aren’t words enough. Maybe that’s why creation is an evolution, which is the crux of Crimes of the Future.
“Art from Anarchy”
And maybe that’s why Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) feels like a Cronenberg surrogate. He’s a renowned performance artist whose “routine” is his body’s ability to generate new and unique organs. Said organs are surgically removed and preserved by his assistant, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), in a public theater.
Caprice posits that Saul’s body is rebelling against him, thus creating “art from anarchy.” He spends most of the film coughing and wheezing (to sometimes comedic effect), and his voice rarely rises above the level of a beleaguered whisper. Despite his reputation as the singular master of a unique talent, Saul just seems very tired.
But who can blame him? Generating new organs and having them removed would take the wind out of even the healthiest human specimen. What makes Saul’s “act” unique is that it’s borne out of survival, with each new organ threatening to fatally alter his physiology.
The Specter of Obsolescence
With performance comes pressure; with pressure comes doubt; and with doubt comes the itch of Impostor Syndrome. I can’t help but wonder if Crimes of the Future – cheekily named after Cronenberg’s own 1970 short film – is the auteur’s riposte to the imitators and bandwagon-jumpers who would claim his Body Horror mantle for their own.
Shoot, the film’s first image is of a sunken ship. And Cronenberg uses the symbol of rusted-out barges as a signifier that, maybe, his particular ship “has sailed.” Even in the background imagery, the specter of obsolescence looms large.
Like Saul, Cronenberg seems to wonder if he can keep up with the “future,” or if he’s merely taking up space in a creative landscape that’s overrun with weirdness for its own sake. Or if the specific vision of the The Future being sold to the masses at large is even worth the effort to keep up with.
It’s interesting how the filmmaker mines character intrigue from the lethargy and exhaustion of being an exhibitionist guinea pig for a niche audience. But to look back at the director’s formative work indicates an empathy and awareness toward being a guinea pig in an outsider niche all his own.
Cult of Personality
As with any subversive or popular artists, Saul attracts an ominous cult of personality with less-than-pure intentions. Consider how many horror filmmakers have quoted the head explosion in Scanners but fail to attach any thematic or dramatic resonance to the effect. In a sly way, Cronenberg pokes at the posers who extract the most literal, surface-level readings from art, and hypothesizes that their ilk may be the most dangerous “fans” of all.
It’s interesting to see Mortensen in a role that largely diminishes his physical appeal, while being simultaneously obsessed with his physicality in painful, functional, and utterly human ways. This is far from his previous Cronenberg characters – Tom Stall in A History of Violence; Nikolai in Eastern Promises; Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method – and further still from the Lord of the Rings blockbusters that minted his stardom. Similarly, co-star Kristen Stewart’s (who plays twitchy “organ registrar” Timlin) collaborations with Olivier Assayas shows the actress shedding the skin of her Twilight past and moving forward to forge something new and exciting.
Disconnection
But I keep going back to how tired Saul seems. He wields power because of – not despite – his physically compromised state and comes across as untouchable (literally and figuratively) as a result. That said, he remains a supporting player in his own existence, as the world surrounding him is so vast that it’s impossible to know how to harness it in a sane, logical manner.
In the decidedly low-tech world Cronenberg has conceived, the irony is not that his depiction of The Future advocates for technological disconnection, but that the technology appears to have disconnected itself a long, long time ago.
Maybe that’s why the conspiracies, double-crosses, and betrayals that occur within Crimes of the Future are raised with the urgency of a shrug. While the central plot hinges on a climactic setpiece that’s visually unsettling and heartbreaking at the same time, the politics driving the proceedings suggest an eternal, ever-grinding machine that will exist long after we’re gone. The timeline of the film is puzzlingly amorphous, suggesting that even the concept of “time” has little relevance in this depiction of The Future.
Crimes of the Future is less about being “state of the art” than about the state of art itself. As with other Cronenberg films, the production design lacks the aesthetic appeal of the green-screened worlds multiplex audiences have grown accustomed to. Instead, we get a grimy shell of civilization where, as one character offhandedly states, “people don’t even wash their hands anymore.” The Future looks an awful lot like the present – maybe a little worse – and Cronenberg, cinematic clinician that he is, is just performing an autopsy on the desecrated remains of horror in an era of regurgitated tropes and intellectual properties.
4 out of 5 stars
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Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) spends his spa days in the autopsy sarcophagus, and co-hosts The Last Knock horror podcast. His writing can also be found at The Screening Space.
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(Crimes of the Future movie still from Argonauts.)