David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is an anti-capitalist snooze fest set in the future, whose sheer incompetence earns its director a firm downgrade.
Canada
1.5*
Director:
David Cronenberg
Screenwriter:
David Cronenberg
Director of Photography:
Peter Suschitzky
Running time: 105 minutes
Though billing itself as an apocalyptic vision of the future resulting from capitalist greed, David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is a vanity project for him and Twilight star Robert Pattinson. It degrades the director’s brand and contributes diddly-squat to the very topical debate about the battle between the elites of Wall Street and the hoi polloi of Main Street.
The film is recklessly bad. The writing is as vapid as the characters, and the setting – more than two-thirds of the film takes place inside the cork-lined state-of-the-art limousine that transports the main character, 20-something Eric Packer – is not utilised for any purpose other than to alienate us even further. In the process, the film’s potential relevance to our world is completely disregarded.
Whatever possessed Cronenberg to make this film? And to make it in this way? There are so many problems – seemingly a result of total ineptitude, notwithstanding the filmmaker’s résumé – that it is difficult to know where to begin.
The most significant disappointment is probably the time spent with the talking heads inside the youthful Packer’s limousine. Had there been some action or interesting points made by the airheads in the car, or even some tension between them, the viewer might have forgiven the filmmaker for this bland portrayal of the life of a multimillionaire.
The only moment of some interest occurs when Didi (Juliette Binoche), a high-class prostitute, services Packer. Seeing Binoche bob up and down on Pattinson’s crotch is bizarre, but puts a rare smile on our faces. Not just because it is the otherwise classy Binoche doing it, but also because it is one of the few moments in which the characters actually reveal that they might be human after all.
It would be foolish, however, to assume that all the characters are human, as Packer’s wife is very clearly a product in the Stepford line of robotic spouses. Without a sense of humour or even a speck of emotion, she is a complete and utter drone. While it is never clearly stated that she is, in fact, inhuman, this is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn. Perhaps that is a shot in the dark and gives Cosmopolis too much credit, but it deserves to be said that Cronenberg is usually not an idiot.
The film opens with a quotation from Zbigniew Herbert’s poem “Report from the Besieged City”, in which he observes that “the rat has become the unit of currency”. These words very vividly (and pungently) come to life as the city’s 99 percent, the poverty-stricken populace who live on the other side of the financial chasm dividing them from the 1 percent of financiers, walk around throwing rats at the ruling class.
There is no middle ground between the two classes. Cronenberg, who adapted the screenplay from a book by Don DeLillo, likely thought this fact would generate greater tension and present an easier way for him to get his point across about the current trajectory toward class warfare.
Cosmopolis exceeds our wildest expectations of incompetence. It is a self-involved mess: ideologically inscrutable, narratively tedious and visually catatonic. The characters have long dialogues devoid of sound and fury, signifying less than nothing. Consider for a moment one of these characters who speak to Packer in his cork-lined bubble. Played by Samantha Morton, Vija Kinsky is another emotionless android better known as Packer’s “chief of theory”, And yes, she is as boring as her title makes her sound.
The film doesn’t know how – or doesn’t try – to engage the contemporary, pertinent theme of the Occupy movements, though these are clearly the inspiration for the potential for tension, and ends up squandering an opportunity to present them in a coherent and interesting light.
Cosmopolis doesn’t have anything to say and doesn’t even pretend to offer the illusion of saying something of value. Most of the film involves a journey across town to a barbershop, as Packer absolutely insists on a haircut from the barber he has known since childhood, despite the always imminent threat of pernicious barbarians launching an attack on his car. But this long-awaited scene at the barbershop is another in a string of letdowns, as it fails to show a deeper side to Packer and ends way too early. Cronenberg couldn’t recognise the viewer’s need for substance and produces another disappointing scene in an already third-rate film.
The film is an abomination. As images wash over you, your mind will be free to boggle at the film’s inclusion in the official selection at Cannes. The pleasant memories of Cronenberg in top form doing reality-based science fiction in eXistenZ or giving Viggo Mortensen an ambitious role as a former criminal in A History of Violence or a hardcore criminal in Eastern Promises quickly fade in the face of such mind-numbing folly.