“Body is Reality.”
In a recent interview conducted for the CBC, David Cronenberg discussed the driving philosophy behind why so many of his movies are concerned with the human body. It derives in part from his atheism, he says, his disbelief in any kind of spiritual essence to humanity, leaving only the body as its’ purest form: “For me, the body is the essential fact of the human condition.” He is compelled by the body, how it can evolve and be manipulated. Later on he reveals he recently had cataracts surgery that changes the way he sees his film. But rather than view this as debilitating or degenerative he is seemingly excited by the newness of it -a healthy attitude towards aging perhaps for a man who’s pushing eighty.
And this links up with his long-held fascination with the intersection between the body and technology, in films such as Videodrome and Crash. Crimes of the Future, a movie with the same name but a completely different premise from his second low-budget feature, explores this with more intensity than ever before as it envisions a future in which the body has evolved away from pain but is more reliant than ever on technology, on manufactured constructs to keep it working.
It’s his first movie in eight years and his return to the so-called “body horror” genre on which he made his name, in more than two decades. A thriller in the vein of a classic speculative sci-fi story (like something that could have been written in the 60s by Ray Bradbury or Philip K. Dick), Crimes of the Future examines its world of bodily evolution from the point-of-view of an ailing performance artist. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) suffers from a disease called “accelerated evolution syndrome”, whereby his body periodically grows new organs. For live audiences, he has his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) remove and tattoo these organs -part of a larger industry of body modification art. In this capacity he draws the attention of both the National Organ Registry and a government police organization looking to investigate a cult that has taken to the practice of consuming synthetic material.
Who would think of surgery as an art form to be exploited for public reception? Displayed as a magician would their trick? But then the movie finds a way of making it understandable, even inevitable. Art after all by its’ nature evolves -even the human being can be its’ subject. To assuage any trepidation drummed up largely by Cronenberg himself, the movie isn’t as gross as you may have been hearing. It’s got some imagery that might be considered disturbing or gnarly, but nothing to rival say the last act of Men. In fact its’ attitude towards the body very much reflects Cronenberg’s -the ways it can be changed and reshaped considered with interest rather than repulsion. Take for instance the “ear man”, featured in the trailer: a man whose mouth and eyes are sewn shut and has ears all over his body -he is an acrobatic dancer with whom the camera is entranced. A woman has slits carved into her cheeks as one might get a tattoo or piercing. In the absence of pain, the movie suggests, the body is a more open canvas, surgery is aestheticized.
And then of course there’s Saul, who quite literally suffers for his art. His condition means he’s one of the few people who does feel the sensation of pain; he has trouble breathing and digesting -outside of his performances he goes around cloaked and masked, he feels the cold stronger than most people. Yet he remains committed to his craft in an almost masochistic way, even as it takes its’ toll on his health; even as it is threatened by irrelevance and commodification. For alongside Cronenberg’s appreciation of the body and the changes it can undergo there is also palpable in the film a fear of its’ devaluing. We’re presented with a mirror of our art world in both its’ passion and cynicism, and a cryptic warning of where it could go. Consider the ridiculous “Inner Beauty Pageant” that Saul is entered into, a capitalistic exploitation of his own body. Or on the purely cosmetic side of things, the surgery Caprice undergoes on a whim, or the “zipper” Saul has made in his lower abdomen for pleasure. The capacity and consumerism of bodily modification doesn’t stop at art.
The line from this movie that is already iconic is “surgery is the new sex”. It’s coined by Kristen Stewart’s Timlin, a junior investigator with the NOR deeply enamored with Saul and even more with the process of his surgery. Yes, it’s an amusing line, but there is a lot of extremely provoking implication behind the idea, where the film leads you to speculate on the way surgery relates to stimuli, to intimacy, to mystery. Cronenberg broaches this, much like he did for Crash, from the vantage point of psychological curiosity more than mere fetishism, making it easier to absorb scenes where Timlin is aroused by sticking a camera through Saul’s stomach, where he and Caprice make love by letting laser tools cut into their skin, or her fondling his insides through an incision. It’s one more way in which Cronenberg re-contextualizes the body, finds new function in places one might not think to look. Yet it also emphasizes a fluidity in sex and the ways this too can be debased on a material scale.
Which brings us to the crux of the movies’ plot and perhaps its’ most dire message. The opening scenes depict a child eating plastic objects in his home, followed by his mother suffocating him. Later we learn of his true purpose for this underground movement led by the boy’s father Lang (Scott Speedman), that believes that the human body is destined to evolve away from traditional modes of sustenance and so have altered their digestive tracts for the purposes of consuming artificial plastics -in a Soylent Green-like purple bar. The effect of this on the body is the great climax of the film and may be its’ most compelling theoretical nugget, one that the deeper it is considered, the more connected it is to the others discussed. Surgery and sex and art -all manipulations of the body, and this its’ most extreme form, with the goal of changing human biology from the inside out through use of industrial material. It is maybe the most uncomfortable concept, but Cronenberg is sympathetic and objective -not presenting such a thing in simple terms of good or bad. It is just a by-product of this environment, of this direction human beings are headed in.
Anchoring all these ideas, Viggo Mortensen is once again Cronenberg’s great muse, perfectly shifty, discomforted, and pathologically curious. A gorgeous Léa Seydoux brings a tense coldness in poise that matches perfectly her various barely concealed thrills. Don McKellar has a great part as the NOR supervisor Wippet, bashful and squirmy and all too hooked on the body art machine. He and Speedman, Nadia Litz and Tanaya Beatty as a pair of maintenance workers, give the film its’ welcoming Canadian character. But tenfold of McKellar’s choices are Kristen Stewart’s -the most bizarre, transfixing performance of the movie. In almost a satire of her Twilight-era reputation, she mumbles her dialogue shy and fast and with unusual emphasis; is acutely anxious and awkward in every scene, uncontrollably horny in Saul’s presence. This is one of her most unorthodox turns in a movie yet and it’s great.
Cronenberg crafts a deeply captivating milieu as well. From the Gieger-esque designs of Saul’s home and walnut bed, a biotechnological digestive chair that looks like a prop from Naked Lunch, and that organ-looking device that one massages to control the surgical tools -it’s all very creative and mesmerizing. This technology alongside the frequently rundown infrastructure suggestive of some great devastation (Wippet’s office is in a bombed-out building, an art show is held in some forsaken mansion) evokes curiosity in the state of this larger world that we’re only seeing a small slice of. Cronenberg keeps the lighting dim, the atmosphere pale, and the camera fixed, allowing for this sensation of emptiness and desperation -so few people occupy these desolate spaces. Not one for visual quotes, I get the feeling he owes at least a little bit here to David Lynch; and there’s one exceptional, critical shot that mimics The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Crimes of the Future is brilliant. It may be Cronenberg’s most immaculate treatise on body horror, a term he’s never much liked. An astonishingly open movie, which for all the fuss may be its’ most transgressive trait. It might be accused of juggling too many themes in concert with its’ central point, but if they don’t gel perfectly or amount to much meaning, they are still fundamentally intriguing thoughts to explore. Body is reality, the movie says; and if that is true, we have only scratched the surface.
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