WWTLD? What Would Taylor Lautner Do?
If there’s one film director who can make audiences flee, it’s David Cronenberg. Anyone who watched Crash, his graphic tale of car crashes and sex, or his adaptation of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, knows as much. What will unsuspecting Edward Cullen fans do?
Maybe they’ll read the reviews of Cosmopolis and spare themselves the discovery. Even Cronenberg’s admirers (including me) will find little to be enthusiastic about. Pattinson is good, as are Jay Baruchel, Juliette Binoche and Paul Giamatti. Unfortunately, watching a man sit in a limousine for nearly two hours—no matter how much sex or prostate spelunking goes on—is anathema to entertainment.
The choice to adapt Don DeLillo’s poorly received novel isn’t as misguided as the decision to stick so closely to it. Cosmopolis is the year’s dullest viewing experience thus far.
The story, such as it is, follows Eric Packer (Pattinson), a multibillionaire. He loses everything in currency speculation, but, really, he just wants a haircut. His limousine ferries him, lugubriously, across Manhattan, delayed by the president’s motorcade and a prominent musician’s funeral procession.
The mounting dread and precise speaking that work so well in the director’s earlier films, such as Videodrome and even eXistenZ, returns. Unfortunately, the script, which Cronenberg wrote, is devoid of subtext, wit or inventiveness.
For example, someone informs Packer that protesters against the rich—shades of Occupy Wall Street, though Cosmopolis was first published in 2003—are invading restaurants where the rich eat and throwing dead rats at patrons and staff. What happens a couple scenes later? Packer is sitting at a diner counter with his wife (a beautiful, bland Sarah Gadon; the blandness probably isn’t her fault) and a bunch of protesters run in, rats in hand.
It’s possible that Cronenberg has outlasted his filmmaking usefulness. It used to be that a Cronenberg film was about something—whether it’s sexual repression (They Came from Within), AIDS (The Fly) or what it means to kill (A History of Violence). Now, on his third dud in a row (Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method are bad, but not his bad), he seems like a man searching for an interesting subject and finding nothing but stilted dialogue.
Even the action is stilted. The few action scenes—“action” used advisedly—look as if they’re rehearsal takes where the actors are still learning their cues and not certain how the blocking shakes out.
Perhaps Cronenberg should again direct a screenplay written by someone else. That didn’t help Eastern Promises or A Dangerous Method, but A History of Violence, written by Josh Olson, is Cronenberg’s last great movie. Its shocking brutality meshed well with the director’s penchant for clinician-like precision.
A movie featuring a guy (mostly) sitting in a car doesn’t need a clinician. It needs energy.
COSMOPOLIS
Directed by David Cronenberg
With Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche and Paul Giamatti
UA DeVargas
R
109 MIN
Did we watch the same movie? Or rather the same movies? Since I enjoyed each and every one of those you obviously didn't like.
And btw I think you don't know much about Cronenberg. He said several times that The Fly isn't about aids. It's about aging. Maybe you should take some lessons at the nearest film school before you write anymore movie reviews? Just a thought. Because you seem pretty incompetent on the subject you're talking about.
Ah, the old "We have different opinions so you must be a total asshole" routine. That's my favorite!
First, let's be clear: I'm not talking about anything. The review you read was written. But whatever. This is the Internet. We don't need to be so precise.
Second, yes, Cronenberg has said that "The Fly" is not specifically about AIDS. True enough. But he has said it's about aging and death.
He's also said of it, and I'm quoting, "[T]wo eccentric but beautiful people meet each other, fall in love, one of them gets a hideous wasting disease, the other watches and eventually helps him commit suicide — end of story." (Time, Sept. 4, 2008)
AIDS, I bet, could be called a hideous and wasting disease. So could cancer. So could Parkinson's. And I wonder, if I had suggested "The Fly" was about any of those things, would I also be wrong?
Further, "AIDS" is two words shorter than "aging and dying," much more direct, and when your word count is 500, that matters.
You may consider, just for a moment, that the purpose of criticism is to express an opinion--an informed opinion--and that opinion may be different from yours or even the filmmaker's. But as you and the filmmaker clearly have the same opinion, you must be correct, right?
You may also be a jerk. Just a thought.
Do you think the nearest film school teaches How Not to Upset Douchey Fanboy Barney? Cuz otherwise, why even bother to enroll?
Do you think the nearest film school teaches a How Not To Upset Douchey Fanboy Barney class? Cuz otherwise, why even bother to enroll?
David Riedel is the most vapid, ignorant and uninformed reviewer that the SF Reporter has managed to disperse into our community yet. While Cosmopolis may not be Cronenberg's crowning achievement, Reidel's reasons for disliking it sound like a 14 year old whining about the lack of boobs and gun fights. Not that I'm surprised. The SF Reporter recently lost all filmic credibility with me when it gave the same, "I guess it's ok" rating to Bela Tarr’s important classic 'The Turin Horse' as current pop film 'Ted'. Plus, the new rating system is abominable with terms like "barf" for a bad film. What freakin' year is this? Is that some way for SFR to try and be hip and ironic? Dear god, I miss Patricia Sauthoff SO much right now.
Really, I don't think all the boobs and guns in the world could improve a script as banal, flaccid and utterly obvious as this one. Even boobs (who uses the word "boobs," by the way? Grow up) are boring when there's no good reason for them to appear onscreen.
One could make the argument that the purpose of "Cosmopolis" is to show that there's nothing tangible anymore; that Eric Packer's world is just numbers moving around on computer terminals, iPads and spreadsheets; we're all disconnected; and his desire to get across town to his father's barber is therefore a way to reconnect with life. But one is making the calculated guess (incorrectly) that that's interesting or novel in the first place.
Oh, Red Cell, are you bothering to read the reviews before you bitch about them? Ratings systems such as ours--Yay, OK, Meh and Barf--exist so that one may take a cursory glance if one chooses, or read through everything. To suggest that an "OK" for "The Turin Horse" and an "OK" for "Ted" (which I didn't review for SFR, by the way) means the films are held in the same esteem is--to use your words--vapid, ignorant and uninformed. It's as if you're not reading the reviews or, perhaps worse, misreading them on purpose.
I called "The Turnin Horse" "powerful," "controlled" and "beautiful," and compared it to the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski. I'm not sure I'd do the same with "Ted," but, then again, it wasn't trying to be anything but smart-stupid. I wouldn't think any informed filmgoer would actually think those movies can be compared in any meaningful way, other than they employ the same basics of filmmaking; they both have writers, directors, actors, etc. We use a ratings system and we rate films with it (see how that works?). That's where the similarities begin and end. If you don't get that, you probably don't get much.