When David Cronenberg wrote the Cosmopolis script he transcribed much of the dialogue directly from Don DeLillo’s densely written novel. Those pages of complicated, lyrical conversation attracted the film’s star, Robert Pattinson.
“I liked the poetry of this script when I first read it,” he said. “My only idea was that it was really different to anything I had ever done and I thought I couldn’t do it. That stuck to me afterwards and I thought that should be the way to choose projects, or which projects to go after — the ones you don’t understand, or the ones you are scared of. That generally means you’ll end up being better afterwards.”
The script was so finely tuned that barely a word was changed during the shoot. The 26-year-old Twilight star says he is used to script changes on other movies, but a modification to a line about a gun on the Cosmopolis set jarred his pacing.
“I remember the line was about the attachment above the trigger guard,” he says. “But there was no attachment above the trigger guard (on the prop gun).
I was so used to the rhythms of everything and suddenly it changed the rhythm of the entire scene. We were doing page-and-a-half long sequences and it was so in my head that to suddenly change it on the day threw me.”
He’s been winning praise for his strange, otherworldly performance as billionaire money manager Eric Packer, but don’t suggest he delved deep into his own psyche to create the man we see on screen.
He says the perception is that actors have “to be psychoanalysts,” but that’s just from the ’50s. Before that actors only thought about their face, and their voice and their movement.
“I think that’s one of the things I have come away from this movie with, in terms of acting in general. You don’t need to analyze things that much. You don’t need to understand it.”
It’s a complicated film, bursting with ideas and one very much open to interpretation and debate, but Pattinson would prefer to leave the psychological heavy lifting to the
audience. “I’m not a post modernist scholar,” he says. Instead he remembers what drew him to the project in the first place — the dialogue.
“I like saying it,” he says. “When I see clips I want to say the lines again. It’s like eating.”
When TIFF 2011 raises its curtain on David Cronenberg’s new film, “A Dangerous Method,” audiences will ask: Can the controversial director finally win an Oscar?
It he does, it’ll be a long time coming.
Cronenberg, 68, first found fame in the 1970s for cult horror movies like “Shivers,” “Rabid,” and “The Brood.” Three decades later, he has transcended a genre seldom favoured by Oscar voters to become a filmmaking auteur equal to art-house favourites like Jean-Luc Godard.
His films increasingly encroach into the mainstream, while retaining Cronenberg’s unmistakable penchant for disturbing violence. In 2005, he gripped audiences with one man’s secret past in the crime thriller, “A History of Violence.” The protagonist was played by one of Hollywood’s top heartthrobs, Viggo Mortensen.
He got down and dirty with the Russian mob in 2007’s Russian mob drama, “Eastern Promises.” That film also starred Viggo Mortensen, who won his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey said Cronenberg has never strictly been a horror filmmaker, “even when he was making horror movies.”
“With films like ‘Eastern Promises’ and ‘A History of Violence’ Cronenberg showed that he could work in different genres and still bring really challenging elements to these stories,” Bailey told CTVNews.ca. “But these aren’t horror movies at all, and even less so at this point in his career.”
Now comes “A Dangerous Method,” a film about the power of ideas generated by two titans in the field of psychiatry: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Set in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, “A Dangerous Method” has an impressive cast headlined by Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley.
The script is based on Christopher Hampton’s 2002 play of the same name. It digs into the turbulent relationship between Jung (Fassbender) and his mentor Freud (Mortensen). That relationship implodes after one patient (Knightley) undergoes their treatment and takes these giants to the dark side of genius.
“Oscar voters love films like these,” said Canada AM movie critic Richard Crouse.
“It’s got great actors, a great story and historical gravitas. It’s is also being launched at a major international film festival. You know Oscar voters will give it some consideration,” said Crouse.
Even so, Cronenberg’s horror roots may still be too dangerous for some Academy members. A shocking 1981 film like “Scanners” — where a character uses telekinetic powers to make a man’s head explode — is difficult to forget.
“Once you’ve earned a reputation for making people’s heads explode on film, it’s hard to get the Academy to think of you as an Oscar contender,” said Crouse.
That may explain why Cronenberg was denied a Best Director’s nod for “Eastern Promises” in 2008. Whether that matters to Cronenberg is another matter.
“Cronenberg stays true to himself. Telling a great story will always be his real satisfaction,” said Crouse.
In “Cosmopolis” director David Cronenberg takes us along for an existential road trip through the breakdown of modern society. Based on a novel by Don DeLillo the movie covers the gamut of human experience, from haircuts, money and infidelity to asymmetrical prostates and mortality.
“Twilight” heartthrob Robert Pattinson plays Eric Packer, a twenty-eight-year old billionaire money manager. Powerful, controlling and self-destructive, he rules his company from the back of a tricked-out stretch limousine. “People eat and sleep in the shadow of what we do,” he says. The glow of computer screens illuminates conversations with advisors, an invasive medical procedure and sex. What they don’t shed light on is Packer’s ennui.
Money has not brought happiness to Packer. Blank-faced, he ruminates on life and business while his car fights traffic—through a funeral procession for a dead rap star, an Occupy-style riot and a presidential visit to the city—to take him to his old Manhattan neighborhood for a haircut. He’s bleeding money—his investment in the Chinese yuan is tanking—world markets are collapsing and there’s even a credible death threat against his life, but the chaos and end-of-days strife happening outside his car brings with it an ever-increasing sense of calm.
“Cosmopolis” is old fashioned in the sense that it values language and ideas over action and flash but it is forward thinking in that those ideas are literally ripped from the headlines of the very near future. It’s a capitalist horror movie about the real value of money and the people who control it. “Nobody hates the rich,” Packer says in a moment of naiveté, “everybody thinks they’re ten seconds away from being rich.”
At the center of every scene, hell, pretty much every frame of “Cosmopolis” is Pattinson. He delivers a strange performance that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Nicolas Roeg film from 1976. He plays Packer as, simultaneously, the ultimate insider and consummate outsider. Think “The Man Who Fell to Earth’s” Thomas Jerome Newton, a wealthy but world-weary alien played by David Bowie (who would have made a great Packer had this movie been made in the early-1970s).
It’s a mannered, nihilistic performance that holds up very well under David Cronenberg’s invasive camera. The claustrophobic feel of the movie places a great deal of emphasis on Pattinson and he takes advantage of the up-close-and-personal cinematography to deliver a tricky performance that uses stillness to mask the boiling rage that exists beneath his stony veneer. His real feelings are as hermetically sealed as the bulletproof limo where he spends most of his time.
Swirling around Packer are a cadre of advisors, sex partners and security guards, nicely played by Emily Hampshire, Sarah Gadon, Kevin Durand, Jay Baruchel, Juliette Binoche (in a particularly lusty and unhinged performance) and Samantha Morton, Mathieu Almaric and Paul Giamatti (who makes “mutton” a funny word). They revolve in and out of his orbit, mouthing the complex dialogue, almost daring the viewer to keep up.
It’s a dense with ideas and dialogue. Cronenberg has never been afraid of ideas, but here he slathers them on thick. Characters ask questions, answers hang in the air and much is demanded of the viewer. The characters barely engage one another, let alone the audience, but their questions are meant to stir conversation if not between them, then among audience members.
“Cosmopolis” is a film that exists on the macro and the micro, a complex character study of one man’s battle to be relevant and alive and a look at the world that is rapidly changing around him.
After 19 movies and a career that has spanned 46 years, David Cronenberg may be long overdue for Oscar’s respect. Whether that will finally come with his new film “Cosmopolis” remains to be seen.
When “Cosmopolis” premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in May, critics rushed to see the director’s latest labour of love and ponder its Oscar potential.
Beyond Robert Pattinson’s hunk factor in this film, fans and critics wanted to see how Cronenberg would fare at adapting this challenging novel from American author Don DeLillo.
Such scrutiny did not unnerve 69-year-old Cronenberg.
“I like a good story,” Cronenberg told CTVNews.ca during the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.
“In this industry you see a lot of ups and downs. But I’ve learned over the years to be true to my gut and to stay true to ideas that interest me. They may not thrill everybody else who sees my films. But to me that’s an act of courage. I want to make films that are, if nothing else, courageous,” he said.
Cronenberg’s body of work certainly speaks to his convictions.
Even with his first cult horror films of the 1970s, such as “Shivers,” “Rabid” and “The Brood,” Cronenberg’s taste for daring was unmistakable.
Decades later, the soft-spoken director transcended his horror roots and a genre that is seldom favoured by Oscar voters.
Today Cronenberg is revered as a filmmaking auteur after Hollywood witnessed his formidable work in 2005’s “A History of Violence” and 2007’s “Eastern Promises.”
Even so, Cronenberg takes praise with a grain of salt.
“If anyone had asked me back in 1970 what kind of movies I’d be making today, I don’t know how I would have answered. I was young. I was trying to prove things to myself. But looking back, I see certain seeds taking root in my mind, certain ideas that pushed me to take a chance,” said Cronenberg.
That cerebral rollercoaster, and Cronenberg’s fondness for riding it, is on full display in “Cosmopolis.”
True to DeLillo’s satirical work, Cronenberg creates an otherworldly microcosm in which billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), experiences a meltdown of crushing proportions. But the real meat comes as Packer slides from untouchable New York money man to a tragic figure who sees all that he owns turn to dust.
“This is one of Cronenberg’s most accomplished films. I’d rank it at the top of his most recent movies,” said Canada AM movie critic Richard Crouse.
Calling the film “difficult, complicated and unrelenting in its point of view,” Crouse said it was still too early to make any Oscar bets.
“‘Cosmopolis’ is not ‘The King’s Speech’ or ‘Slumdog Millionaire,” said Crouse.
“This is not some uplifting story that leaves you feeling pumped with joy after the curtain falls. But it is the work of an accomplished filmmaker at the top of his game,” he said.
But even if this movie is not his best film, Cronenberg’s impressive body of work could sway Oscar voters to hand him a nomination for Best Director. If they did, it would not be out of the ordinary.
In 2012, 82-year-old actor Christopher Plummer won his first Oscar for the drama “Beginners.” Inconceivable as that may seem for an artist of Plummer’s stature, his portrayal of a gay man who comes out of the closet in his 70s convinced voters to give him his “turn” to win an Oscar.
The same rationale could apply to Cronenberg in 2013. But if Cronenberg is ignored once again the world won’t find him crying in his cups.
“If Cronenberg wins next year that would be great, but I don’t think he cares about it all that much,” said Crouse.
“Winning an Oscar isn’t the driving force behind a director like this,” he said.
That priority remains evident in “Cosmopolis.”
“Cronenberg believes in doing good work, no matter what. That’s what sets him apart.” Crouse said.
Richard Crouse: You know there’s a long list of films, and it’s interesting to hear you talk about how A History of Violence could have been probably a much different film if it had been made by an American. There’s a long list of films that you’ve said no to, that I’ve read about.
Geoff Pevere: How different a film Flashdance might have been.
Richard Crouse: Absolutely.
David Cronenerg: It would have been a failure!
Richard Crouse: Geoff and I were talking about this earlier, Geoff said someone quoted to you the idea that there would have been a whole alternate world of blockbusters had you directed Top Gun, and Flashdance, and Beverly Hills Cop, and some of the other films you were offered and said no to. You’d probably get offered many many things.
David Cronenberg: Well, Witness was one of those, and it actually was the first movie that Viggo Mortensen was in.
Richard Crouse: That’s right.
Geoff Pevere: Oh, that’s right.
David Cronenberg: He played an Amish.
Geoff Pevere: One of the Star Wars movies too. Weren’t you offered one of those?
David Cronenberg: Uh, yes. Yes, I was. I got a phone call from somebody from Lucas Film, and they said “we’re thinking of you for doing this third Star Wars movie.” I guess it was Return of the Jedi, and I said “well, I’m not used to doing other people’s material.” And I think there was a hang-up after that. I think they were looking for unbridled excitement, and instead they got hesitation, and that was it. Anyway, you have to know what to turn down. Those movies wouldn’t have been hits if I had done them. I would have somehow screwed them up because what they needed was that full on … I mean I certainly remember very definitely why I turned Witness down, because I could see the structure of that movie demanded that you sort of idealize the Amish. And to me they were a very repressive, sort of cultish group that I didn’t have much affection for, and I knew that I couldn’t do that kind of idealizing that the script required, because that was paradise, and life in the big city was “bad.” And I just didn’t believe it. So that was as it often is with me, a philosophical problem. People think because I’ve done horror films, they send me things like Constantine, with demons and stuff. And I say “I don’t do devils. I don’t do the Devil. I don’t do demons. I don’t do angels. I don’t do ghosts. I really don’t. And that’s because it’s a philosophical question. All of those things presuppose an afterlife, which I don’t believe in. And therefore I don’t, even metaphorically – I mean, I suppose if there were an approach were you could really say all of those things were metaphors for something else, then maybe it would work – but mostly it’s not. I can watch The Exorcist and see why it’s effective, and enjoy it. But I couldn’t make it.
Usually they sound like one long breathless sentence that seems scarier than the disease the drugs are meant to prevent.
A new film, Love and Other Drugs, starring Jake Gylennhaal and Anne Hathaway as a pharmaceutical salesman and the girl he loves respectively, however, forgoes the disclaimer. In fact, in what almost seems like a 90-minute ad for Viagra, it appears that the drug’s—Vitamin V, Jake calls it—only side effect is that it works too well.
It is the rare movie that uses a real brand name drug as a plot device. Even though the odd movie like Prozac Nation dares to name names, often filmmakers use fictitious drugs to advance their stories (and avoid lawsuits from notoriously litigious Big Pharma), but even in fantasy, side effects abound.
Brain Candy, the 1996 Kids in the Hall comedy, created a cure for depression called GLeeMONEX that “makes you feel like it’s 72°F in your head all the time.” Unfortunately the pill’s patients also turn into comatose zombies.
David Cronenberg devised Ephemerol, a tranquilizer used as a morning sickness remedy for his film Scanners. Side effects? Telekinetic and telepathic abilities. Later, in Naked Lunch, Cronenberg featured the more recreational drug Bug Powder, a yellow dust formally used by exterminators, informally by people looking to find a “literary high.”
In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Paris Hilton’s character Amber Sweet was addicted to a powerful blue, glowing opiate extracted from dead bodies called Zydrate. I’ll do wild things to “your soul for one more hit of that glow,” she sings. An alternative cinematic painkiller is Novril, the pills that kept James Caan sedated in Misery.
Filmmakers don’t just fictionalize pharmaceuticals, however. Plenty of recreational drugs get the Hollywood treatment. Remember Space Coke from Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie? One snort was enough to send both Cheech and Chong literally into outer space.
A Clockwork Orange was chock-a-block with fake drugs; everything from Drencrom to the synthetic mescaline Synthemesc to Vellocet, which produced ultra-violent tendencies and sudden outbursts of Singing in the Rain.
Perhaps the strangest recreational drug from the movies is Alien Nation’s Jabroka. Aliens find it highly addictive and grow to monstrous proportions when they take it, but to humans it tastes like dish soap and has no effect.
With the release of “A Dangerous Mind,” the tautly told story of two psychoanalysts you’ve heard of, Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), plus one you’ve probably never heard of, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), director David Cronenberg is still exploring uncharted territory in his films.
On the surface the story seems simple enough. Two pioneering figures of psychoanalysis have a falling out over an intelligent, beautiful but troubled patient. In the hands of Cronenberg and writer Christopher “Dangerous Liaisons” Hampton however, the movie becomes an enticing stew of psycho-sexuality and repression that challenges commonly held beliefs about what is normal and what is not.
Cronenberg, always known for his crisp filmmaking, has rarely ever been this simply elegant. Shot compositions and camerawork are kept simple so as not to distract from the star of the show—the dialogue. As you can imagine, in a drama about three therapists (Spielrein became a doctor after her treatment with Jung), there is a great deal of talk. Separately and together they talk about their dreams, their pasts and, in the case of Jung and Spielrein, their future. It may be the most inward looking movie of the year, but in its introspection—and buried in the film’s subtext—is a restrained but fascinating glimpse into the lives and minds of these characters.
Keira Knightley delivers a brave, strange and Oscar worthy performance as Spielrein, while Fassbender expertly plays the repression that plagued Jung. Cronenberg muse Viggo Mortensen may seem an odd choice to play Freud, but he leaves behind the physical performances that have marked his best work to create a convincing portrait of Freud.
“A Dangerous Method” won’t be for everyone. The combo of love story and birth of modern analysis is an odd mix. The almost total lack of physical action—Cronenberg’s fireworks here are in the small moments and the ideas expressed in the script—means the focus is on the words, but where some will see a film rich with dialogue, others will see it as verbose. But that’s just the kind of duality the movie explores.
