Movie Review: Crimes of the Future (2022) [For Halloween contest]

After several dramas and some psychological thriller stuff, some of which feature The Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen, the self-not-professed body horror legend, Canadian filmmaker and actor David Cronenberg has finally decided to remind the fans that the good old Cronenberg hasn’t gone anywhere: Crimes of the Future is the apotheosis of Cronenberg’s craft; a synthesis of everything fans want; a medley of best Cronenberg moments in minor scale, transcending cinephile generations. It is also a product of independent filmmaking, filmed in Greece after years of securing financing, and using a script that was originally written by the director 20 years ago. If there is one thing young filmmakers of this day and age can learn from Cronenberg's second Crimes of the Future movie, it’s how to create horror that's filled with meaning and provocation, and little to no blood.

Viggo Mortensen for the first time had been made a participant in feats, which the Master of Venereal Horror was most well known for back in 1980s. The latest movie by David Cronenberg really comes across as one which unabashedly celebrates... well, Cronenberg. There’s a question in the new film, asked by a so called evolutionist Lang Dotrice (played by Scott Speedman) to Mortensen’s performance artist Saul Tenser, “how radical are you?” I’d say that really is a question David Cronenberg is asking to himself, having profoundly established the status of grand explorer in the further regions of cinema experience at the Cannes film festival back in 1996, when Crash premiered. In a somewhat strange, coincidental way Crimes of the Future, same as Crash back in the 1990s, didn’t reach cinema screens in the United Kingdom right away. But when it did arrive, it brought themes of fetish with it. Medical fetishism, to be more accurate.

_{Léa Seydoux as Caprice and Viggo Mortensen as Tenser in Crimes of the Future. Source}

"Is this new movie of Cronenberg really that narcissistic? Meaning, is it self obsessed and legacy obsessed? Or is it just me and my own narcissistic demons doing the judging?" Those were among my initial impressions, when watching the film.
I won’t try to come up with a conclusive answer to those questions. Instead I’d like to come up with just another question: “is this day and age narcissistic?”

Don McKellar’s Wippet, a bureaucrat at the National Organ Registry in the film says, “everyone’s a performance artist these days.” He is talking about performances where audience members with cameras witness live surgical procedures since human beings have stopped feeling physical pain entirely. Surgeries on a unique and legendary artist Saul Tenser, performed by his partner Caprice (played by Léa Seydoux, one of the latest Bond girls), are accompanied by tv screens with a text “body is reality”. Obsession with human body is all the rage in Crimes of the Future, which nature itself seems to be glad to encourage by developing new organs and taking away the feeling of pain. That is all part of the inner beauty in the new Cronenberg movie, all of which gets photoed and videoed, and as such is just glaringly consistent with the reality of TikTok and Insta era. I mean, what is that familiar smell I sense? Narcissism perhaps? Be that as it may, Cronenberg explorations do not end until the film's finished, so, we, of course, get another thing coming: Kristen Stewart being the first one to mention sex in this movie, which thus confirms this is also about fetish. Her character is Timlin, a young woman exhibiting signs of neuroticism, who is aforementioned Wippet’s assistant. She becomes excited to a considerable degree by Tenser’s performance; Tenser calls her reaction an “epiphany”, “a triumph of art”. The process of ‘triumph’ here involves sexual gratification.

_{Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart as Timlin in Crimes of the Future. Source}

Right off the bat settings in Crimes of the Future are bleak, dreary as if literally everything in the world had been losing both, vitality and meaning. The dreary vibes are reinforced by Howard Shore’s ambient theme of synth music. All throughout the movie there is virtually no vegetation anywhere, all the mise en scène is mostly ramshackle. The focus is really on what evolution is doing to human body and how different people approach this whole phenomenon; the inside of human body is the one thing having meaning in this film. Body is all the characters really talk about. Yet it is all far from being prosaic or banal; Crimes of the Future is also a sci-fi thriller, dealing with the meaning of art and creativity as well as politics, restrictions and challenges that the free thinking creatives face. The deciding factor in regards to enjoying this film is whether you like Cronenberg’s art or not. There is no compromise here. That includes appreciating some aberrant sounds and expressions typical to chronic pain produced by Mortensen; eternal martyr in the name of art, who's operations related to consumption and digestion of food – a process that normally is simple and straight forward for any mammal; in this film look as complex and sophisticated as the film's plot itself.

Peer Ynt
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