David Cronenberg on Body Horror, Titane, and Stalinist Censorship as Crimes of the Future Hits Cannes – IndieWire

David Cronenberg makes movies ahead of their time and hed like to keep it that way. When a global pandemic broke out, the godfather of body horror didnt rush to make his own response.

I sort of felt Id done that already with Shivers and Rabid, the filmmaker told IndieWire during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, while sitting on a hotel balcony at the Cannes Film Festival, referencing movies he made four decades ago. Of course, the whole body is reality thing is very real for me. Things that affect the human body are very basic, primitive and essential.

Body is reality is one of many provocative lines from Crimes of the Future, the 79-year-old auteurs first feature in eight years, which premieres in Cannes this week. Borrowing a title from his unrelated 1970 film and utilizing a screenplay he wrote two decades ago, the movie once again shows the mark of a director so immersed in his exploratory concepts that he demands the audience think through them to keep up.

Set in a near future in which people can grow new organs in their bodies, Crimes of the Future centers on a performance artist couple (Viggo Mortensen and La Seydoux) whose work involves the removal of such organs onstage before a live audience, and brings scrutiny from a team of bureaucratic investigators at the National Organ Registry (Don McKellar and Kristen Stewart). Like so much of Cronenbergs work, the scenario evades precise interpretations even as it amounts to a remarkable meditation on identity. In this case, the focus is the interplay of physicality and technology unique to the 21st century so it makes sense, of course, that Cronenberg came up with it at the end of the 20th.

When I wrote this in 1998, it was very theoretical unlike now, when everyones talking about microplastics in their bloodstream, the director said, insisting that he hadnt changed a word of his original draft when production resources finally came together last year. The human condition is the subject of my filmmaking and all art. Right now, these are things that are intriguing in terms of where people are and how theyre living.

There were some contemporary twists to the movie, which includes meme-worthy lines like surgery is the new sex, an observation Cronenberg has said was inspired by the amount of surgeries one can watch on YouTube. Theres also recurring POV footage from a ring-cam that was shot with an iPhone, which registers as Cronenbergs acknowledgement of the way personal devices have invaded our way of seeing the world. Its meant to be super-modern, Cronenberg said.

The director previously explored prospects of technological control impacting everyday life with Videodrome, and said he wanted to incorporate a similar theme this time. Crimes of the Future doesnt just revel in the interplay of art and technology; it gets inside the humanity at the core of that intersection. I personally do not have an agenda as a filmmaker, but Im interested in people who do, because that reveals many things about how they struggle with who they are and who they should be, he said. My filmmaking isnt political in the literal sense.

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In a separate interview at Cannes, Seydoux said that she was struck by Cronenbergs sensitivity. Hes very romantic, extremely romantic, and its not something you would think of him, she said.Hes very sentimental and very alive, very young, inside. Its inspiring. Theres something about him that I felt and its great when you admire people and you meet them in reality and they are even better than what you imagined.

Still, she wasnt able to get many answers out of the director about the nature of her surgical artist character. He didnt like to talk about it, she said. But we had very interesting conversations about life and about love.

Cronenberg delighted in the ambiguity around his work. Most of my movies are quite open-ended, he said. Things arent tied up in a nice little bow.

Though he has speculated in other interviews ahead of Cannes that audiences might walk out of the movie during its opening minutes, he was now radiating a Zen-like energy about the potential reception of his work. You know, Im from the 60s, he said, referencing the era when he made his first feature. I just want to be here now and chill. I never know how people will react.

Plus, no matter what happens, he already has a new project in the works that he expects to shoot in Toronto next spring: The Shrouds, which imagines a world in which people can witness their dead relatives decaying in real time. The movie has been seeking financing at the Cannes market.

Originally, Cronenberg was paid by Netflix to develop the concept as a series, and said he wrote two episodes before the streaming service backed off. I think theyre very conservative and for whatever reason, they didnt go ahead with my project, he said. I still thanked them because I wrote a script and I wouldnt have done that if it hadnt been for their enthusiasm. I was interested in a streaming series as an alternative form of cinema, because suddenly youre making eight or 10 hours of film.

As for Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg said he researched COVID protocols for the production through TV acting gigs he took on over the past year ahead of the shoot. I wanted to see if it was possible to make a movie with those protocols, he said. How awkward does it make things, how much more expensive does it make things, does it affect your acting, your directing, your acting? I saw that it was perfectly possible to do. It was more expensive, it was more awkward, but it was very doable and you got used to it. You got used to wearing the mask. When it came time for the Crimes of the Future shoot in Athens, among our crew of 150, nobody got COVID, so it worked, he said.

In the years since his last effort, 2014s Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg has written a horror novel, produced a VR experience, and acted in both the Shudder series Slasher and Star Trek: Discovery. But the world has been deprived of his filmmaking during critical moments of societal upheaval, including new sensitives about onscreen representation that he said gave him pause. A lot of artists are worried about saying the wrong phrase on Twitter or getting canceled, he said. Its kind of Stalinist in a bizarre way. Its not the same politics but its about the results the inflexibility and the lack of understanding of what art is.

It didnt take much prodding for Cronenberg to offer some specifics. Of course there are power trips as soon as people feel they have some power through this stuff, he said. You take something like the MeToo movement, which is totally legitimate, but obviously it can be politicized, weaponized by people who want to take it to an absurd extreme, and that has happened. So how do you deal with that? I guess that always happens. Something that has value is misused and used as a weapon. It can be for personal vengeance. Right now, there are a lot of people running scared.

Cronenberg said he navigated pushback to his own work on the institutional level back in 1979, when the Ontario Censor Board cut scenes out of The Brood without his permission (they were later restored). Ive had moments where things were forbidden, things were bad, things were taboo, he said. I havent paid any attention to it in terms of altering my approach.

The gap between his last feature and this one has also meant that the filmmaker didnt join the fray of artists who addressed the Trump years, though the exploding head in Scanners was also ahead of its time in terms of capturing the nature of public discourse these days. I wouldnt dignified my art with Donald Trump, I have to tell you, Cronenberg said. He didnt deserve it. As a destructive force, he was to ludicrous to me. It was so obvious I cant believe anyone would vote for him.

And no matter what his work says about the manipulation of physicality, Cronenberg made one thing clear: He abhorred anti-vaxxers. When I was a kid, we were all terrified of polio, he said. The vaccine was the savior. I just cant believe the attitude toward vaccines right now. Its an amazing thing to be able to have a vaccine right now. If youre refusing a vaccine, I just think youre a ridiculous person.

The filmmaker is often asked about the commercial opportunities that have come his way over the years, including Top Gun and Flashdance. He was adamant that he never seriously entertained these offers. People ask me about this all the time and there could be some misunderstandings, he said. Im flattered because theyre trying to put a huge enterprise into your hands. With Top Gun, he added, he was put off by one ingredient above all. I like machines. I like those jets, he said. Its just all about American military stuff and that wasnt something I wouldve wanted to do. Asked if he found anything fascistic about the plot, he added: I would say that mightve been an issue for me, he said. There was a bit of that in there.

Cronenbergs thematic consistency has inspired a new generation of filmmakers that includes his own son, Brandon Cronenberg. The younger Cronenbergs unsettling and imaginative thrillers Antiviral and Possessor are undeniable spiritual successors to his fathers work, though he has been coy about discussing such comparisons in interviews.

I think thats for obvious reasons, David said. But we love each other and talk about it all the time. As it turns out, both Cronenbergs were shooting new movies produced by U.S. distributor Neon at the same time, and Brandon decided not to rush the completion of his upcoming Alexander Skarsgard effort Infinity Pool to make the Cannes deadline to clear the way for his dad. It was really quite sweet, David said. To be shooting at the same time is delicious for a father. I was really very proud.

And then theres Julia Ducournau, the rising star who nabbed the Palme dOr last year for Titane, the Cronenbergian tale of a serial killer woman who has sex with a car. It ended up as the countrys Oscar submission. While Mortensen recently compared the movie unfavorably to Cronenbergs Crash, the director himself who participated in a conversation with Ducournau in Paris last week felt differently. I liked the film a lot, he said. Shes got a really strong visual sense. I know shes said how much of an influence my filmmaking has been, but its basically in the sense of unlocking her own sensibility, which is unique. Shes got a really strong visual sense and a sense of the absurd, the extreme. Her films are totally not like my films.

Neon

And then there were the accolades. I was delighted that she won the Palme, and I thought it was a real breakthrough for the festival, he said. More than that, the fact that it was chosen to represent France as the official Oscar selection was pretty bold. That also tends to be a conservative choice. In this case, they went the distance with that.

Still, Cronenberg expressed indifference about awards when it came to his own work (he has never been nominated for an Oscar, though A History of Violence scored nominations for William Hurt and screenwriter Josh Olson). I forget which awards Ive won, he said, without a hint of irony. I have to look at my shelf to see what they are. Im not being arrogant. Its the truth. You often know that the awards-givers are doing it more for themselves than for you. They need somebody to be a figurehead for the festival or whatever. Its a little bit transactional in a way. Its just not the reason Im making movies.

So what is that reason? He answered the question so quickly it was almost like a mantra. To be an artist, to create, and connect with human beings, he said. But even as he approached his eighth decade, he wasnt committed to filmmaking at all costs. Cinema is not my life, he said. I have three kids, four grandchildren. Thats life.

Crimes of the Futurepremiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release it in the U.S. on Friday, June 3.

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David Cronenberg on Body Horror, Titane, and Stalinist Censorship as Crimes of the Future Hits Cannes - IndieWire