I finally saw it last night, in the last theatre in New York that was showing it (the Village East, site of the Rocky Horror screenings of my youth.) I thought it was pretty terrific.
It amazes me, though, that critics (both liberal and conservative) really seem to believe this was some finger-wagging statement about The Violence At The Heart Of The American Experience–in essence, “Norman Rockwell Lied, People Died.” (In the battle for the crown of Most Tedious between left-leaning critics who find a kick to America’s junk in every movie and applaud and the right-leaning critics who do the same and boo, the left-leaners lose, but not by much.) First of all, all of the violent people in this film actually hail from big cities–hardly the indictment of Small Town America we’re supposed to see it as. And secondly, Cronenberg went out of his way to make the Americana aw-shucks-apple-pie-small-town stuff as transparently cliched and TV-movie as possible, almost–but not quite–to the film’s detriment. Cronenberg is an extraordinary filmmaker and also, perhaps more relevantly, no dope–why would he do that, if not to undercut that too-pat reading of the film? (Seriously, did no mainstream critics pick up on this? Bizarre.)
Consistent with his work in other, more on-the-surface-weird films, Cronenberg is a philosopher, not a politician, and this movie was not about America’s Love Affair With Guns or some other bit Michael Moore demagoguery for the New Yorker set–it was, like all his films, about the extremes to which we can push our bodies and to which our bodies, our instincts, can push us, and the danger that comes when we ignore or attempt to stifle the fact that biology is, in fact, destiny. Cronenberg out-and-out agreed with Freud’s famous pronouncement in the excellent horror-in-the-’70s documentary The American Nightmare; surely it’s no coincidence that the violence in this film really stems from a man who tried to shun one set of biological links in favor of creating a new one?
With Croneneberg’s usual obsessions in mind, I love how in-your-face this film got with both the violence and the sex, which in both cases always seemed to last several seconds past the point of uncomfortability. Ignore this, it says; try to remain unimplicated by this.
It actually reminded me of the bug scene in King Kong, which I’ve noticed a critic or two (like the always readable, almost never clueful David Denby) say stopped the movie in its tracks. Well, of course! In Kong‘s case, the protagonists have (literally) hit bottom. The relentless rigors of Skull Island have broken them down, and they will not stop until they’ve all been devoured. Jackson strips away the music, strips away everything but the vain struggle–the increasingly primal grunts and screams of the “heroes” and the increasingly grotesque and unstoppable array of creatures aiming to devour them. (Again, seriously, did Denby et al not pick up on the “lowest point” angle, the missing music–did they really think Jackson was unaware the scene stopped the movie’s momentum?)
Cronenberg’s not up to the exact same trick–he’s not trying to stop the movie in its tracks, he’s saying this is the movie’s tracks. This is what sex is like; this is what violence is like. When we cringe and recoil, whose fault is that, really?
And I think it must be said that this movie functions perfectly well as a slightly fantastical action thriller as well–with a darker heart than, say, Four Brothers, and a more realistic one than Kill Bill or Sin City, but certainly not as far removed from all that as it’s cracked up to be. That doesn’t bother me, and I can’t imagine it bothers Cronenberg either. He’s said that setting this film in the context of a family rather than in the context of, I dunno, a man with a video-playing orifice in his chest makes it easier for people to relate to, and therefore to see beneath the surface. I think the thriller context does the exact same thing, in the same way that Cronenberg’s more straightforward horror efforts did.
One final thought: Folks have argued that people who praise art for making people uncomfortable are in fact perfectly comfortable with that art because it makes others feel uncomfortable, and therefore we can feel superior to them. Alls I can say is that my nightmares last night should serve as exhibit A that this movie made me uncomfortable, too, apparently moreso than I’d thought. And I’m glad for it. It’s a really good movie, and I think a really great movie also.
I’m very happy I saw this in the theatre.