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| Dario Argento |
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As with Dario Argento, I heard about David Cronenberg by reputation before I actually got to see any of his films. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had made The Dead Zone. A lecturer at college who ran a film club once a week after lectures introduced me to his work. He ran a short David Cronenberg season and showed The Fly, Videodrome and Dead Ringers, all excellent films, although I didn’t know (and still don’t) what the hell was going on in Videodrome. David Cronenberg started making short films in University, and shortly after made his first full-length feature, Shivers, which was quickly followed by Rabid and The Brood. All were small successes, but his next film, Scanners, was a big hit in America which allowed him to raise a bigger budget for Videodrome, one of the most surreal films I have ever seen: video cassettes and televisions that swell and breathe; guns that merge with the hand and stomachs that grow video slots.
The Dead Zone was his next film, and it couldn’t have been more different. Filmed in autumnal shades, it concerned itself with a more cerebral story. A man wakes from a long coma to discover he has the ability to see people’s future from physical contact. Far from happy with this ‘gift’, he is horrified to learn that a popular presidential candidate’s future is to start World War Three.
After that he began to move back into the background with good but non-commercial films like Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch and apparent (I haven’t seen it) crap like M. Butterfly. Everyone should have heard about his next film: Crash caused a major fuss when it was released here in the UK. It is certainly a graphic portrayal of people who derive sexual pleasure from car crashes. It is a very cold film, with characters seemingly devoid of any emotion. I’ve watched it many times and I still don’t know what to make of it.
His following feature, Spider, is an odd film. Despite very good performances from everyone involved I found it difficult to engage with any of the characters so I came away very unfulfilled. His next two films, A History
of Violence and Eastern Promises, both seem on the surface to
be major departures for Cronenberg, dealing with the criminal underworld
of gangsters. But they are both excellent films and contain fantastic,
varied performances from Viggo Mortensen, star of both. |
Filmography
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The Dead Zone has always been one of my favourite
films ever since I saw it on television as a teenager. But I didn’t
really find out about the film’s director, David Cronenberg, or any of
his other films until much later.
The Fly was David Cronenberg’s first major commercial
hit. His story of boy meets girl, boy’s bits fall off really struck a
chord with the cinema-going public who were still coming to terms with
AIDS (although David Cronenberg insists that’s not what the film was
about).
eXistenZ is much easier to like, as it has an evil
sense of humour, and seems to take much pleasure in seriously confusing
the viewer as you try to work out what is reality and what is the game
in a splendid comic thriller in which a virtual reality games designer
is almost assassinated and goes on the run with a PR nerd. But
absolutely nothing in this film can be taken at face value. It is well
worth watching, but don't expect to know what was going on at the end.