I’m not sure what there is about the sturdy, Biblical name David that encourages perverse thoughts,
but Movieland seems to be studded with writer-director Davids who consistently
look on the dark side. David Lynch started with creepy works like Eraserhead, won widespread acclaim for Blue Velvet, achieved cult status with Twin Peaks, and continued off the beaten
path with such disturbing films as Lost
Highway and Mulholland Drive. David Fincher is perhaps best known for the
not-so-grim The Social Network, but
he got his hands bloody with flicks like Se7en,
Fight Club, The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo, and Gone Girl.
And then there’s David Cronenberg, who has made a career out
of exploring subjects that are eerie and gruesome. Cronenberg is Canadian,
which I believe is supposed to make him mild-mannered and polite. Which he may
well be, in person, but his mind works in peculiar ways. Maybe that’s why his
favorite literary influences are Vladimir Nabokov and William S. Burroughs,
whose bizarre and unfilmable Naked Lunch he
once tried to adapt for the screen. Given his filmography, it’s no surprise to
learn that his favorite school subject was science, especially botany and
lepidopterology. (This field, the study of butterflies, would certainly put him
in sync with Nabokov, an expert in the field.)
I was first introduced to Cronenberg via his ghoulish remake
of The Fly (1986), starring Jeff
Goldblum as an out-of-control biologist. Intrigued—and, as a Roger Cormanite,
always on the look-out for low-budget ideas we could steal—I dipped back into the Cronenberg canon to
discover The Brood (1979), full of
psychological and biological oddities that end in a shocking conclusion. Then
came Dead Ringers (1988), a cold,
clinical tale involving Jeremy Irons as twin gynecologists who share a perverse
interest in women who are beautiful, inside and out. Not a lot of laughs in
that one.
I was impressed by
Cronenberg’s riveting, though slightly more conventional, film approach to the
graphic novel, A History of Violence (2005).
But I’m thinking about Cronenberg right now because I just caught up with his
most recent feature, 2014’s Maps to the
Stars. This film has won its share of international awards, many of them
for the lead performance of Julianne Moore as Havana Segrand, a troubled child
of Hollywood. Written by Tinseltown laureate Bruce
Wagner, it has its share of mordant humor, based as it is on the questionable
priorities of film stars and their entourage. But it seemed odd to me that
Moore’s performance was singled out by the Golden Globes folks as a nominee for
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy
or Musical. This film is by no means a musical, and I’d be hard pressed to
think of it as a comedy, given that it encompasses arson, poisoning,
strangulation, and the shooting death of an entirely innocent creature. I guess
it could be considered comic in the Shakespearean sense because it ends (sort
of) in a wedding. And that’s all the spoilers I’ll dare to mention.
Suffice it to say that there’s an expert cast, led by Moore
as well as John Cusack (as a pop psychologist to the stars), Olivia Williams as
his wife, Evan Bird as their cocky child-star son (now appearing in a sequel to
Bad Baby-Sitters), Mia Wasikowska as
the new girl from Jupiter, and Robert Pattinson as a Hollywood hopeful. The
horror elements of the story don’t necessarily add up, but they’re creepy
indeed. And the swank venues inhabited by the Hollywood rich are reproduced
with a cold, clear eye. That’s good for a shudder, at least.
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