How strange does your work have to be when the only adequate short-hand label for it is your own name?
Lynchian is both the mix of Americana imagery and the black heart underneath. But his contemporary in Canada, David Cronenberg, started defining Cronenbergian right out of the gate. For over fifty years, the master of the grotesque has been grossing out, ticking off, and generally disturbing audiences with his cinematic output, his plague-fuelled sexual riffs on identity and humanity are completely singular. So let’s talk a little about his career, specifically, the best and worst of his work, and what it reveals about how he’s come to define himself in modern cinema!
The Best: Crash
If David Cronenberg started his career now, he would probably get the piss taken out of him when it came to his adaptations. Spider, The Naked Lunch, Crash – the unfilmable novel is one of the director’s favourite pastimes. Why else would he pick authors like Don Dellio, William S Burroughs, and JG Ballard when everyone around him is adapting Stephen King? Well, partly because he already produced a brilliant King movie with The Dead Zone. But mainly because he seems to be drawn to the unthinkable across all mediums. With The Naked Lunch, Cronenberg brought some form and structure to his riff on the material, but with Crash, he perfected it. It seems like he and author JG Ballard are kindrid spirits. While not a body horror on par with The Fly or Videodrome, Crash combines the wreckage of cars, bodies, and the violence that connects their destruction and somehow finds eroticism in it. While Cronenbergian has taken on a life of its own outside of Cronenberg himself, Crash feels like a film that only this sicko could make and get away with.
The Worst: Stereo
Looking through Cronenberg’s filmography was surprising in its lack of complete duds. While there are plenty of fans and critics that hate his approach and his subject matter, he doesn’t have an outright bad film to his name. So Stereo, his hour-long debut art film, will have to do. Not many artists arrive fully formed – some take a few projects to really find their voice, whereas others just need a proper budget. Stereo is Cronenberg in embryonic form; shot in black and white with only passages of fictionalised academia to clue us in to what is going on, Stereo follows a group of telepaths as they explore their powers and the ways in which this new communication method has its own methods of alienation and connection. It is a interesting film, but is better viewed knowing that the seeds of where Cronenberg would go are being planted. The DNA of Scanners and Shivers is present but the training wheels would take a few years to come off. Stereo is a curio more than anything else. Like coming across a favourite authors out of print work. It has their personality but you can also see why it has been buried over time.
Do you agree with these picks for Cronenberg’s best and worst? If not, what would you put up there amongst his career highlights and lowlights? Let us know in the comments below, and check out the other entries in our Directrospective series here!
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via The Guardian)
No But Listen 