Cosmopolis

Bea says: It's been a while since I've watched a Cronenberg film, but not too much has changed since I did. Still very avant-garde, but also very beautiful, and still obsessed with bodily functions.

The action of Cosmopolis mostly takes place inside a limousine, in a kind of not-too-distant, dispossessed future which is actually very scarily like our present world (currency collapse, the occupy movement etc). A series of guests visit our beautiful, young protagonist (last seen in Twilight!), the head of a multinational corporation, as he drives through the streets of a large city, protected, and cut off, by his bodyguards and the armoured vehicle he is in, and it is only towards the end of the film that he leaves it to meet two people important to his life in different ways.

This film has some of the clearest, most interesting and perfect dialogue I have ever heard, and reminded me of some of the old playwrights I have read - Brecht, or Beckett perhaps. I saw from the credits that it is an adaptation of a novel, and it feels like it.  It is something so sharp, so different, that holds up a mirror to our lives. If you like Cronenberg, see it. If you don't, well, maybe it would be hard going; nothing really happens, but actually lots does, all at the same time, but you might just find it stays with you.

What do I mean??
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Cecil says: At first I thought this modern, arty cinema in Inverness had a fantastic sound system; but then, as the dialogue of the film continued in the crisp, clear tones Bea described, I wasn't sure whether it was the intention of the director or whether the Eden Court had a super acoustic. Thing is, I have no intention of going to see this film again anywhere else to find out...

It's not to say that it was a bad a film or even that I wriggled in my seat in a 'help-get-me-out-of-here' kind of way. But it wasn't a lot of fun, let's face it. I actually didn't really know who Cronenberg was, and maybe if I had realised, I might have chosen a different film.

That said, Bea and I did find ourselves talking about the film for some hours afterwards over dinner, so it was thought-provoking and challenging.

Bea's right that it felt a lot like a Brechtian play, with characters not quite talking to the camera, but certainly making comments on the world, the situation, life. But it also felt a lot as if it was trying to do for the 21st century what Metropolis did in the 1920s. A questioning of the way society is going and where we'll all end up.

Juliette Binoche intrigued me, as ever. She does sex on film incredibly well, but is it erotic? For some reason, not, but is THAT intentional?

I also liked the lead bodyguard - was he Danish? And rather disappointed as his fate...But I'll say no more or that might spoil the shocks...

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