What I’m watching: a challenging, dark satire of the future

Date: 6/13/2022

In theaters: “Crimes of the Future”

This new film by director David Cronenberg apparently had quite a reception at the recent Cannes Film Festival. Reports indicated that a large number of the audience walked out of the screening, while others gave it a standing ovation.

When I learned the film was going to be on area screens – the Amherst Cinema and Cinemark in West Springfield – I was both surprised and delighted. Regardless of the film itself, I was happy to see that it was receiving commercial release. Too many “smaller” or art house films suffer from inadequate theatrical distribution.

So, I went with three friends – including artist and film historian Steve Bissette, who has written a 600-page book on Cronenberg’s film “The Brood” – to the Amherst Theater to experience the movie.

And what an experience it was.

Cronenberg started making horror films in his native Canada and received his first mainstream hit with “The Fly.” Not all of his films deal with horror or science fiction themes, such as “M Butterfly,” “Crash,” “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises.”
His films frequently challenge the audiences with confrontational stories.

In this new movie, the future is depicted as a bleak broken place. Some humans are going through spontaneous evolution, growing new organs for which their purpose is unknown. Viggo Mortensen is Saul Tenser, one of these people. Saul’s partner in life is a former surgeon Caprice (Lea Seydoux), who now teams with him as a performance artist. When she realizes Saul has a new organ growing, she tattoos with a drawing – don’t ask me how exactly – and then removes it as a performance live in front of an audience through a semi-automated machine designed for autopsies.

And yes, it is quite explicit.

The government requires registering these mysterious organs and Saul is well known to them. The performances seem to be illegal but the government officials in the registry office are clearly fans. In fact, one of them is operating an internal beauty contest based on these spontaneous organs.

Got all that?

Although the film opens with a very disturbing sequence – which sets up a secondary plotline with which the film concludes – I started to realize the over-the-top story was a dark-as-midnight satire that provoked legitimate laughter, something I didn’t expect.

One such scene involved another performing artist who has grafted ears all over his body and then had his mouth and eyelids sewn shut. He then dances. One member of the audience, obviously a critic, was complaining the ears weren’t functional and just for show.

As you can see, this is not a mainstream movie for a general audience.

If you’re a Cronenberg fan, this would be a movie you would want to see. If you’re uninitiated in the ways of this director, you will experience a very wild ride.

Streaming: “Under the Banner of Heaven”

I just concluded watching this limited series starring Andrew Garfield and based on the true crime book of the same name. Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of a Mormon police detective and his non-Mormon partner investigating a terrible murder of a mother and her child by what would appear to Mormon fundamentalists.

Not only is this a compelling mystery, but it is also a very thoughtful meditation about the role of faith in all aspects of one’s life.

Garfield’s character struggles to live his faith while at the same time doing his duty as a police officer. As the story unfolds, he is confronted by Mormon history that challenges the acceptance of all that he has been taught.

Garfield turns in a great performance, but the character that impressed me the most was his partner, a Native American, Bill Taba, played with under-played intensity by Gil Birmingham.

You should put this series on your list of summer watching.