Crimes of the Future

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🎙️ EPISODE 336: 03.04.2021 On the surface, David Cronenberg's second feature feels like a natural extension of his first, 1969's Stereo. They both utilize a voiceover narration and no natural sound or dialogue, having been shot on. They were both filmed on location, primarily at Canadian educational buildings, most notably the University of Toronto's Scarborough College. They're both just slightly longer than an hour. The actor Ronald Mlodzik features in both, though he's much more of the focus here in Crimes of the Future, serving as the lone voice of narration whereas Stereo had numerous narrators. And here's where we start to see the separation.

Most obviously, this is in color and not black and white. But it also has a much more thorough sound design and, at times, an experimental soundtrack. We hear the sounds of bugs right from the get-go, and later, some sparsely used and uncredited avant garde score work. I found these sound editions invaluable in cutting through the constant hum between narration. But perhaps the largest distinction between the two is story. Where Stereo felt like a true experimental work, purporting to be a mosaic of faux educational resources by the made-up Canadian Academy of Erotic Enquiry, Crimes of the Future has something of a concrete plot, albeit shrouded in the oblique and cluttered with numerous obtuse and equally fake references to organizations that don't exist.

The general setup here is that Adrian Tripod (Mlodzik) navigates a future where sexually mature women appear to have been obliterated by a plague produced by the use of cosmetics. Now, that's never spelt out for you, but it's probably some information you'll want going in lest you spend too much time thinking about these men painting each other's nails and giving each other ladies underpants as gifts.

Suffice to say, it's complicated.

In Stereo we saw a fascination with body horror that was mostly theoretical. Here, we see it onscreen, in the form of foamy man nipples and other maladies brought on by this hellish future without women. It's all incredibly weird and metaphorical, and what you take away from it without the assistance of some online plot analysis, is, well, your own journey, I suppose.

But fair warning: it gets very fucking dark. With allusions to pedophilia and an ending that goes right up to the line of what you should probably show on film, I felt pretty queasy when it was over. The narrative hooks make it a more engaging movie than its predecessor but only slightly. These are curiosities, which film critic Kim Newman once wrote of, they're "more fun to read about in synopsis than to watch." And I think that's a perfect summation.

I'm more than ready to get into the proper timeline of Cronenberg's work.

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 2nd 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚐 – 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑/𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚐'𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢. 𝙲𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎...

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 335 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 337 ⫸

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