 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 575: 10.13.22 The movie about a book about a rich guy trying to drive across Manhattan to get a haircut. While this couldn't get more boring on paper, the film isn't nearly as tedious. It takes some time to get its footing — the first twenty minutes are a bit of a slog — but when it does, it's quite a nice ride. Cronenberg descends deeper into the digital world here, not just thematically, but in practice; we are so far removed from the practical FX wonderment of his earlier work that the never-ending rear-projected green screen imagery and subtle CGI enhancement and tricks mesh with the aesthetics (unlike that fateful boat ride in A Dangerous Method ). Its a heady movie with the first script by D.C. (based on Don DeLillo's 2003 novel) since 1999's excellent eXistenZ.. It probably features too many extraneous conversations (which feel like they were pulled straight from the book), but it feels ripe for repeat viewings given the many layered subtexts, allusions and imagery. |
The difficult inroad is plagued by this way of a talking in addition to the streaming city green-screened in. Both elements never really dissolve as the film goes along, but, rather, congeal; even if you can't wrap your head around it in a concrete way, you'll need to accept it to get anything out of Cosmopolis...
Jay Baruchel's reaction at the end there feels like a proxy for the audience's. You're not meant to get it right away and you'll likely be left with more questions than answers.
The entire movie is a essentially a series of one-off conversations and interactions between Packer and a revolving door of co-workers, lady friends, a rap talent manager, and eventually a psychopath played Paul Giamatti which lasts the entire final third of the picture. The only other recurring characters are his head of security (whom he murders) and his wife (whom he can't get to have sex with him).
It begins with a quote from Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert: "...a rat is now a unit of currency." This is both directly referenced and used as a metaphor throughout. There's meant to be some humor in this conversation but it's lost in the absolutely suffocating and unnatural exchange (and that just might be the point)...
But we also start to dig out from the gobbledygook there. Blink and you'll miss it, but it's about "the interaction between technology and capital." I will spare you from any heavy-handed analysis at that front. The film, and I have to assume the book, have a deeply bleak outlook on the future of capitalism. I think that's all you need to know/work with, at the core level, to glean an appreciation if not some deeper understanding.
Eric Packer is so rich that when presented with an opportunity to buy a Rothko, he scoffs and pleads he wants to purchase the entire Rothko Chapel. There's a mindless hubris to his character which constantly borders on the absurd, the flippant and even the nihilistic. This is a world of money that shouldn't exist. As a riot engulfs the entire city, Samantha Morton enters the limo to unpack this quandary with a little more direct simplicity...
We're not confined to the claustrophobia of the limo ride for the entirely. The departures are limited but welcome and effective. His wife never enters the car, for example. In these interactions — which often involve food — we catch a glimpse of the breaking/broken world outside the windows...
We see in Packer's eyes that he's attracted to this chaos. This character isn't as complicated as it initially appears. His rise was formed out of disillusionment and so is his fall. He is presented with details of an imminent threat to his safety and sees how other luminaries' fates are ending in a horrific ways and he merely sneers, ever calmly...
But all the while, as day turns to night, he still just wants a damn haircut. He has sex with Juliette Binoche in the limo and then a different girl (not in the limo). He gets his daily — yea, daily — doctor's exam, which seems to fly in the face of his perceived death wish, only the prying, groping, delving is itself a desire for something/anything to be wrong. He's left only with the knowledge that is prostate is asymmetrical. This idea of balance and all sides being equal is not subtle and isn't meant to be.
Right before he arrives at the barbershop, he's hit by an assailant. But the weapon of choice is pie and the pie thrower, André Petrescu the Pastry Assassin, takes the time to boast before the moment's over and what's left then?...
The actual haircut is incredibly anticlimactic. Again, this seems to be the point. The barber, a rare connection to Eric Packer's past before Eric Packer, is as trapped in time as the set design of his shop. Here we're also introduced to the limo driver, an immigrant and former cab driver. He shares war stories with the barber about their past lives in the taxi games. They speak as if though they'd been through a war but the worst part of the job seems to be they had to pee under the same bridge. What's presented on the surface is almost nothing like what's underneath. And Packer leaves abruptly with only one side of his hair cut.
After Packer abruptly murders his head of security in a scene that probably makes more sense in the book, he parts ways with his limo driver and sets off on foot. He's immediately shot at by a disgruntled former employee who goes by the name Benno Levin. This is Paul Giamatti announcing himself off-camera in dramatic fashion...
Packer eventually makes his way to his assassin's apartment and that's where the final 25+ minutes of the story unfolds. In Levin's dingy, cluttered space, they talk. And it goes on and on. In equal parts, the strength of the writing and the quality of these performances keep this from falling apart into an abyss of boredom. Packer puts his own gun in his mouth before removing it to put a CGI bullet through his hand. Then they bond over both having an asymmetrical prostate...
The film ends with Levin's gun to Packer's head before cutting to black without a sound. The credits role over the blended, unbalanced colors of Rothko.
This is one of the more allusive and difficult to parse entries in the Cronenberg canon. It is incredibly boring at times (a conversation about the sound-proof cork lining in his limo lasts three minutes) but it rewards the viewer who can stick it out.
𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 20th 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚐 – 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑/𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚐'𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢. 𝙲𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎...
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 574 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 576 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 574 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 576 ⫸
Cosmopolis is a 2012 Canadian drama-thriller film written, produced, and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Robert Pattinson in the lead with Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand. It is based on the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo. The film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, drawing mixed early critical reactions. It was released on May 25, 2012.
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