Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Scott Speedman, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar
Distributor: Madman Films 
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Strong surgical detail, science fiction themes, violence and nudity

In a not-so-distant future, humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings and, as humans alter their biological makeup – some naturally, some surgically – the body itself becomes art. 

Film buffs will be alert when they see in the name of the director David Cronenberg, who has also written the screenplay for this film. Cronenberg has been making films for more than 40 years. A Canadian, he started with small budget films with such titles as Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, focusing on horror, psychology and bodies. Over the decades he has made a range of films including a version of The Fly, the bizarrely erotic Crash, and a kind of alternate universe, eXistenZ. In 2022, he has returned to some of these early themes.

For audiences unfamiliar with Cronenberg, it might be recommended they go back to some of his earlier films which will prepare them for this one should they wish to venture into it.

The film is set in an extraordinarily dingy future, old wharves, shipwrecks, dark interiors (and somebody noticed, not a computer in sight). The atmosphere is dark in so many ways. And, yet, it is interesting to notice the title, a kind of moral judgment it would seem on the characters and their behaviour.

It should be noted that this is not a film for the squeamish, for those who find the visuals of close-up surgery something that they cannot or do not want to watch. There are many scenes in this vein.

And the characters? The focus is on a reclusive performer, Saul Tenser (Mortensen, who has appeared in several Cronenberg films). He is in pain. To ease the pain and to help him swallow and digest, he sits in a skeletal-looking movable chair. And he is cared for by Caprice (Seydoux), his partner in his performance arts. When Saul gets out of his chair, he is dressed in a black cloak, a black hood, mirroring The Grim Reaper.

And the sequences, and there are many, where he performs our pain-inflicting, with a strange audience of the curious and the photographers, Caprice manipulating surgical knives on Saul’s body, opening him up, extractions… And, there are several similar sequences but, a climax, where a little boy who has been seen at the beginning of the film, then smothered by his mother, promoted by his father (who has a factory manufacturing purple chocolate which has deadly effect), is featured for the audience for an autopsy. Also in the background are two officials of the Registry for Organs and who participate in festivals of such pain performance (Stewart and McKellar).

The film is obviously a parable about human nature, pain, exploitation, mutilation, the picture of an alternate universe – and a challenge to reflect on how much of this future and its crimes are already present in our contemporary world.