The Essentials: David Cronenberg’s Best Films

“eXistenZ” (1999)
It’s easy to dismiss this effort from Cronenberg as too lightweight to make much of an impression on us now, and too easily lost in the rush of apparently similar fin de siecle technophobic genre pictures to really score points back when it was released. But “eXistenZ”  though undeniably flawed, is a delirious, prophetic romp, that has aged remarkably well, all things considered, accurately and mischievously foreshadowing the age of atomization wrought by the internet. It’s also run through with a disarmingly self-reflexive streak: one of the characters even bellows “Death to realism!” before flambéing a videogame console. Willem Dafoe is asked “Don’t you ever go to the fucking movies?” before having his throat blasted out with a cattle-gun. And Jennifer Jason Leigh gives a welcome lead performance as game designer Allegra Geller who must enter her own game, eXistenZ, to prevent its “meta-flesh” from becoming contaminated. On hand is a hammy and simpering against-type Jude Law (itself a courageous choice of role for so pretty an actor) playing a greenhorn marketing trainee with a phobia of having his body “penetrated surgically,” but it’s hardly a character study, or even anything we’re supposed to take particularly seriously (perhaps its closest recent analogy is in fact “Maps to the Stars” in that regard). This is a film as much built around fastidious minutely detailed production design as recognisable human behavior or particularly cutting social insights. But even that is not really a criticism when the design is this fascinating, from the bone-grafted guns to the in-jokey references, that cannibalize Cronenberg’s own back catalogue (particularly “Videodrome,” though for a new and even more vacuous generation addicted to their entertainments) and even include a nod to Philip K Dick in the fast food joint from which the characters eat being named “Perky Pat’s” in honor of one of Dick’s short stories. Not his most resonant or provocative work, still “eXistenZ” is surprisingly well worth a revisit. [B/B+]

“Spider” (2002)
Few enough of us summon “eXistenZ” top of mind when thinking about Cronenberg, but we’d wager even few think of “Spider,” the second of two peri-millennium pictures from the director that missed with both audiences and critics. But 13 years after release, a little like its immediate predecessor, “Spider” feels like it’s served its time in that forgotten gray area, and deserves a reevaluation — one it can stand up to on account of being, actually, really good. Starring a committed-as-ever Ralph Fiennes as a man recently released from a mental institution who glides through life without speaking, haunted by the past, it’s been described as a detective film where the investigator, perpetrator and victim are all inside the head of the same person, which feels like an accurate and compelling summation to us. Cronenberg, with frequent collaborators composer Howard Shore and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, creates an atmosphere rich with dread and psychological unease, and unusually for such a coolly cerebral director, it really feels like he gets his hands a little dirty here, muddying up the boundaries between reality and fantasy, past and present (Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne appear as Fiennes’ parents), in a manner reminiscent of “Naked Lunch” but without the sly smile. Instead, there’s a wide streak of melancholy in “Spider” again unusual from such a rigorously unsentimental filmmaker, which adds layers to what eventually becomes one of the director’s most disturbingly real-world chillers. While it doesn’t sit altogether comfortably in any of the categories Cronenberg spans, it deserves to be looked at as mire than the director idling between big films, his engine barely ticking over. As a transitional film between the body horror concerns of “eXistenZ,” and the dawning of the next highly accessible, Viggo Mortensen-led chapter in Cronenberg’s many-splendored career, it’s perhaps the underrated title of his that’s most ripe for rediscovery. [B+]

“A History Of Violence” (2005)
Considered, if not a “return to form” for Cronenberg, then the discovery of an entirely new form, “A History of Violence” is his first teaming with Viggo Mortenson, who plays Tom Stall, a small town family man with a hidden past. The film, notably shorn of all otherworldly, surreal or schlock-horror elements, nonetheless simmers with tension, erupting into violence in the second half, but haunted by its possibility all the way through. Family man Tom, married to Edie (Maria Bello) gains unwanted status as town hero when he successfully defends his diner from thieves, whom he kills with chilling ease. The repercussions of this event raise old ghosts from the grave of the past, (Ed Harris and an Oscar-nominated William Hurt are terrific in revelatory supporting roles as Tom’s nemesis and brother, respectively — the film really reestablished both actors). Josh Olson’s screenplay, based on the graphic novel by John Wagner really plays up the B-movie, gritty pulp aspect but this is Mortensen’s show: suggesting so much going on beneath a frozen surface, he makes even silences feel thunderous. Before this, Cronenberg was most famous for his science-fiction/horror flicks, but here he, like his protagonist, turns away from the excesses of his past, channeling his interests instead into a taut, yet resolutely real-world story. As a psychological, sometimes melodramatic investigation of the effect on violence on its victims, its perpetrators and those who, despite trying to run from it, find it their natural state, it is a fantastically controlled and compelling performance piece. And the  anticlimactic ending does divide us slightly, with half us feeling unfulfilled and the other half sighing “that’s the point, doofus”  even that is a minor quibble. ‘History’ ushered in a new phase for Cronenberg, but it arrived fully formed. [A-]

READ MORE: David Cronenberg Calls ‘The Dark Knight’ Movies “Boring,” Says Christopher Nolan’s Best Film Is ‘Memento

“Eastern Promises” (2007)
After tentatively stepping into mainstream territory with “A History of Violence,” Cronenberg consolidated that move with the again-almost-straightforward crime thriller “Eastern Promises,” but what’s perhaps surprising is how successful the film is on its own terms. While some of the director’s trademark concerns are in evidence (bodies, and their mutilation, still fascinate, be it through tattoos, the stubbing of a cigarette on a tongue, the dispassionate dissection of a corpse or the roiling, writhing, inordinately fleshy, naked fight in the steam room), here they are relegated to character background or incidental action; they don’t inform the main thrust of the plot. Instead we get an engrossing, well-researched, low-key mafia movie, only here the city is London and the Mafia is Russian. And in Naomi Watts‘ midwife, dogged in her mission to solve the mystery of a young girl who died in her care, we are given possibly the first Cronenberg protagonist since “The Dead Zone”‘s Christopher Walken who we are actively encouraged to like. But it’s Mortensen who steals the show (though Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel both give him a run for his money). His Nikolai is a mass of contradictions and moral conundrums, marshaled into a conflicted but frighteningly disciplined killer: it’s a character we’re happy we’re going to see more of, if the mooted sequel happens. Yes, there were those who lamented the evolution of the Cronenberg movie from the cerebral schlock of yesteryear to the brainy accessibility characterized by “Eastern Promises,” based on a terrific, crackling script by Steven Knight, but while it might be classical in form, there’s a steely, sinewy tensile strength to his films from this period that by rights deserves to be seen as as much a Cronenberg hallmark as viscera and VHS tapes. [A-]