cronenberg

Had a little Cronenberg marathon the past few days. Peeped The Dead Zone and Eastern Promises over the weekend, and just finished Crash. Outside of Rabid and the racing movie he did in his earliest days, I've seen his entire filmography. Dead Zone, a Stephen King adaptation, goes run-of-the-mill - as the majority are (though, the print-analysis scanning device that Martin Sheen uses as President was uniquely and prophetically Cronenberg). In context, a young Cronenberg probably needed the paycheck. Plus, he didn't pen the screenplay so it's not complete Cronenberg.

Eastern Promises continues a trend started with History of Violence where the auteur has let off somewhat on the meta-explorative narrative, becoming more commercially receptive. Not to say he's no longer substantial, but his early works of identity are behind him. As with most geniuses, their most revealing works come early - raw, real, personal. His works, really beginning in the 90's seem more voyeuristic. Perhaps a result of identity comfortability. Scanners and Videodrome still stand as my favorites.

Cronenberg is one of the most important contemporary artists. Among auteurs, he is the most perversely intellectual. He has the uncanny and unsettling ability to evoke that sexual insatiability threatening our humanity. That crack whore mentality in us perpetuated and embellished by the postmodern capitalist cultivation. He's an artist that's more intellectual than emotive. A mad romantic scientist that sees the next potential realm of the human psyche, and understands the existential effect of technology on the human form, as well as the evolution of the eyes. Go back to '83s Videodrome. Prophetic how he understood the correlations of visual media and perceptive reality. Or even something more contemporaneous, '98s eXistenZ, and the fragile state of hyper-reality.