CRIMES OF THE FUTURE: Cronenberg Looks Outward, Inward, Behind, and Forward (Patreon)

A three-part essay.

1. SEMIOTICS SCHMIOTICS!

Movies don’t have to be anything.

I feel like I don’t say that enough. I talk so much about dramatic mechanisms, catharsis, arcs, and timing of plot information that it can come off like EVERY MOVIE NEEDS TO DO THIS blah blah blah. But no. Some of my favorite movies are odd ducks. Some are willfully obtuse. And some are complete trash fires. The point I’m often trying to make is just that those dramatic elements are more often of a guiding hand in movies than most people assume. It’s just that there tends to be a good deal of confusion between a film’s functionalism and its conventionality. But the two could not be more different. I know it’s my go to recent example for a lot of things, but Everything Everywhere All At Once is a deeply unconventional movie. But it’s using all these tried and true methods of set-ups and pay-offs to make its manifold madness work. Proof positive of how the most successful “crazy” stories always seem to have this deeply functional element behind their intent. And there’s no arena of filmmaking this is probably more true for the world of the “art film,” where aspirations of plots drift away and abstraction takes hold. But when you do that?

The function of your semiotics is often what determines your fate.

Granted, I feel like any time I talk about Semiotics it feels like I’m throwing on a lab coat and making things needlessly verbose, but it’s just a fancy way of saying, “the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.” Basically it’s our ability to interpret symbols. I know people like to say “anything can be anything!” and yeah, I get it, but let’s first agree that we also use symbols everyday to the point that lives depend on them. We know the walk sign. We know what a stop sign is even in a different language. We know white flags and surrender and even popular motifs, like doves being the symbol of peace. Even has a lot to do with the origin of language itself. We use agree-upon symbols constantly. And movies use them just as constantly. It’s not just with art fare, but the most popular ones, too. It’s a closed door in The Godfather. A blown out match in Lawrence of Arabia. Everything about the final sequence of Citizen Kane. These are all iconic ways we combined the story with an image, enhancing meaning twice over. And it’s just that art fare is often more entirely reliant on these kind of symbolic connections.

Make no mistake, the most successful art films are products of deep, coherent semiotics. I know David Lynch loves to play coy in interviews, including my favorite all time interaction here…

But that’s just separation of church and state thing (which we’ll get back to in a second). His movies are using absolutely clear symbology. Eraserhead is about the horrific fears of fatherhood. Blue Velvet establishes the horrors of transferring between the light / dark worlds of existence.  Lost Highway plays into identity overlaps, blondes and brunettes, and using these things to dissociate from your guilt. And Mulholland Drive is perhaps the most crystalized form of all of these ideas. Within the “WTF” these are the deeply coherent narratives that we grasp onto. And deep semiotics shows up in places you might not expect. Famed “manly action” director Kathryn Bigelow studied semiotics at both Whitney and Columbia and it’s even the subject of her first short film. Seriously, The Set-Up is “a 20-minute deconstruction of violence in film. The film portrays ‘two men fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over.’” It’s practically the guide to her entire career. Meanwhile, Wet Hot American Summer might seem like pure madness, but Michael Showalter taught semiotics and screenwriting at NYU. And right now Jordan Peele might be my favorite semiotician at the height of their game. Point is that…

1) Artists often care about this stuff more than popular moviegoers think.

And 2) It’s more effective than they think, too.

When it comes to critical interpretation, the key is keeping things as close to the text as possible. Back in LOST days, I remember a lot of popular columns and posts that would go, “this related to A. and that relates to B and that relates to C” and before you know it the author was making connections X and Y deep and it’s like “wait, all it really presented us was Reference A.” You have to constantly ask, how do they all fit together? In Mulholland Drive, you have to ask “okay, what does the cowboy’s warning and the doing good / bad have to do with anything?” Turns out a whole  lot of you put it together with her “real life” actions in the film’s coda. It’s all about engagement. David Lynch lack of elaboration isn’t about his own thoughts being vague. The point of playing coy is to create a space where everyone can play. It’s no fun if a director is like “it meant this.” (to wit, Aronofsky started doing that on the Mother press tour and it instantly killed engagement). Weirdly, it was Christopher Nolan who said my favorite thing on the subject of semiotic analysis of his work, “their interpretation is as good as mine.” I love that wording because it gets at two competing notions. The first is that, yes, his interpretation counts. He’s the one who puts it into the world and spearheads the entire conversation. But secondly, ours counts just as much. And it’s about the place where the art and audience all come together in the middle. That’s the whole fun of it.

And it’s where David Cronenberg holds court.

2. “IT CAME FROM CANADA!”*

*shout out to an old friend / TA who named their Cronenberg class that.

So I just realized I haven’t written much about Cronenberg, which is a damn shame. Because he’s one of our cinematic treasures. A visceral, singular, thoughtful, uncompromising voice who is also deeply Canadian somehow. But honestly, I feel odd lauding him because some of my best friends are the biggest Cronenberg fans in the world (one literally celebrates his birthday with a party every year and makes a Cronencake). But I do love the man. From his initial horror run with The Brood and the head-explosive propulsion of Scanners. To horror masterpieces like The Fly and Videodrome. He then took a slight turn in classing up the joint with Dead Ringers, which is one of those perfect, unnerving mixtures of the high and the low. But it triggered a whole 15 year stretch of him making some glorious, messy, and messed-up high-brow fare Naked Lunch and Crash (not that one), where even ones that don’t “work” are intensely thought provoking. Then his sudden turn into the action movie space with A History of Violence and Eastern Promises brought him back to a certain kind of spotlight.

I love all these films, but the last decade has featured an obvious slowing down. I mean, I really like A Dangerous Method, but his last feature, 2014’s A Map To The Stars is the only film of his that really hits me wrong. Because it’s another in the long line of Hollywood films that’s made by an outsider who is allergic to Hollywood. The film shows he’s just as susceptible to the same tired, surface level observations that plague how people see the city. It’s what Jonathan Gold said: “if you live in Los Angeles, you’re used to having your city explained to you by people who come in for a couple of weeks, stay at a hotel in Beverly Hills, and take in what they can get to within 10 minutes of their rented car. The thing that people find hard to understand, I think, is sort of the magnitude of what’s here, the huge number of multiple cultures that live in the city who come together in this beautiful and haphazard fashion. And the fault lines between them are sometimes where you find the most beautiful things.” Those fault lines are something Cronenberg would have been more interested in, but alas. My only great worry was that this would be his last film. Instead, we are finally treated to his first film in 8 years. Which just so happens to be his first horror film in 20 years.

And boy is it a doozy.

But perhaps not in the way that you think. Sure, there are moments that go hard. But so much of the movie is quieter, weirder, and purposely funnier than you’d think. But Cronenberg’s always been kind of funny. He specializes in moments of nervous laughter, which I love because it often means the movie is hitting on something in the audience. It’s their involuntary response to provocation. They’re looking for alleviation of tension but unlike pure horror where you scream, or pure comedy where you laugh, the audience is instead feeling multiple things at once. I fucking love hearing nervous laughter in movies. And Cronenberg mines it with the assuredness of someone who has been doing this a long time. He’s gonna hit points he wants and not care if you don’t know what the movie “is” in a larger sense. But he’s still going to give you a feast of what to work with in all these little corners of semiotic interpretation. In truth, this is at once a more straightforward film than you’d think, while also being completely expansive in theme. It’s a meta way of Cronenberg exploring the future and the past, often reflecting, and perhaps the most inwardly thoughtful and personal look at his entire career. Even the name “Crimes of the Future” is taken from a 1970 film he made with the same name. You can recognize bits of everything he’s ever made in this film. But where so many other writers would be better at guiding you through those references…

I want to talk about what it (probably?) means.

3. IT’S CRIME TIME!

With something densely-packed, but still straight-forward like this, it’s easiest to go subject by subject instead of chronologically by scene.

The Central, Crooked Spine - Everything starts with the central metaphor and works outward. At the heart of this film is a clear one that’s perhaps even simpler than some have let on. In the future, society is crumbling and people have literally become outward numb to pain, while often simultaneously feeling sick deep down, especially while eating / sleeping. They are even producing new unnecessary organs that need to be removed. I know this film was a long gestating idea, but if anything speaks to the modern feeling of ennui, depression, and apocalypse of the world in 2022 it’s that one (and it was shot in a Covid-filled world, post vaccine in Greece of August 2021). It’s a world literally rusting, rotting full of death and trash. Even government offices are low rent and dilapidated, with tattered files and creaky floorboards. While some sectors seem barely hanging on, the question is posed, how do you live in this kind of world? Well…

Make It Art! - It was at this line “Everyone wants to be a performance artist these days.” that I cackled because I realized what movie I was in. For all the unnerving gore, this is partly a satire, too. You must see it in the humor with which different performers criticize and laud others work. But the performance art is also getting at something. For one, it shows the way a “numb” society will dive into violence and gore to try and feel again. But it’s a very literal method of emotional survival, reflecting the soul and how we process things falling apart around us. This is how we can lend meaning to our experience and reflect the space of doom! For it is the documentation of how we are literally “evolving” into something obscene. So even though the film is having playful fun with the mechanics of the art world (those ears can’t even hear!), it’s also directly upholding “the point” of art on the whole.

Viggo, Artist P.I.! - At the center of this notion is the way that Viggo’s character is also in the middle of a “real” investigation for the police. He’s after the truth of what’s happening in this art world: how are we evolving and what’s happening with these organs. He’s the artist detective! (and like most artist detectives, he’s kind of lazy about his job, haha). But adding to the layers of this is the constant discussion of what is legal / illegal, along with the dangerous way that so many bureaucrats love to operate within those blurred lines. These acts of art, protest, and evolution are all the titular “crimes of the future.” But the real meaning of the film lies with how people are all trying to “save us” with these crimes in various respects. The question is how? And why?

Like the Director - I’m trying to remember, but this feels like the first time in a while that we’ve gotten a main character that feels so close to Cronenberg himself? Viggo’s admitted to the comparison and if you listen to how he talks you’ll notice certain soft-spoken similarities. But so much of the point lies in the framing of the character. He plays Saul Tenser (the last name being a playful allusion to an uptight, high strung object) and it’s like, duh, OF COURSE Cronenberg is writing a story about an artist who is literally producing these “weird organs” that no one really knows what to do with, but seemingly celebrate or chastise in equal measure. It’s, like, a perfect metaphor for his films. There’s even a cheeky look at his process with how people ask him if he’s working on something new and he retorts “it’s not really up to him.” These weird organs (read: films) will come when they come.

A Partner - For Cronenberg, filmmaking always seemed like a family affair. His wife Carolyn was an editor and an instrumental part of his process. His sister Denise was his long-time costume designer. His other sister Carol was his longtime art director. His son Brandon and daughter Caitlin are filmmakers who came up under him. And this is not to discount long time non-family collaborators like Ronald Sanders and Mark Irwin. The point is, the way that Cronenberg engages in collaboration is critical. And here in the film, the interplay here between Viggo and his partner played by Léa Seydoux (Caprice, as in defined by sudden shifts) is a deep characterization of those values. Note the way they very purposefully keep their partnership undefinable and un-possessive. At first, she’s even the one at the controls and we see the idea that his art is literally just offering himself up, letting them see his insides, and watching other people taking the organ out, while feeling the release. But then we see the way those roles frequently switch. We also see the way they both spend their time in the womb-like alien beds, both being vulnerable and letting themselves be cut. Everything about their lives comes with some much listening and understanding, especially the turn of the forehead ridge scene where he comes to respect her desire and the sudden choice. There’s so much understanding and love here. And while we know Cronenberg’s creative partnership with Viggo has resulted in so many great things, Seydoux is so great, varied, and nuanced here. It’s one of my favorite performances she’s given. But Cronenberg has always been sneaky great with actors because he’s always needed to attune them to delivering a performance within one of the weirdest cinematic tones that a career has ever had. As an actor, you have to project the exact right thing to find those lines of odd tension. And there are two other performances that snuck up on me and I want to talk about them before we get back to the text. The first…

Scott Speedman!??! - So I didn’t realize that Speedman’s actually been working big ass tv shows that I haven’t watched and thus didn’t even know he was on? (Animal Kingdom, You, and a recent run of Grey’s Anatomy). But I personally haven’t seen him in anything since 2008’s The Strangers. But Cronenberg, perhaps being a very good Canadian and looking out for a northern pal, went with Speedman in this role and I was kind of delighted? It’s not just that Speedman still looked great, it’s that particular way of underplaying his voice and overt mannerisms that hit really well for me. And make no mistake, this is NOT an easy role. You have to make lines like, “Of course, he’s my son,” land in a way that is both funny and sincere, so this is quite an accomplishment. I now want to see Speedman pop up in more things, especially now that he can transition into odd duck character work like this. And speaking of which…

K-Stew - Man, I love Kristen Stewart. I love that she navigated the hell storm of pop culture to find herself. I love her DGAF attitude. I love that she used Twilight fame to get great roles. I love that she stretches herself. And I love that she backs good projects. But as a performer, she undoubtedly has a certain set of mannerisms that frequently get employed. And I agree, sometimes they get in the way of a certain role, not because they are present, but because they go against the dramatic needs of a given scene (which is partly why she’s gotten very good at downplaying them for many roles). But I actually LOVE that they get hyper-weaponized here in Crimes of the Future. Every fiddle and lip-bite is maximized for pressure, the way we get to see her press against Viggo with curiosity and whisper all timer lines like “surgery is the new sex.” Someone online called her a “horny little gremlin” and while I can’t find the tweet (the timeline moved and it was lost to the world) I so love it. And it even turns out she has an important role in the cover-up to come, but that gets at the interesting way that this film plays with…

Information and Timing - You’ll often hear me give the advice of “don’t hide your motivations, put it all up front!” But most of the time I’m talking about popcorn fare where rooting interests are at the heart of things. But art films can often go the opposite way. They often push the viewer away from subjects and conventional emotional rooting. They’re more cerebral exercises. Though it’s less that they’re puzzles, more like they are emotional mysteries. Which is why so many of the best ones take on a kind of noir-ish tone of investigation (like Lynch’s work). And when you look at the plot itself, this Cronenberg film is technically one, too. You even feel it in bits of pastiche, where they take literal crouched meetings near the remnants of docks. And like most noir, the mystery of the opening scene is central. It’s not a tease. We get the information plainly. It’s a horrific event. Leave it to Cronenberg to start with the bold murder of a child at the hands of his mother. But we want the “What the fuck?” of that moment to hit us because that’s actually the driving question. It’s about how “the why” unfolds.

Under Covers - I smirked to myself at the reveal that Viggo is “under covers” informant. Not just because it’s a callback to a certain other film, but because it turned it more centrally into the noir trappings. But I love the way those trappings come out in Cronenberg’s version of the future. The cop is not part of some oppressive system with a giant, cold headquarters that we see in other Sci-Fi. He’s a guy in a gray T-shirt. These roles are so abstract, dare I even say Brechtian! You feel the “up is down” of all it, which is why the satire can play with this odd rhythm. More interested in fostering the feeling of “the surreal” and the tight boiler-plate conventions that play for tension. Again, this film is way more of a comedy than you’d think. What with the complaining about a guy with non-functioning ears. A guy eating bars that can kill other people. An “inner beauty” pageant. Even the “tension of sexuality” that is often rife in noir, instead plays out with that same “up is down” level of irony.

Surgery is the New Sex! - Man, Cronenberg is really just getting to just go for it on the design front, huh? There’s the insectoid / human sexuality of the equipment and the surgery control is basically a vaginal Simon machine. Not to mention the bed is an alien-like womb. But all this imagery adds to the central, somewhat funny idea of living in the world like this. Lines like “Surgery is the new sex!” just amp up that guffawing expectation. But what I love about Cronenberg is that it’s not *just* ironic, but a pathway to the sincere. For instance, while I often don’t like a lot of portrayals that mix sex and violence (often because of how much of it casually taps into not-so-subtle baked-in misogyny), Cronenberg’s always been interested in the more naked and humane aspects of the gory / sexual imagery. Here, to “cut” is really to expose one’s vulnerability. To show the deeper self and the “inner beauty” as they say so many times. There’s something weirdly tender about even the grossest moments (I mean this is a film where he gets a zipper on his stomach so for Seydoux to go down on his intestines, basically). And at every step they’re seeking out these experiences not to achieve power through malice, but to expose their vulnerability, vulnerability, vulnerability. Which means Cronenberg is somehow one of the most surreal and gory filmmakers we have and yet one of the most sensitive and least indulgent horror filmmakers we have, too. Which is likely why the film’s most brazen scene ties into those very ideas…

Agent Non-Provocateur - Soooo this is a film where there is an autopsy on a young boy. And much of the central struggle between Viggo and Seydoux is the argument about whether or not to do it. And you can imagine many of the same conversations being had about why they choose to film it the way that they do, too. Because there he is a naked boy on a slab and oof, the scene is tough. But this isn’t being done because Cronenberg is some Agent Provocateur who is looking to be puckish or shock us for shock’s sake. It’s about that vulnerability and empathy for someone who is just that, a young boy. And the sensitivity here is actually what produces that worry, that tension, and the need to desperately find purpose in the autopsy itself. Everyone understands the “crimes” here quite clearly, but they also understand the stakes. Because as Speedman is trying to convince Viggo, the autopsy can prove that people are evolving in order to eat synthetic material and thus be able to eat the wastes of the world. But will it pan out?

Then comes  the set of reveals, which I fully admit are a little bit muddled and become dependent on retro-active explanation? Meaning I would love things to snap into place a bit more dramatically. For instance, I had to play catch up a bit with the fact tattoos explicitly meant the organs were inserted and that this was all some falsified stunt. And while K-Stew gets an A and B scene, I would have loved a “C” scene where there’s a dramatic confrontation about her decision to switch the boy’s organs to the unnatural ones. But I also understand why Cronenberg doesn’t think he needs it? And maybe he’s right to just get to just stick with the mournful emotions of Speedman’s character. There’s a heartbreaking quality in his voice as he mutters to himself about how he “thought he’d be beautiful” (referring to his son’s horrid looking organs), all before getting his head drilled in by the bad folks. But it is finally then that the intention of the movie’s plot becomes clear: the bad guys behind this cannot let society know it can evolve. Which brings us to the people behind the organ switch…

The Baaaaaad Guys - Why, we’re talking about the old guard of crumbling, but in-power institutions of course! We have an eager young bureaucrat in K-Stew. The cop interested in squelching the “evolutionist” terror cell (ACAB). And the two representatives of the surgery / pain machines AKA the healthcare industry. These are the big institutions that Cronenberg is aiming at with full and rightful malice. The ones hell bent on keeping their power in a crumbling society and painting the younger generation as rancid and “wrong.” To be clear, we understand how this works in real life all the time. It’s like financial magazines blaming millennials for not buying houses because they’re eating too much avocado toast, when really it’s the older generations literally gouging the market and making the kids poor. The younger generation cannot be allowed evolve beyond the need for the old institutions. They cannot have the world see that the young boy has perfectly natural organs that just so happen to be able to eat plastic now. No, the youngs have to stay put and kill themselves in the process. But I should say, while I adore the central metaphors here and the institutions Cronenberg is aiming at, there’s a couple of tricky things to consider about their portrayal.

The first is that there is an irrevocable American response to the casting of the sole Black actor in your film as a cop. I mean, I’d never seen Portuguese actor Welket Bungué before and he’s fantastic. And I’m sure the conversations might be different in the rest of the world, but that one is always gonna hit America weird, you know, given the EVERYTHING about the police state. What’s also tricky is the the fact the two health care women are coded as queer and even have a scene openly showcasing that. Now, good granola this is NOT one of those movies where the director is secretly grinding some axes on either political front. For one, that’s not Cronenberg’s bag. And for two, I think they’re playfully queer and Seydoux’s character stands as an obvious counterpoint to any malice. If anything, that scene more seems to represent their fetishistic love of the archaic technology that’s killing us. But I’d still argue that both choices are more indicative of the film trying to skew toward a post-racial / post-sexuality society and that has it’s own problems, too. After all, there are so many people living with oppressive realities and nothing about their lives is “post” whatsoever, and most post depictions seem to just complicate that reality. But honestly, there’s a lot of people who are much better at writing about this sort of thing. It’s just important to open up the thoughts on this stuff and acknowledge that a nearly 80 year old Canadian may have obvious blind spots. Meanwhile, there’s no denying that what he’s hitting in the central thematic thrust is undoubtedly sharper. And he’s letting us know where he’s going from the very onset…

The Opening Image - I love the opening image of this film so damn much. You see that big, overturned, rusted cruise ship and you immediately know you’re in a future where the “vacation’s over.” The boy immediately gets warned to not eat anything he finds in there, but knowing where it all goes? You can put the two things together with hindsight. He’s “the boy who could eat the boat,” meaning he is the one who could save us all from ourselves (there’s a reason he eats a WASTE basket after). It just makes the opening murder all the more tragic, the mother’s fear of this evolved “monster” doesn’t understand the degree to which this child’s lifestyle can save everything. But, of course, the old generation constantly lives in fear of the new. And you can draw the environmental parallel of this so clearly…

A Purple New Deal - Did anyone else kinda want to try those purple bars? No? Just me? Anyway, there is such a beautiful metaphor of having human beings evolve to eat the very trash that killed the planet. What we’re basically talking about is all the things that are involved in a green new deal, AKA changing our way of life so that we can acclimate to a new world. It’s about our evolution and learning how to re-exist. Which old institutions cannot tolerate of course! No, they have little alien bone chairs to sell, dammit! So you need to sit right where you are, in pain, and eat your little sad microwave dinners in proper misery, thank you! And as I think about all this, I notice there is such a strong emotional connection in the film to these specific images…

Down With The Sickness - Look, Cronenberg is famously private, but there have long been conversations about how both Cronenberg and his wife, or maybe just one of them, have been sick during the last however many years. The specifics are not our business. We just know that she passed away a few years ago and he’s clearly been dealing with the emotional heart of those issues of illness and death. And when you watch this movie it’s so hard NOT to feel the weight of sickness and over everything. It’s in every moment of Viggo’s performance. The voice. The difficulty of eating. The pain and immobility and all the feeling like your body is being shifted in so many violent directions. Like so much about this movie, the sickness is another mode of vulnerability. Something rendering us more baby-like and fetal. And it is something in desperate need of relief. Which brings us to…

The Ending Image / Moment of Transcendence - No, I didn’t realize we were in the end scene either. But when it hits, like so many of the moments in this film, I cackled. Because you see Seydoux filming this beautiful moment. You see Viggo’s tears flow as he finally feels this deep, transcendent peace inside. The full realization that no, you don’t need to cling to the old institutions… you can evolve into the new. Forget the mere relief of the pain, it will literally save your life. But admittedly, when you get into the specificity of these ideas and images, there are a few loaded interpretations one can make that I want to shut down.

The first is the idea that the film is somehow rejecting modern science / medicine and invoking some kind of “naturalism” as being the cure to what ails, ya! That it’s somehow piggybacking all that wellness crud that I tend to live in deep fear of - and next thing you know, Cronenberg will be telling you to eat dandelions to cure cancer and get sunlight in your butthole. First off, if you know Cronenberg, that’s poppycock. Second off, you’re already talking about an inverted metaphor. I mean it’s literally about developing the ability to eat synthetic food, not echoing it’s story back toward naturalism. Much of the old “organic world” of consumption is actually the thing that’s archaic. The obvious environmental idea is that we’ll save “ourselves” if we can learn to start actually consuming our trash, instead of producing it. And when it comes to making a direct parallel to food, there’s so much hope in lab-grown meat / plant-based meats that feel much closer to what Cronenberg is aiming for in the metaphor.

But like so much in the film, there’s also this playful, funny irony to the ending. It’s kind of being like, “hey, just happily eat your garbage!” But a similarly bad reading would be insisting this is some cynical view about how we’re all just consuming trash nowadays and they don’t make “organs” read art like they used to. But that doesn’t hit the mark either. Especially given how much Cronenberg has grown used to his films being called things like garbage, or filth, even though they’re provocative movies that are often quite beautiful and loving - they’re just loving the “ugly” things that so many others are often repulsed by. To me, the ending image feels like an expression of that ultimate existential joy. The kind of relief that’s powered so deeply by a sense of letting go and making peace with the changes that come. New “organs” growing in our body? Death? Consumption of waste? People evolving? Our hope for the future? These things are happening.  And no matter what “they” are specifically…

We’ll find the most peace when we adapt with them.

* * *

“What WAS that!??!”

That was what the woman behind me exclaimed as the credits started rolling, before unloading with some specific questions about things she didn’t understand. Keep in mind, I don’t bring it up to admonish. Quite the opposite. I bring it up because she’s right. This is probably the correct reaction to watching Crimes of the Future. And I think it’s important to not only expect this kind of reaction from people, but embrace it through and through. It’s okay to have these WTF reactions. Like, hey, if we’re gonna make weird art films then most people should be like WTF. That’s the point, honestly. Because the audience of people who are ready to take out the semiotical knife and fork while watching? It’s pretty limited. But the key is to understand that all the good art films are just invitations. They’re invitations for everyone to ask questions, to guess, to ruminate on, and most of all to FEEL like a movie did something to them, however much we have trouble piecing it together at first.

Sometimes the understanding comes later.

Even for me. Half the points in the essay came in the writing of it, not the immediate watching. And a million other thoughts will come later when I can watch it again and take notes. Even just now, I was thinking about that last image and realized how much that “feeling of transcended release” must tie directly into Cronenberg finally being ready to release this film into the world. No more aborted organs. He seems at peace in a way. And he’s already working on his next project following this one. Maybe he’s finally just letting those weird organs grow. As a longtime fan, I cannot be more delighted. Just as I couldn’t be more empathetic toward that image of “him” with a tear in his eye. And so, to use a phrase that was once echoed in another film…

Long live the new(est) flesh.

<3HULK