Cosmopolis (15)
HH
Dir: David Cronenberg
With: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche
Running time: 108 minutes
HERE'S a theory. In America, possibly next to Area 51, there is a Fort Knox-style storage facility in which Hollywood keeps all those books that should be considered impossible to film, or at least approached with extreme caution.
David Cronenberg is among those filmmakers working today who make regular visits to the vault. To various cries of: "Whoa there, Nelly," and: "Careful with that one, chief", Cronenberg has taken out JG Ballard's Crash – car wrecks as sexual stimulus – and Twins (renamed Dead Ringers) by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. Filming of these books leads invariably to either eruptions of outrage (Crash) or mass wincing (the female population over the gynaecologically themed horror that was Dead Ringers).
Cronenberg's latest acquisition is Cosmopolis, the end of financial days novel by Don DeLillo. Watching this stylish drama won't lead to outrage or wincing, particularly if you are a fan of the book or of Cronenberg, but there is a high chance of being seized by frustration and boredom as staginess settles over everything like a fog.
At front and centre of proceedings is the character of Eric Packer, a 28-year-old New Yorker, played by Robert Pattinson. Packer is a cross between Howard Hughes, Jay Gatsby and every young zillionaire financial whizz kid who ever made the papers. Clad in a very nice pair of shades and sitting in his stretch limo, Packer is the unlined, unacceptable face of modern finance.
The day in which we drop into his life, Packer decides that what he needs above all else in the world is a haircut. The US president is in town, and there's a funeral procession for a famous music star. The result: bumper to bumper traffic all through central Manhattan. But Packer doesn't need to worry. He takes his work wherever he goes in his white limo, complete with door to door information screens. A minion is driving, another minion is watching his back – vague threats have been received – and yet more minions will drop into his moving office as the day progresses.
First up is Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder), a systems analyst; then there's Juliette Binoche's older woman, Samantha Morton's ideas guru, and various other bods stepping in and out of the car, including a doctor and a financial strategist. As busy modes of transport go, this limo resembles the last Glasgow train from Edinburgh on a Saturday night. Almost everyone who enters the vehicle is subjected to Packer's sneers and gnomic remarks. If there is a market for ambiguity, Packer has cornered it. The key lines are taken from the book, and that's where the problems begin. What appears on the page as smart and enigmatic too often sounds flat and forced when said aloud. Lines don't so much float from the actors' lips as fall with a clunk.
For a time, it's intriguing to ride along, particularly during the verbal transactions between Packer and his new bride (Sarah Gadon, one of the few to pitch the lines just right). Cronenberg revels in keeping the mood suffocating, downbeat and ever so slightly menacing. For that, for sticking to his artistic guns, you have to admire the director of Scanners, Videodrome and, most recently, the Freud-Jung drama A Dangerous Method. Not, though, when he holds out too long, and not, in particular, after you've sat through a latter section so suffocatingly theatrical they should have had an interval for a gin and tonic rush to the bar.
A lot is asked of Pattinson, and he delivers up to a point. He's still a tad too apple-cheeked to make a truly convincing Packer. What his legions of Twilight fans will make of this new Pattinson will be fascinating to see. Or maybe he's not that new after all. Edward the traditional vampire versus Eric the financial vampire, same old bloodsucking, different game.
Cronenberg's New York, or what we can see of it outside the limo windows, is grubby and chaotic. It is a world where the brash clashes with the refined, where the new money Packers tangle with the old money of his bride, and where demos against greedy bankers stop the traffic, including Packer's limo.
One would think, given all that is happening in the west at the moment, that it couldn't be a better time for a film to come along that aims to skewer the excesses of capitalism. Therein lies the rub with Cronenberg's picture.
When DeLillo's Cosmopolis was published in 2003 it was a shocking glimpse at a future few suspected was lying in wait. Come 2012, the story is out there already. The global recession is now five years old. As a result, Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, though it has its chilling qualities, is not half as disturbing as what is going on in reality. Instead of pushing us into an unnerving new world, what Cronenberg does best, his Cosmopolis carries all the thrill of yesterday's news.
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