A rat became the unit of currency

Notes towards an unwritten review of David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis

Robert Pattinson spends three quarters of the movie cruising around in a white limo whose interior looks like a spaceship designed by a company better suited to producing surgical instruments. The pace is hypnotic (in other words, slow) and Cronenberg makes absolutely no concessions to his audience’s expectations. Peter Suschitzky’s cinematography is slick, in a cold and sterile way. The narrative jumps from scene to scene (it helps to have read the book). The characters are enigmatic (in other words, weird) and the dialogue is abstruse, philosophical, requires near-constant concentration, and sounds like a collaboration between Beckett and Mamet trying to channel JG Ballard parodying a critique of late capitalism. Everything is excruciatingly cerebral; the characters don’t even shut up during the sex and violence. Juliette Binoche sizzles, Paul Giamatti steals the show, and Kevin Durand is possessed by the ghost of Christopher Walken. Nobody but Cronenberg could make this film: Crash meets Crimes of the Future meets American Psycho (after the serial killer bits have been edited out) with a climax that echoes Dead Ringers and Videodrome simultaneously. Nobody but Cronenberg would want to make this film. Who wants to see a movie that consists of sporadic violence (though not enough to give you a real frisson) and protracted monologues about sex, technology, and asymmetrical prostate glands? Certainly not the audience I saw it with. There were five of us when the film started. Twenty minutes to the end I was the only one left in the theatre. I can’t wait for the DVD release.