David Cronenberg’s films have always been a bit of an
acquired taste. If you can bear sitting through stories about emotionally and
(often) physically scarred people who continue to be tortured by and torture
themselves over their trauma, and you like it all presented in the harsh cold
of the distance the filmmaker puts between his audience and the film’s
subjects, then you might keep returning to his work. His films are rarely short
of intriguing and boundary-pushing. At least it was through his first two
decades or so. It’s getting harder and harder to shock people. Once you’ve done
exploding heads, nude bathhouse knife fights, and people whose sexual fetish
involves car crashes, where is there room for turning stomachs? His recent
spate of work resides in a heightened glossy reality. He had a mainstream
renaissance with A
History of Violence and Eastern
Promises. Those two are among the most accessible pieces in his body of
work, but they still require a suspension of conventional expectations.
