“Surgery is the new sex.” Caprice (Lea Seydoux)
Although I have a less sensual feeling about surgery than Caprice, David Cronenberg in his new Crimes of the Future makes the case for the tyranny of cosmetic and internal organ rehab for the human body. “Body horror” is the name of his game. He is so good at observing the close relationship between technology and the body that this horror cum philosophy disturber gets attention and doesn’t let go. And sometimes it makes sense.
At a science fiction future time, humans are growing synthetic organs and messing around with plastic surgery so that the parallel with the contemporary urge for surgery is unavoidable. The blight of plastic in our environment is brought home when a boy chomps on a plastic basket.
The main performance artist, Saul (Vigo Mortenson), has become a rock star of synthetic organs reminiscent of Kafka’s troubled Hunger Artist. Garbed sometimes like Death in Bergman's Seventh Seal, Saul publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in performances catering to a jaded humanity.
As his assistant and surgeon, Caprice operates on and models his new organs resulting from his “designer cancer.” As for the two actually having old-fashioned sex, I’m not so sure but am wary of the future population decline, as the Chinese have experienced.
Another female who works for the director’s symbolic machine is Timlin (Kristen Stewart), under the employ of The National Organ Registry (ominous title with malevolent bureaucratic properties) and desirous of connecting with Saul’s celebrity. Like other citizens, she is seeking sensation as a byproduct of pain deficiency and dull affect. When she unzips his stomach zipper and licks his wounds, echoes of the old oral sex intrude.
Enough said of the organ motif, for more organic to Crimes of the Future is the human evolution to dangerous surgery and questionable cosmetics, a world almost devoid of humanity and full of narcissism. While it is a world devoid of pain, it’s the interior emotions that seem, like the synthetic organs, vulnerable. The “inner beauty pageant” is the one salutary oddity contrasted with the ugly organ expos.
Crimes of the Future is easier to stomach, so to speak, than would be suspected. There’s almost a Zen acceptance of the evolution that stands somewhere between The Fly and Crash, highly symbolic and slightly hopeful about humanity’s survival, but accepting that crimes are always in our future.
Crimes of the Future
Director: David Cronenberg (Crash)
Screenplay: Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic), Kristen Stewart (Spencer)
Run Time: 1h 47m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
