When I saw "Spider" at the Landmark Lagoon in Minneapolis in 2002, I did meet Mr. Cronenberg after the QA. The event the was sponsored by IFPMSP.
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
"Maps to the Stars": Cronenberg's sense of horror, mental illness, and a cynical look at Hollywood values
“Maps to the Stars” is David Cronenberg’s most recent film,
and it is even darker than “Spider” a decade ago. In fact, it is quite explicit in spots, rated
“just” R but could well have been NC-17.
It makes Ameer’s work (discussed yesterday) seem a bit milder by
comparison.
And the film is quite slick, gathering momentum with constant
character confrontations, toward a violent and tragic end, predicated on
Cronenberg’s concern about mental illness.
The motion in this film is
self-evident, but perhaps a little more predictable than, say, Ameer’s, which
makes a good comparison in storytelling technique with comparable raw material.
It starts when Agatha Weiss (Mia Waskilowska), her arms
covered to hide scars from previous pyro activity and released from a mental
hospital, arrives in LA (from Jupiter, Florida), to be driven around by limo
driver Jerome (Robert Pattinson), himself aspiring to become an actor and
writer. She lands a job as an assistant
with wealthy has-been actress Havanah (Julianne Moore), who wants to play her
mother, now rumored to be a ghost, in a remake of “Stolen Waters”. In the meantime, she locates family, headed
by self-help guru Stafford (John Cusack), wife Christina (Olivia Williams), and
gifted but disturbed son (and her younger brother) Benjie, said to be 13, and
quite good a trash talk, played by Evan Bird.
The characters come together in confrontations, a little bit
as they might in an Altman movie, leading toward increasing spectacle and
violence, some of it pretty disturbing.
To be more specific would spoil things now. After what Benjie does (when under delusion)
in a privy on the set, it’s surprised that he gets out of “the hospital” so
quickly.
The film might seem a bit cynical. No, I don’t think this is how most of
Hollywood behaves. I am networking a bit
with people and, no, I’ve never seen anything like this.
The official site is here from Focus International and E-1.
When I saw "Spider" at the Landmark Lagoon in Minneapolis in 2002, I did meet Mr. Cronenberg after the QA. The event the was sponsored by IFPMSP.
Although the film was shot around Beverly Hills, it was produced by Canadian and European companies.
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