Cronenberg (pt. VII)

Spider

M. Butterfly

Well, we survived another arduous Oscar season and I am, rather surprisingly, mostly very thrilled with the outcome(s)! After such an unpredictable lead-up, I really wasn’t sure how Hollywood’s biggest (and longest) night would go. But when the show began with Amy Madigan winning Best Supporting Actress (which felt like a win for all iconic women in horror, particularly Demi Moore who also played a spectacular horror hag last year and didn’t win) I had a pretty good feeling about the rest of the show. Unsurprisingly, KPop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Film and Best Original Song, although the Sinners cast had one of the best musical performances of the night, and maybe in the history of the show. I’m extremely happy Jessie Buckley won for her stunning performance in Hamnet, though I’ll be pretending she won for something more uplifting, like her role in Chernobyl. Frankenstein won Best Costuming, Hair & Makeup, and Production Design, which was all incredibly correct, and while I would’ve been over the moon if Jacob Elordi had won for playing his cutie version of Frankenstein’s monster, it makes sense that the absent Sean Penn would win for his portrayal of a more practical, current monster. I’m very pleased that Sentimental Value won Best International Film, but I felt so much pride when Autumn Durald Arkapaw of Sinners won Best Cinematography, making her the first woman to ever win this award in the entire 98 years of this celebration. I was not surprised that One Battle After Another won Best Picture—with PTA also snagging Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay—and even though I loved this movie, I do think Sinners should’ve won for both. But oh, the joy I felt when Sinners won Best Original Score, Ryan Coogler won Best Original Screenplay, and Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor! I cannot describe how bizarre but appropriate it felt to not root for Timothée this year, and how especially excellent it was that his uninspiring film Marty Supreme won absolutely nothing. It was cute they threw F1 and Avatar 3 a bone by awarding them Best Sound and Best Visual Effects, respectively. Conan was a hilarious host, per usual, but some bits went on too long, per usual. And no one got slapped but there was a tie in one of the categories! But enough about this stuffy spectacle of surgeries and starvation, let’s talk about the other event that occurred on March 15th: David Cronenberg’s birthday! David Cronenberg, the sultan of sci-fi, the baron of body horror, the master of morbid humor and grotesque, gumption-filled cinema turned 83 on Sunday, and if it wasn’t clear by my six otherdoublefeaturesdedicatedtohim, he is one of my favorite directors of all time. How perfect it’s been, every year, to follow up one of the most egregiously prestigious award ceremonies with a celebration of daddy Crone’s oft-disgusting filmography. However, I fear this may be my last David Cronenberg double feature ever because I have now officially seen all of his movies! And while I could certainly spend several more evenings rewatching and rewriting about his films, this blog is already self-indulgent enough. I’ve watched a lot of surreal, absurdist, horrific, and bizarro films, and David Cronenberg’s flavor of freaky cinema is by far the most palatable and entertaining to this critic. His dedication to curating extravagantly weird and singularly strange films is appalling, exciting, and inspiring. Whether he’s adapting someone else’s story or telling his own, Cronenberg’s films remain in my memory long after the credits roll. His aesthetics are incomparable, his characters are undefinable, and his legacy is one of uniquely pleasurable displeasure. Even the Cronenbergs I don’t love, I still can find value in, and that was the case with both of tonight’s films.

Let’s begin with a Cronenberg film that I’d somehow never encountered in all my years of researching his work, this is his 2002 film Spider. Patrick McGrath, who wrote the novel this film is based on, adapted the script himself then allegedly sent the screenplay to Cronenberg out of the blue—attached with a note that said Ralph Fiennes was interested in playing the lead. Cronenberg also deferred his salary to make this film, so it was out of pure passion and intrigue that this it got made. Spider follows a schizophrenic man named Dennis Cleg, nicknamed “Spider”, who has just been released from a mental institution and now finds himself back in his home town, moving into a halfway house for others with severe mental illnesses. Ruling over the building is the cold and Nurse Ratched-esque Mrs. Wilkinson, who shows Dennis to his new quarters, complete with a tiny bedroom and a dirty bathtub. Dennis mutters under his breath constantly, never quite speaking or articulating anything, but always determinedly jotting things down in his journal. Whether of his own volition or some unconscious pull toward destiny, Dennis walks the derelict streets of a bleak-looking London and begins piecing together the fragmented memories of his childhood, little by little connecting the dots of a mystery that has seemingly haunted him his whole life. We witness Dennis walking through and hovering around his remembrances of the past—appearing as a ghost among memories of other ghosts. His father (Gabriel Byrne) is an unrelenting alcoholic, never fully satisfied by the fleeting pleasures of his vices: women and booze. His dutiful mother (Miranda Richardson) is much warmer and kinder, despite her husband’s flagrant cheating and disregard for their family unit. Most nights, Dennis’ father is at the pub down the street, and Dennis is often tasked with retrieving him for dinner. One night, he bears witness to his father’s unfaithful tendencies, and we are introduced to his boisterous and crass mistress: a sex worker named Yvonne (also played by Miranda Richardson.) As the film weaves in and out of the past and the present, the picture of Dennis’ trauma and pain and resentment becomes clearer and clearer, and steadily we understand how Dennis became the quietly disturbed individual that he is today. But Dennis is determined to solve the puzzle of his paralyzing trauma, and the answers are delivered with plenty of twists, turns and fucked up, Freudian fallacies. I’ll be honest: I didn’t like this movie very much—not because of the exhaustingly depressing journey to the conclusion, but because of the conclusion itself. A good amount of Cronenberg’s films are open-ended and presented without full, coherent explanations, but for the most part I am left feeling satisfied. I don’t think I can say the same for Spider, which ended with more of a whimper than a bang. That being said, the performances are breathtaking in this film. My love for Ralph Fiennes has grown substantially over the years, and I was blown away by his ability to remain so compelling here, despite never speaking a full sentence and mostly just smoking tiny cigarettes. Miranda Richardson was particularly spellbinding though, as she occupied two incredibly disparate and diametrically-opposed characters. (And the real twist to this critic, is the fact that she did the voice of Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run!)

Spider was a bit of a boyish bummer of a Cinderella story, to say the least, but tonight’s next film was a bummer of epic, operatic proportions. I was only familiar with Cronenberg’s 1993 adaptation of M. Butterfly because I’d heard tale of how legendary of a box office bomb it was, and how this grounded, earnestly romantic, historical film perplexed fans of his other, more scintillating and squeamish proclivities. M. Butterfly, based on Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang’s work of the same name, details the fascinating and incredibly complex true story of the love affair between Rene Gallimard, an attaché at the French embassy in China, and Song Liling, a Peking opera singer. The year is 1964, the setting is Beijing, and our French protagonist, Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) is struggling to settle into his foreign digs. Rene’s job seems to enforce some cultural exchanges, as he weakly inquires to an embassy wife, “What are they planning to inflict on us tonight?” The answer is excerpts of famous operas, sung by local singers, one of whom, Song Liling (John Lone), absolutely enraptures Rene during a performance of Madama Butterfly. Madama (or Madame) Butterfly recounts the story of a Japanese woman who falls in love with a Swedish soldier, “But it’s a mistake” the embassy wife explains. After the show, Rene searches for Song, and eventually approaches her with nothing but compliments: “I’ve never seen a performance as convincing as yours, you made me see the beauty of her death. She loves him so much, its very beautiful.” Song corrects Rene, and says that this is only the opinion of Westerners, “If a blonde, white cheerleader killed herself in a story, you wouldn’t be as moved. It’s the music that's moving.” Apparently turned on from being schooled so fiercely, and still transfixed by Song’s angelic voice, Rene shirks his other responsibilities and time with his own wife to go see her sing again. Rene holds all of the misguided and racist ideas about China and Chinese people that one would expect for this time, but his French-by-way-of-Britain pretentiousness is broken down by Song’s enchanting elegance and hypnotic beauty. Rene keeps finding his way back to Song, and eventually, the two dive head first into a full-blown affair. What Rene doesn’t know, or perhaps chooses to ignore, is the fact that Song is a Dan performer—meaning, he is a man who plays female roles, which is a tradition of Chinese opera. And if that weren’t enough of a secret for Song to keep, she is also a spy, steadily gathering intelligence and feeding it to her handler, Comrade Chin. Chin is confused why Song continues to dress in drag and behave as a woman, even when Rene isn’t present. And while Song claims it is due to a severe dedication to maintaining her secret mission, it’s clear that this gender expression provides her with great joy. M. Butterfly is a fascinating, tragic, historical love story with shocking elements, but not the normal Cronenberg flavor of “shock.” There are no bugs, no ooze, no slime, no depraved sex acts, no telekinetic violence, no flesh-eating viruses or brain worms and only minimal psycho-sexual mind games—there is only the promise of a fairytale and the heartbreak of reality. This makes it one of the most distinct and outcast Cronenberg movies I’ve ever seen, and I am so intrigued by the fact that, after Peter Weir declined to direct this film, David Cronenberg, who was a massive fan of the play, proudly volunteered. Over 60 men were auditioned for the role of Song, over 5,000 costumes were created, and it was Cronenberg’s most expensive film until he made A History of Violence a little over a decade later. I could sense the effort and the considerate handling of its subject matter that went into this production, I’m just not sure if it all worked as a complete package. The performances were once again impressive, though Jeremy Irons was chewing the scenery just a tad. But considering the time in which it was made, and the dedication to the impossible romance of its story, M. Butterfly is still an admirable and engaging film. Critics at the time were far less kind to this film, though, to the point of confusion on my end. Every hater of this film cites that the original play is far more moving and special, and while I’m sure it was wonderful (and originally starred BD Wong [in fact it was this role that made him start going by “BD”, to obscure his gender]), I can’t help feeling like the theatre crowd who loves this play is historically impossible to please. As a humble, low-brow movie buff, I found it to be fine. Nothing particularly special, but emotional nonetheless. People love to critique an ambitiously-large adaptation of a smaller story, especially if there’s a feminine angle, so I’m not surprised that this movie was so panned. And while I didn’t love M. Butterfly, it was still pretty funny to hear Jeremy Irons say “ni hao” and “xie xie ni.” Even though neither of these movies are my among my favorite Cronenbergs, I can still appreciate them because of their particularly Cronenbergian ability to transport me to another world and completely subvert my expectations. Now, Mr. Cronenberg, if you could just make two more movies by this time next year so I don’t have to end my Cronenberg double features here, that would be great! Until then, I’ll be rewatching them all. Ta ta for now!