Prophetic though it was, Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel—now a whip-smart
film about meltdowns global and personal—gets one thing absolutely
wrong. (So does the movie.) Consider some of cinema’s past greedmongers:
Michael Douglas’s ravenous Gordon Gekko, his face strained with impure
appetites, or Christian Bale in American Psycho, plenty active to burn
off those extra calories. These beasts fit the rapacious moods of their
day, extensions of the market.
Cosmopolis, on the other hand, has too-cool Robert Pattinson as its
28-year-old billionaire about to fall (leap?) into the maw of economic
collapse and OWS rage. Its hero should look a lot less collected, no?
Shouldn’t his pulse be irregular, his exuberance more irrational? During
a daylong trip across a traffic-jammed Manhattan, hypervigilant Eric
(Pattinson) is even visited by a prostate-probing doctor, who does the
examination right there in the soundproofed limo—apparently, these
checkups occur daily. (Were the housing market as lucky.) Pointing to a
mole on his torso, Eric frowns. “Let it express itself,” says the
doctor.
Director David Cronenberg—who knows a thing or two about bodily
expressions—understands, finally, what to do with the Twilight star,
turning his zombified handsomeness into a stark canvas upon which we can
project our own anxieties. Undervalued as a subverter of the A-list,
Cronenberg uses Pattinson’s own blankness (let’s call it a career
performance) as the visage of an unpersuasive godhead, surrounded by
computer screens that don’t comfort him. Crawling through a city
throbbing with unrest, Eric makes time for a dalliance or two—not with
his wife, a brittle ice queen (Sarah Gadon), but with other women—and
still, he doesn’t seem at ease. He communicates most with his
tight-jawed security aide (Kevin Durand, fierce) who warns him of
upcoming obstacles and vague messages from the “complex.” The pair could
be miniaturized travelers in an updated Fantastic Voyage, the dying
body that of late capitalism.
Where is Eric going? To get a haircut, we hear early on. Cosmopolis
is close to experimental in its denatured, deceptively banal plot.
(Cronenberg probably required his lead actor’s name just to get it
made.) The movie grows, though, into something hypnotic and ominous. A
parade of temporary companions makes its way through the backseat cabin:
a nervous tech wizard (Jay Baruchel), an art-dealing sex partner
(Juliette Binoche), a vice president of “theory” (Samantha Morton) and a
pie-throwing terrorist (Mathieu Amalric). All of them raise alarms in
their own way, pointing to Eric’s doom—his inability to understand his
own potency, his blithe willingness to buy an entire chapel of Rothko
oils just to keep them in his apartment.
DeLillo’s comment wasn’t exactly profound: These business types have
no souls. Frankly, the book reeks of reaching too hard—where do all the
limos go at night? Yet Cronenberg, who adapted the script himself (as he
did with Crash and Naked Lunch), flatters the material into a sensual,
propulsive thriller, the apocalypse as viewed from lush interiors and a
hermetic remove. It’s more than spooky.
Ultimately, Cosmopolis is a theory movie, one that’s made unusually
accessible by filmmaking chops, rear-entry sex and spiky dialogue. It
could have used more humor: When a hulking rap promoter shows up to
mourn a dead celebrity—the saintly Brother Fez (K’naan)—Eric’s wanksta
sympathies provide a rare moment of levity. (Howard Shore’s sinuous
score, including the K’naan number “Mecca,” is tops.) It all comes down
to a disgruntled 99 percenter with a gun—again, way too obvious—but
until then, the cruise is slick as an oil spill.
Source http://www.timeout.com/us/film/cosmopolis
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