Introducing the New Flesh: David Cronenberg's Videodrome

SPOILER WARNING

The second truly important work in David Cronenberg's career (after The Brood) and still one of his most vital, Videodrome was quite a few years ahead of its time with ideas involving the evolution of flesh into technology. The desire to connect with your television, mentally, physically, and sexually, was Cronenberg's launching pad here, and despite whether or not you agree with it, he makes it damn near impossible to dismiss. Watching Videodrome nearly thirty years after its release, I am still quite stunned a major studio had it on their slate. There's little question the execs didn't know exactly what (or who) they were dealing with.

Max Renn (James Woods) is in charged of programming at Civic TV, the kind of station whose logo shows a man lying in bed, watching television. This is a society where eyes are constantly glued to the tube, and Max is tired of giving the audience the same old junk. He wants to show people something real, something that will be so appalling they won't want to turn their eyes. When previewing potential programs, he wants to see the end first. This is a world of instant gratification...why bother with stories or characters when you can get straight to the good stuff? By good stuff, Renn means smut. If presented with sex that is handled in a tasteful manner, he proclaims it's "not tacky enough to turn me on. Too much class."

Why is Renn so obsessed with giving the world raw sex and violence? It's an outlet...if they can experience it on TV, they won't want to experience it in real life ("Better on TV than on the streets"). But what happens when it starts to work its way into your brain? When what you see on your television becomes so real the technology in front of you becomes a living, breathing thing? That what we experience on TV becomes how we really see the world? This is what happens to Max once he discovers Videodrome, a show scrambled through a satellite feed that has a very simple set up...two masked figures drag a naked woman into a room with clay walls and proceed to torture and beat her. At first, Max is annoyed by the lack of "plot." After a few minutes, he is unable to look away.

On the talk show circuit, he meets Nikki Brand (is the last name ironic?)(Deborah Harry), a radio talk show therapist. She helps people through their "real" problems. Right after hearing a theory that television is the "retina to the mind's eye," (the television is the new window to the soul, if there was ever a soul to begin with) Max goes to visit Nikki at the station and we see her booth is modeled after an eyeball. The camera then protrudes in...in other words, radio is on the same path as television. Or, given what we learn about Nikki, maybe it's already gotten there.

It's one thing to watch violence for arousal; but to take part is something else all together. Max learns this on his first date with Nikki when he notices cut marks on her shoulder and then later when she gets off having a needle stuck through her earlobe. Instead of removing this object, he leaves it. This our first glimpse of metal penetrating flesh. It is only the beginning of how far Nikki is willing to go in her quest for pain as pleasure. After seeing Videodrome, she wants to be a contestant on the show. In the meantime, Max begins to see things metamorphosize before him. Every time he views Videodrome, reality changes a little more.

How could it be real? Cronenberg constantly keeps us on edge by having Max experience bizarre events that later look like they might have never happened at all. His television begins to pulsate and moan when he touches it. The line has been crossed and interaction with technology is becoming indistinguishable from anything else. One character describes giving homeless people a TV as a way to bring them back to "the world." Which world does she mean? The reality of the world we know, or the one that exists inside the television? The movie suggests they are about to be one in the same.

Max is on his way to the other side. His stomach splits into a vaginal shaped opening in which a blood red videotape can go, and it seems to be giving him instructions on how to complete his journey to the "new flesh," a hybrid of his human self and the technology he supports. A company called Spectacular Optical created Videodrome as a means of brainwashing the viewers with its shocking footage, thereby creating a new race of people who can easily be controlled. Max is the first subject, for when the tape is inserted into him, he'll do whatever he is told. His assignments consist of destroying anyone who is a threat to Spectacular Optical's plan (how appropriate the company poses as an eyewear manufacturer).

Videodrome throws so many elements into the pot, it's amazing the movie doesn't collapse under its weight. The key to its success is Cronenberg's confidence in his material...the ideas could easily look absurd (and there certainly are moments that provoke uneasy laughs, not to mention a God-like character named Brian O'Blivion), but they are portrayed in a fashion that makes them eerily realistic. Aside from a climatic death scene that goes overboard, the special effects perfectly compliment the paranoia. Fittingly, Videodrome was only the beginning for Cronenberg's exploration of technology and flesh becoming one. As fascinating as it has been in future projects, I don't think he's ever done it this potently.

The picture's ending is an indication that Cronenberg is not done with these themes yet. Max, with a gun fused to his hand (it has grown flesh and literally become part of his hand), kills the inventor of Videodrome and then turns the gun on himself and says, "Long live the new flesh." He has killed his creator and welcomed the inevitable takeover, which opens the door for a filmmaker who will spend most of his career showing how man will become consumed by his own inventions. Our nature and our impulses are not strong enough to keep us from giving in...we are living for ourselves and our own gratification, and the end result will always be a disaster. We will never be the winner. Love it or hate it, Videodrome is a movie that drives itself into your brain and holds it hostage. The question is, will you welcome the invasion?

Thank you for visiting Hell and Beyond!

(c) Hell and Beyond, 2012

"What is past is prologue." - Lee's Best Movies of 2011

As I began to make this list, I was looking at the ones I've compiled in years past, which, while bittersweet and occasionally depressing (due to some of my choices), fit in perfectly with the 2011 movie year. The past played a crucial role in many of the best movies of the year, mainly in the way it's made the present unable to let it go. We saw many characters stuck in a strange warp, trapped from moving forward due to events (often sins) of their past. In many cases, it involved sons and daughters struggling with fathers. What the movies showed me mostly, as we continue to steamroll forward, is that no matter how old you get, you cannot completely free yourself from the past, for better or worse. It was that kind of a movie year. And I'll be damned if it wasn't a most potent one. Happy 2011!

-Lee

Dishonorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): The Adjustment Bureau, Another Earth, Cowboys & Aliens, The Green Hornet, Red State, Scream 4, The Thing, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Trespass, Vanishing on 7th Street, The Ward.

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): Attack the Block, Bridesmaids, A Dangerous Method, Drive Angry, Hobo with a Shotgun, I Saw the Devil, Margin Call, Moneyball, Rango, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Source Code, Stake Land, Super 8, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Woman.

The Next Ten

20) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dir. David Fincher
19) Warrior dir. Gavin O'Connor
18) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol dir. Brad Bird
17) Cave of Forgotten Dreams dir. Werner Herzog
16) Fright Night dir. Craig Gillespie
15) Meek's Cutoff dir. Kelly Reichardt
14) Young Adult dir. Jason Reitman
13) The Adventures of Tintin dir. Steven Spielberg
12) Shame dir. Steve McQueen
11) 13 Assassins dir. Takashi Miike

TOP TEN



10) Poetry (Shi) dir. Chang-dong Lee

Similar to Joon-ho Bong's Mother but with less quirk, Poetry follows Mija (an extraordinary Jeong-hie Yun), a woman in her 60s who, in addition to dealing with early stages of dementia and a dead-end job, enrolls in poetry classes as a way to cope with the knowledge that her grandson has taken part in a truly heinous act. He's a brat and shows no remorse for what he's done, but these factors don't change Mija's stance...instead, she drowns the unpleasantness surrounding her by trying to create something beautiful through words based on the creations of nature around her, creations that are unable to be cruel or deceptive.






9) Hanna dir. Joe Wright

Proof that Joe Wright needs to ditch melodrama altogether, his first outing in the action genre is truly mesmerizing, a scorching Red Riding Hood tale about teenager Hanna (an intense Saoirse Ronan), raised in the Arctic by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to be a killing machine. He knows Too Many Secrets in other words, and wants his little girl to be ready in case their location is compromised. Naturally it is, springing Hanna into action for her first dose of the real world, a place where normalcy is a curious thing and the sins of the father become the sins of the daughter. Whether Hanna knows it or not, that is what she is running from and ultimately fighting for.






8) Midnight in Paris dir. Woody Allen

Possibly Woody Allen's most magical movie to date (outside of maybe Everyone Says I Love You), his latest casts a lovely spell. It finds Owen Wilson as a surprisingly appropriate Allen stand-in, and, by having him meet all his favorite authors and artists of past (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, to name a handful), is able to learn the dangers of depending on the past to make oneself complete as an artist. As cathartic as it may be to meet the ones who influenced you the most, it doesn't change the fact that they don't necessary hold the solutions to your problems. Don't be fooled into thinking the movie is a downer...Midnight in Paris has the kind of charm that sticks with you long after it's over.






7) Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz) dir. Patricio Guzmán

The Atacama Desert in Chile is the main setting for this amazing documentary, a beautiful, haunting, and deeply mournful examination of the way the past is discovered through the efforts of science and history. While astronomers comb the sky for clues pertaining to the secrets of the universe, archaeologists dig in the desert in hopes of finding the remains of love ones lost during Augusto Pinochet's terrifying reign. This link to the past is all that keeps them going...the hope of finding some piece of their family member's existence. Guzmán doesn't treat them as simple subjects but people who, like him, cherish the memories of years gone but need concrete evidence to ease their sorrowed souls.






6) Drive dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

What's there to say about this picture that hasn't already been said time and time again? Drive is the most intoxicating movie of the year, a visually splendid, impeccably acted, and surprisingly romantic movie that somehow manages to be equally thrilling, beautiful, and scary, often all at once. See it if you love the movies. And have a strong stomach.








5) Take Shelter dir. Jeff Nichols

Michael Shannon is one of the very best actors alive, and no one understands it better than writer/director Jeff Nichols. After his stunning debut, Shotgun Stories and now this, I'd be fine if Shannon and Nichols stayed glued together. In Take Shelter, Shannon plays Curtis, a man with a loving wife (Jessica Chastain, in one of several dynamite performances from 2011) and daughter who begins to test their loyalty once he starts having visions of a disastrous storm. The fear that it will come true consumes Curtis's life, but what's so refreshing about the movie is that he acknowledges that something is wrong with him. All the while, he prepares for a storm that may never surface, in the process depleting his already limited funds. Take Shelter is a convincing family drama, a chilling thriller, and a depiction of how troubled times could possibly drive a man over the edge.






4) Certified Copy (Copie conforme) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

I haven't seen any of the movies Abbas Kiarostami has made in his home country of Iran, but his first outside venture, the Italy set Certified Copy, is as joyous an experience as I had at the movies all year. An absorbing and delightfully intellectual journey about the perception of art, its history, and identity and relationships, the movie follows two (supposed) strangers (a luminous Juliette Binoche and real-life opera singer William Shimell) as they wander the streets and argue like an old married couple. Did they just meet? Or are they acquaintances? One of the many great pleasures of this movie is attempting to decide, and Certified Copy is a testament to why we love to debate art.






3) Beginners dir. Mike Mills

Personal projects can be disgustingly self-indulgent, which thankfully is not the case with Beginners, Mike Mills's fictionalized account of how he responded to his father coming out of the closet in his 70s. The characters and dialogue have a genuine and authentic feel, matched by a soft visual style. It creates a fine line between realism and whimsy, always staying with the former even when it threatens to spill into the latter. It's the best balancing job I've seen in years, and is the first movie in ages that's had a cute dog that didn't annoy me to death. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a depressed artist still mourning the passing of his father (a career best Christopher Plummer), who announced he was gay just months after his wife died. This revelation combined with the cold relationship his parents had when Oliver was a child has made him afraid of getting too close to someone, a hardship that comes into play when he meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent, lovely). Their disconnect strikes a chord that brings them together in the most enchanting ways, even if they are always at risk of falling apart. Beginners is as good as it gets when it comes to understanding relationships by looking into the past and viewing things literally because it's the only way we may know how to comprehend them.






2) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul


Lyrical and spiritual, the latest offering from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visual stunner that follows the final days of Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar), a farmer with a kidney illness who is visited by deceased loved ones who still watch over him. They end up being his guides to his final resting place, and the journey leads Boonmee through forests inhabited by ghostly beings and caves that literally look as if human spirits have become part of their walls. With deep faith that the afterlife is when man finally becomes one with the elements of nature, Weerasethakul's movie asks a series of rich and challenging questions and does so with much poignancy and occasional subtle humor. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is unlike any movie I've ever seen...I feel fortunate to have experienced it and, after two viewings, can't wait to again.






1) The Tree of Life dir. Terrence Malick

Many viewers, critics and audiences alike, have claimed they didn't "get" The Tree of Life. Others said it was disjointed and the sections don't fit together. My response to them is that they didn't really watch it. Unlike the latest Transformers movie, where you can just stare at the screen and watch action unfold, Malick's latest labor of love requires some effort on the viewer's part. The movie jumps back and forth through time, at one point going all the way back to the beginning in order to show us that the beauty of this world began with the creation itself. But it's also there to show us how freedom of choice trickled down from one species to another, and how it was able to lead to humans questioning not only their own existence, but the reasoning behind the events of their lives, good and bad. And that barely scratches the surface! In addition, The Tree of Life is also one of the most honest portraits of adolescence ever made, ranging from a child's free-spirited behavior, to the rebellion against their parent's rules, to the startling way the movie captures the familiar looks and sounds of a summer's day/night. And I haven't even gotten into how Malick subtly explores how the son grows up wrestling the inner demons of the father, which still fits on an even larger scale when held in context with the rest of the movie. I have no issue with someone not liking The Tree of Life, as long as you give it the attention it deserves before criticizing. This is the work of a master filmmaker who, with only five films, has achieved a bliss some directors never reach after making twenty.


Thank you for visiting Hell and Beyond!


(c) Hell and Beyond, 2012