It’s not a good sign when you give your ticket to the ticket-taker
at the movie and hear his boss say to him, “Cosmopolis is a really crappy
movie.” I guess I was prepared for the worst and that’s what director David
Cronenberg gave us.
Landmark Century Centre Cinema’s newsletter explains the plot this way:
Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), a 28-year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one, watches a dark shadow cast over Wall Street. As he is chauffeured across midtown Manhattan to get a haircut, his anxious eyes are glued to the yuan's exchange rate: it is mounting against all expectations, destroying Eric's bet against it. Meanwhile, an eruption of wild activity unfolds in the city's streets. As the threats of the real world infringe upon his cloud of virtual convictions, Packer's paranoia intensifies as he pieces together clues that lead him to a most terrifying secret: his imminent assassination.
That is certainly a much more
coherent idea than what we as an audience were given.
The film reminded me of what I know of Dadaism, a post-World War I movement that stressed the absurdity of
art and ideas by using nonsense words in mock didactic speeches and collages of
discarded materials. André Breton defined it as,
“Dada is a state of mind… Dada is artistic free thinking… Dada gives itself to
nothing.” A piece of film I saw once of a Dada performance was
of a man banging on an upright piano while three women dressed in white gown
performed nonsense movements and said words that made no sense. I think a cuckoo clock was singing at the same time.
I bring these
up because that’s what I felt the film was doing. There were big pompous
speeches about the economics of the world and how rats might become currency, but everyone seemed to be reading a
teleprompter. Pattinson, who I know can act—check out Water for Elephants or Little Ashes but avoid the Twilight series—seemed
in catatonic state where he registered virtually no emotion until one moment at the end. His character has sex a
couple of times, gets a prostate exam which talking about sex with someone who
works for him, shoots a character with no motivation apparent, loses his tie and then his
coat, gets a pie thrown in his face, keeps meeting his wife at various stops,
and gets the worst possible haircut from the family barber. I'm sure we are supposed to see the disintegration of the person, but we as an audience should care. I found myself wanting to talk back to the film.
I think one of the clues to the film is this bit of
dialogue between Pattison and Paul Giamatti:
Packer: My prostate is asymmetrical. Do you think that means anything?
Levin: No.
I thought the same thing of the film.
Cosmopolis (2012) 0 stars
[Note: I liked last year's A Dangerous Method, directed by Cronenberg, a lot.]
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