OPEN MIND
FOR DECADES, DAVID CRONENBERG HAS TAKEN US ON BOUNDARY-BREAKING, TABOO-BUSTING JOURNEYS. AND WITH HIS NEW, HUGELY PERSONAL FILM THE SHROUDS, HE SHOWS NO SIGN OF LETTING UP
WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM PETER STRAINWORDS
He’s softly spoken and well-mannered, certainly, but the 82-year-old Canadian auteur prefers to get straight to the big stuff. Why waste time nattering about the weather when you can ponder human frailty, decay, mutations, psychosis and disease?
Right now, he’s pondering his own death. “There’s a stretch of sidewalk in Toronto called the Walk Of Fame, and there’s a plaque for me,” he begins, talking to Empire from his home in said city. His shock of grey-white hair stands upright as if in fear of what he’s about to say. “I often think, ‘I could be buried under that plaque, and there could be a Plexiglas slab put over it, so that people could look at my body.’ They would walk along and go, ‘Oh, there’s David. He’s coming along quite well.’”
Death, of course, infects all of Cronenberg’s work. His 1975 debut Shivers gave us burrowing, slug-like parasites that turn their human hosts into violent nymphomaniacs. The Fly saw a brilliant molecular physicist transform into a gloopy winged insect. J.G. Ballard adaptation Crash coolly observed the numb survivor of a car collision discovering sexual arousal in mangled metal, scarred flesh and gaping wounds. His work picks obsessively at the same scabs: physical and mental transformation, the effects of technology on body and mind, and transgressive sexuality.
His sombre, 21st movie, The Shrouds, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), an entrepreneur whose invention, GraveTech, allows mourners to watch their loved ones decompose in the coffin — in 8K. A widower, Karsh finds solace in peering at his own wife’s remains, but spirals into conspiracy and paranoia when the high-tech graveyard is ransacked and hacked. And it’s personal: The Shrouds sees the director wrestle with the 2017 death of his wife of 38 years, film editor Carolyn Zeifman.
“I always assumed I would die first, because I’m a man and our life expectancy is lower, and because she was seven years younger,” says Cronenberg. “It never occurred to me that I would have to deal with this.” Well, he’s done it on screen, and he’s now ready to discuss his grief — and how the film chimes with themes he regularly returns to. No small talk…