Cosmopolis review

There was a time David Cronenberg shocked and awed us. 

            There was a time Don DeLillo showed us the world and reminded us we were the ones plotting our downfall.

            There was never a time Rob Pattinson could act.

            A bad apple can definitely ruin the whole bushel, but in the case of Cosmopolis, a bad apple, bloodlessness, and worn-out clichés will just about make anyone swear off apples together.  The film, based on DeLillo’s hardest flop, is a reminder that even the best artists can fail with fantastic display and that hearing Pattinson recite lines is about like hearing someone read the telephone book. 

Don DeLillo kick started his career with White Noise, the disturbing portrait of 1980’s consumerism told through the eyes of a family caught within the noise of microwaves and buzzing refrigerators.  Characters talk in circles, search for meaning in the television and become utterly self-aware of death in the era of shopping malls and simulated evacuations. 

Since this novel, DeLillo has delivered hits and has cranked out some enormous pieces of crap.  The latter creations (Cosmopolis among them) are comprised of the worst postmodern tropes realized to a wordy, exhausted limit.  Cronenberg could have chosen any DeLillo hit, but instead, he nabs his most panned novel.  His decision to adapt Cosmopolis is similar to someone adapting Joseph Heller’s Closing Time.

But Cronenberg loves to film the “unfilmable.”  He did make a solid Naked Lunch, though I would refrain from calling it an adaptation.  Naked Lunch can’t even compare to Cosmopolis, which is nothing more than DeLillo exercising his dialogue acrobatics.  The characters speak their minds, and only vapid, faux-philosophical mush vomits out of their mouths in convoluted tongue-twisters.  Cronenberg spent about one week writing this screenplay, so (surprise!), the movie suffers from a similar fate.

Eric Packer, played by Rob Pattinson, demands a haircut from a specific barber across town and rides in his limousine the whole way there.  Never mind that the president is in town; Packer wants that haircut.  On the way, Packer entertains a whole host of characters in his limo, each one able to speak in volumes on the state of the world and its approaching collapse. 

I really shouldn’t judge a movie by its acting alone, but goodness, who taught these hacks how to deliver lines?  Sure, the lifted script would be nigh impossible to work with, but no one in this film, save Paul Giamatti, can recite a line with any sort of heart or soul or whatever.  Speaking of Giamatti, he plays a worthy character bent on killing Packer.  His character appears at the end of the film, and he speaks his lines (which happen to be a little less nauseating) decently.  Some of the dialogue exchanged is quite honest, and we are able to see Packer at his most vulnerable.  He becomes a human somewhat, but at this stage in the film, I find the whole thing hard to settle into. 

If Cronenberg is doing the best he can with what DeLillo has offered him, then the least he can do is present an aesthetically pleasing direction.  Well, no, he fails there too.  Everything within the frame is bland and lifeless, giving me no reason to believe Cronenberg knows what he’s doing.  The cinematography isn’t striking at all, and the design of the limousine appears too technological for its own good.  What I mean is, all the flashing screens and gizmos inside the limo make it look cheap (not futuristic or sleek).

Some detractors of this film will cite its dialogue-heavy script as the main fault.  Keep in mind there is nothing fundamentally wrong about a movie hinging on dialogue, provided that the dialogue has meaning within its words.  The dialogue in Cosmopolis is filled with weightless sound.  No one talks like this, and no one ever will.  That being said, the state of this world DeLillo and Cronenberg have created is unbelievable because of this stilted language and cheap look of the film.  Even as a dystopic vision, I don’t believe it.  It’s funnier than it is terrifying.  

I’ve mentioned a lot about DeLillo because he is as much at fault here as Cronenberg.  Cronenberg chose the novel, sure.  He also managed to shoot the entire thing with as much indifference as possible.  I really don’t think DeLillo should join the ranks of Ray Bradbury and Shakespeare as the unfilmable canon whose characters speak only in soliloquies and overly philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but the reality is the film doesn’t work at all.  Cronenberg is not a bad director, and we have Shivers, Videodrome, and A History of Violence to remind us.  DeLillo is one of the greatest authors of all time thanks to White Noise, Underworld, and Libra.  But neither artist can save Cosmopolis.

Written by David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo (novel)

Directed by David Cronenberg

Produced by Paulo Branco

Starring Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, and Juliette Binoche

109 minutes