By DEIRDRE CRIMMINS
Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce
Written and directed by David Cronenberg
Sideshow/Janus Films
You know the old saying that sex is like pizza? Meaning, even bad pizza is still pizza, and bad sex is still sex. Comparing THE SHROUDS to both sex and pizza is not to say that it is a bad film. Far from it. Rather, it is to say that even the most midline film by the Canadian auteur (and I never use that word lightly) is still a really good film. But within the scope of Cronenberg’s oeuvre, it is just still pizza.
THE SHROUDS takes place not long after suave gray fox widower Karsh (Vincent Cassel) begins dating again. It is quite notable that Cassel is dressed up much like Cronenberg typically dresses in public, and Cronenberg himself lost his wife of 38 years in 2017. It is easy to see how Cronenberg has previously had his protagonists stand in for him within his own creations, but here he is not even trying to hide it.
Aside from putting himself back on the market, Karsh has been busy with his latest business venture: burial shrouds. These are not as basic as the muslin kind that allegedly wrapped Jesus’s body back in the day, but instead are high-tech, fully wired shrouds that report images back to a screen atop the gravestone – offering a real-time look into the deceased’s state of decomposition at that moment.
Leave it to Cronenberg to design a character who cannot move beyond the physical body while in his mourning period. Throughout his career, Cronenberg’s films have teetered on the thin line between science fiction and body horror. Often, through technology, his characters are faced with the body as a biological vehicle for pain, art and the grotesque. Quite importantly, it questions if there is even a division between those three bodily functions. THE SHROUDS is no different.
Karsh stumbles through the plot of intrigue and obsession without ever leaving thoughts of his decaying wife. New lovers and foes emerge, along with digital crimes, physical destruction and international wealth. As these giant themes swirl about Karsh, he seems to be dully floating from one scene to the next. Sure, he cares about solving the core mystery at hand, but he never seems particularly passionate or enraged at what is happening to him. This does not seem to be a limit of Cassel as an actor; instead, it appears to be a directorial choice by Cronenberg to keep his ersatz-self cool and in control at all times.
THE SHROUDS was originally developed by Cronenberg as a limited series for Netflix, and that format pivot is felt in the film’s complicated and thin plot. There are many players here, each with motives, earned accusations and deep, emotional history, but the film itself only touches upon each of them briefly. The typical Cronenberg is more driven by style than plot, which is true here, but even more so. Zipping between stories and disparate characters never allows the film to dig into any single throughline or become invested in any outcome.
What THE SHROUDS does do well is introduce grand concepts that only Cronenberg could introduce. Granted, as mentioned, he never gives any idea the breadth of thought each is worthy of, but even the teased concepts are fascinating. Rather than taking on art (like Crimes of the Future), mass media (like Videodrome) or medicine (like Dead Ringers), THE SHROUDS takes a peek into the physical experience of death itself. Karsh is obsessed with his dead wife’s carcass and is in the process of building an empire by either convincing others to gaze upon their lost loved ones as they rot or finding kindred spirits who want the same. As he goes through this sales pitch, we learn how he thinks of death and what meaning it has to humanity in his view. The argument is chilling, but also not wrong. Karsh does not divorce the body from the soul, and his version of mourning is an interesting introduction into the discourse over mortality.
Not nearly as ambitious or as polished as Cronenberg typically delivers, THE SHROUDS is still a disquieting film from one of the best filmmakers working today.
THE SHROUDS opens in New York and LA April 18, and nationwide and in Canada April 25. See our exclusive interview with Cronenberg here.
