Crimes of the Future Review: A Startling Allegory of the Anthropocene

In a scene from David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Saul played by the immaculate Viggo Mortensen is somewhat forcibly kissed by a visibly aroused Timlin, played by wonderfully unrestrained Kirstin Stewart. “I’m sorry, I’m not good at the old sex,” says Saul. Cronenberg’s latest film, which is now streaming on Mubi, is similar to some of his older work where he queries the pathology of all eroticism and gives it new dimensions to stretch in. Like Crash (1996) where people held a fetish for watching cars crash, Cronenberg has explored the ability of the human brain to approach everything with a streak of perversion. Crimes of the Future is a discomforting and often hilarious comment on the Anthropocene, especially an age of evolution where pain becomes passe’ to the point that it is actually pleasure. Set in an eerie, seemingly dystopian but art conscious future, Viggo Mortensen plays Saul Tenser, a performance artist whose body somehow cultivates new organs. His partner Caprice played by the always elegant Lea Seydoux, is a former surgeon who helps Saul nurture these organs. Saul sits and eats in weird little capsules and performs live surgeries where Caprice tattoos his organs for show. The two report to a government agency fronted by an agent, who is also assisted by the intense Timlin. There is also the parallel story of a 10-year-old boy who has been murdered by his mother shortly after she discovered he could chew and digest plastic. His father, Lang ( Scott Speedman ), has held onto the corpse of his son as a historic souvenir for Saul, hoping he’d become a part of one his set pieces. It’s a diabolically twisted world, with little or no emotional heft in the way of investment. People have stopped feeling pain and therefore they cut themselves open for the sake of pleasure. “Surgery is the new sex,” Timlin tells Saul at one point. Scenes of people standing in alleyways cutting open each other’s skin to the sounds of orgasmic moans feel eerie and unsettling in a film that is as dark as it often also feels hilarious. In one scene, Caprice goes down on her knees to seemingly pleasure Saul by flirting with a giant surgical gash in the middle of his stomach. “Be careful not to spill”, he tells Caprice, half-groaning from dizzying pleasure. It’s a comically dark sequence, merging the choreography of the old sex with the dexterous but ultimately repulsive mechanics of the new one. Crimes of the Future is perhaps necessarily more operatic than it ever feels emotively present. The point of a post-pain world perhaps extends to both the body and the heart. In one scene a man convulses and drops dead from some sort of chemical poisoning, while the people standing around him continue to consume a piece of performance art without blinking an eye. The consumption of everything as impractical artistry is maybe also a type of sickness. And there are all types of bizarre, inexplicable performances from body-horror to surgical theatre for the hungry and horny. Evolution, we’ve all believed is a process of mental transcendence. The body will evolve, it’s the mind that requires persistent calibration. In Crimes of the Future, however, it’s the human body that has somewhat mutinied against the casual passage of time. People, though, continue to seek the pleasures of the old. Cronenberg’s film is an often minimalistic view of the post-evolution stage of human degradation. It suggests the disintegration of all industrial and technological evolution alongside the humane quality of perceiving and feeling. There are some gadgets here and there, the scariest of all surgical pods, but other than that the set designs suggest a basement dwelling population living vampiric lives. The bit about humans being able to digest plastic is probably compelling commentary on climate change, but the evolutionary hell that Saul’s body growths represent point to both the sadism and the horror of jinxing your own prospective paths. What if the human body is simply unprepared for what’s coming next, and chooses to go rogue? Without compassion and empathy, can there really be pleasure? Crimes of the Future, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. A more aggressive reading would translate the film as a socio-political commentary on the disorienting missteps of human evolution. The fact that we invent so little that is needed, and so much that is accessory and perhaps inapplicable. As a dark comedy, Cronenberg’s film is a perplexing satire on the many ways humans invent ways to consume others. It isn’t exactly cannibalism, but it isn’t far off either. Crimes of the Future is never quite subtle, but never quite accessible either and for all its many viscerally unsettling images it is still a film that can be read as an uncomfortable comedy. Crimes of the future is now streaming on Mubi The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram