Cosmopolis (2012) Review

Man, I'm normally always in for odd, heady stuff. Jodorowsky, Gilliam, Haneke, von Trier, you name it and I'll be there. But what I have to deal with here is really pushing the boundary. But of course, I am getting a little ahead of myself.

Let's start right at the source. That would be Don DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis, a book so unbelievably uncinematic, it's quite astonishing to see it being adapted into a motion picture. Enter cult director David Cronenberg, definitely not a stranger to so-called unfilmable novels (check out his take on William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and on J. G. Ballard's Crash for further proof). Now here's my 5 cents on him: I freakin' love Cronenberg's style and movies. Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ, A History of Violence, pick any random movie by him and you can be almost assured to get something worth watching. Cosmopolis, unfortunately, is not worth watching.

It's the story of billionaire/douchebag Eric Packer (played by Robert Pattinson) who's on his way across New York City to get a hair cut while losing his entire fortune during the course of the movie. He's pretty much hermetically sealed from the outside world in his soundproof stretch limousine, a location that doubles both as the movie's main location and as the film's clunky way of symbolizing Packer's detachment from actual reality. It's here where Packer encounters the various supporting characters, if you can even call them that. What that amounts to is the actors spouting mostly senseless monologues, disguised as dialogues. Everybody is talking a lot while nobody is saying much. I can barely put it into words, everything that's uttered is an empty speech bubble, it borders on self-parody. It feels like Cronenberg has a quiet chuckle in the background knowing that he's throwing random sentences at us in the hope that some highbrow film analyst will fall for it and interpret is a deep, meaningful and as an important comment on the world's current economical situation. Apparently his tactic worked given that the film ranks in the list of the best movies of 2012 both in Sight & Sound and Cahiers du Cinema. Well, let me tell you, that doesn't mean bollocks to everybody else who's got some common sense left and who will see through the ridiculous scheme.

I could mention to you that the film is beautifully shot and creates an eerie atmosphere, pretty much a given for a film by Cronenberg. I could also mention that great acting talent is being wasted here. Pattinson himself is definitely not as bad as the atrocious Twilight movies might suggest but he's not given much to work with and his emotionless stare becomes grating after 5 minutes. Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton, Mathieu Amalric and Paul Giamatti don't have much else to do but to lecture in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to fill their words with meaning. I don't blame them, with a script like that nobody can do much.

And who knows, maybe I am misreading the entire thing. Maybe I had a bad day and just didn't see the forest for the trees. Maybe Cronenberg fooled us all and Cosmopolis is a misunderstood masterpiece. But you know what? I trust my gut here. I didn't much care for the original book and I don't much care for the movie.