H22 #10: Scanners (1981)

David Cronenberg's Scanners is dreary, strange, uniquely masterful. Watching it in the middle of day plays like a walking nightmare, at night a downbeat head trip. 

Howard Shore's music over the opening titles is anxiety inducing, futuristic and full of dread. Then the opening scene at a shopping mall where protagonist Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) unintentionally uses his telekinetic abilities to put two shoppers into a deadly seizure. Vale's later informed by Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) he's a "scanner", a gifted individual who can harness the power of his mind. Dr. Ruth is affiliated with a company working for the military-industrial complex who view scanners as a national security issue, while he believes they are the next stage of human evolution. 

Meanwhile, a renegade group of scanners led by "Revok" played by Michael Ironside at his creepiest have their own diabolical plans. It's a revealed an experimental drug called ephemerol was used in the 1950s causing the mutations, a parallel to thalidomide (which deformed children). Revok is sending assassin squads against other scanners not joining him.

Cronenberg's violence is bloody and nasty. The strikes by the hit squad eerily parallel mass shootings. Every scanner struggles with their sanity. One uses art as therapy to deal with the voices in his head, while others act out in more extreme ways. Analogies can be made to drug addiction and mental illness in that many still blame violent acts on those two factors. The film also is prescient in portraying the growing power of big pharma. Good scanners who have learned to live with their condition have their own support groups and form supportive communities, while the diabolical ones use their gift (or curse) for power. 

Scanners presents a gloomy world of psychokinetic death squads, exploding heads, and body transference that would influence pop culture, specifically the TV shows of Chris Carter and J.J. Abrams.  The human condition in Scanners is both powerful and fragile, ripe for exploitation yet always seeking a transcendence. 

H22 #3: The Fly (1986)

 

A tragedy disguised as a horror film, David Cronenberg's visceral and hauntingly grotesque remake of the The Fly, is propelled by a razor sharp script and humanistic performances by Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.

Seth Brundle (Goldblum) is a brilliant scientist who's isolated himself from most human interaction. He meets science journalist Veronica (Geena Davis) who takes an interest in his work in teleportation and they eventually fall in love. Eager to share Brundle's work with the world, Veronica must fend off her editor Stathis (John Getz) who wants to take credit for the scoop. One night in a drunken fit of jealousy (he believes Veronica is also seeing Stathis) Brundle teleports himself unaware a fly entered the chamber.

A main theme in Cronenberg films is how we evolve as human beings. In the first half we see Brundle's confidence and hubris grow as he prepares for the fame and adulation that will come with his scientific breakthrough. The nuances in Goldblum's performance are subtle. In an early scene he complains of car sickness and his fear of vomiting, am ironic foreshadowing of what's to come. As he begins to transform, Brundle becomes more physically and sexually aggressive, the first step in his metamorphosis into insect. 

As he begins to physically transform, the film becomes a symphony of dread and macabre fascination. Many in the 1980s saw parallels to the AIDS epidemic, a disease mostly afflicting young men in their prime of youth. Cronenberg later stated he viewed it as a metaphor about the fear of aging and disease, specifically cancer. Brundle refuses treatment fearing he will be just another "tumorous patient." 

Seeing Brundle become something else that's ugly and frightening is when the real scares start. He begins to vomit on his food before eating (like a fly), strange fluids come out of his body, and his entire physicality alters. In time his psychology changes, his musings on "insect politics" are unsettling, an existence of unalloyed aggression with no morality. In perhaps the most tragic line, "I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over . . . the insect is awake."

The Fly also draws upon classic literature such as Frankenstein and The Metamorphosis. Anxieties over the human body and psyche undergoing rapid change were Cronenberg's specialty in most of his previous films Shivers and Videodrome. The performances of Goldblum and Davis bring a humanity to the story, we truly feel awful for these characters. The focus on birth and decay imagery provides an unsettling dilemma for the audience as well when considering our own vulnerabilities, a sign of the film's enduring power.