David Cronenberg Approaches Directing In The Most Cronenbergian Way Imaginable

Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ,” which hit theaters only a few weeks after “The Matrix” back in 1999, is one example of a film of his that stimulates the intellect, with its similar ideas of multiple levels of reality — some real, others virtual. For “Crimes of the Future,” though, Cronenberg wanted to take a more spontaneous approach on the set with his actors. It seems that he was looking for them to listen and react, not so much think, or just work it out for themselves what the film’s meaning was supposed to be (much like the characters in the trailer, filling bodies that are “empty of meaning” with some of that for themselves). “We don’t have discussions, we don’t rehearse, we don’t intellectualize,” he said in his interview with Variety. “When I see what happens on the set, unless there’s something that everybody thinks has gone off the rails, I don’t say anything.”

In the same way that bodily needs pull us out of our own heads sometimes, it makes sense that Cronenberg’s brand of body horror might resist intellectualization. Not having discussions on set also very much jibes with the ethos put forth in the first teaser for “Crimes of the Future,” with its voiceover stating, “It is time to stop speaking. It is time to listen.”

That voiceover also says, “It is time to stop seeing,” but if you want to see “Crimes of the Future,” it’s in theaters now.