This might be Cronenberg’s best yet
‘The Shrouds’ is a deeply personal project that draws on familiar themes for director
The Shrouds
K (out of 4) Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt and Jennifer Dale. Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. 116 minutes.
The Apprentice
K (out of 4) Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova and Martin Donovan. Written by Gabriel Sherman. Directed by Ali Abbasi. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. 120 minutes.
CANNES, FRANCE “How dark are you willing to go?” graveyard innovator Karsh (Vincent Cassel) asks his date (Jennifer Dale) when she inquires about his rather creepy line of work.
Pretty dark, it turns out, but Karsh — via writer/director David Cronenberg — is really aiming that question at viewers of the film, one of two Canadian features that had its world premiere Monday at the Cannes Film Festival and is competing for the Palme d’Or. (The other is Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice.”)
Described by co-star Diane Kruger as Cronenberg’s “most personal film” in his decades-long career, “The Shrouds” is also possibly the Toronto writer/director’s best film, showcasing his fascination with body horror, advanced technology and high paranoia in a way that also genuinely touches the heart.
It’s inspired in part by the 2017 passing of Cronenberg’s beloved wife, Carolyn, to whom he was married for 38 years.
When Karsh talks about going dark, he means more than the midnight-hued clothes he habitually wears. He and the film’s title are referring to high-tech metallic garb wrapped around corpses at Karsh’s switched on Toronto cemetery, “The Shrouds at GraveTech,” which allows mourners to view their loved ones decomposing in real time by either a gravesite screen or a handy smartphone app.
Karsh has a personal interest in this. His beloved wife, Becca (Kruger), died of cancer a few years ago and he’s never gotten over his loss. His initial impulse at her passing was that he’d rather be lowered into the ground with her than say goodbye to her.
His shroud invention gives him the next best thing: He can watch her slowly decompose while he awaits his own death, whereupon he’ll be buried right next to her. It also proves to be a profitable business, with global expansions planned.
“It makes me happy,” Karsh explains, but that proves to be too dark for his date, Myrna, who quickly leaves the scene.
The people who remain in his life are better attuned to his moods and urges. Becca’s twin sister, Terry, a veterinarian also played by Kruger, is worried about Karsh’s apparent inability to move on with his life.
Karsh’s computer nerd brotherin-law, Maury (Guy Pearce), Terry’s ex, wants to bro out with him and also to assist him with his technical problems.
Maury’s services become immediately necessary when vandals attack nine of the graves at Karsh’s facility, Becca’s among them, and hackers interfere with the signals from the shrouds, stopping mourners from seeing their loved ones.
Are the vandals and hackers the same people and what do they want? The movie shifts into spy thriller mode as Karsh, Maury and Terry follow a trail that could lead to a Chinese and/or Russian plot to monitor westerners via their graveyard rituals or which could lead to nothing at all.
If this were anything but a David Cronenberg film, the situation might seem laughable or at least implausible. But Cronenberg has a knack for seeing the future; his 1977 film “Rabid” anticipated stem cell therapy.
And the point he’s making with “The Shrouds” is one he and other grieving people would understand all too well: They’d do anything to see a lost loved one again, even if it seems ghoulish to others.
“Attack, attack, attack!”
That’s the first rule of success laid down by Roy Cohn, the ruthless New York lawyer who takes a young Donald Trump under his wing in Ali Abassi’s terrific “The Apprentice.”
Cohn’s other two rules for winning are “admit nothing, deny everything” and “claim victory and never admit defeat,” slogans that will resonate for decades to come.
The year is 1973. Listening very closely to Cohn’s cocky mantra is future U.S. president Trump (Sebastian Stan), who is 27 and hungry. He’s trying to establish himself as a player in New York real estate so he can get out from under the shadow of his controlling father, business tycoon Fred Trump (Martin Donovan).
Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who looks like a rattlesnake in a suit, is holding court with his henchmen in New York’s ritzy Le Club, which Trump has just joined.
So begins a film and a close relationship that continued until Cohn’s death in 1986, that answers a lot of questions about how Trump became the showboating power seeker he’s known as today.
The film, a Canada/Ireland/Denmark co-production shot in Ontario, seems at first to be impressed by Trump and maybe even sympathetic toward him.
Trump has to put up with a lot of verbal abuse from his father, who scorns his son’s plans to build a luxury hotel — the landmark Trump Tower — in a dodgy neighbourhood in downtown Manhattan.
The tendency is to root for a guy like that.
It doesn’t take long for Trump’s true colours to emerge, as his Faustian deal with Cohn deepens. He begins referring to people as being either “killers” or “losers” and bullies New York civic leaders to cut him sweetheart tax deals to bankroll his building binge.
As his confidence builds, so does his swagger, and he begins pulling away from Cohn, a closeted gay man who has AIDS (although he denies it), which will ultimately kill him.
How much “The Apprentice” is based on strict historical facts is hard to verify.
But none of it is hard to believe, especially a scene near the end where Trump takes credit for the three rules of success quoted above, which he attributes to his own “natural ability.”