The Shrouds
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“How dark are you willing to go?”
Overview
Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce lead David Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds; a carnal, conspiratorial, science-fictive meditation on grief. Reeling from the loss of his wife (Kruger), tech entrepreneur Karsh (Cassel) has invented a new way to remember the dead: a device that monitors the deceased’s body as it decomposes in the earth, 3D scans and all – you can even access it with an app. After Karsh sparks a relationship with his wife’s identical sister (also played by Kruger), his GraveTech cemetery is vandalised, dragging him into a vast conspiracy where real and virtual, life and death, contrast, blur and even transcend.
“Darkly fantastical... ruthlessly honest... that characteristically Cronenbergian fusion of horniness, sadness, intellectual restlessness, and curiosity”
“A hypnotic descent into the darkness of grief, punctuated by perverse Cronenbergian pleasures”
“The Shrouds’ true center is Kassel’s performance. He translates grief into a restless electrical energy; you can practically feel it vibrating through his agile, lanky frame”
Why You Should See This Film
The pleasures and terrors of the flesh, the will to transcend the corporeal, and a nasty nest of weird, tech noir intrigue; The Shrouds fits in well with David Cronenberg’s perverse oeuvre, yet it is certainly his most personal or ‘autobiographical’. In 2017, David’s wife Carolyn passed was after a long battle with cancer. With a strong cast, Cronenberg explores his own grief through his signature lens, confronting the physical relationships of human beings living, dying, dead and virtual; the new flesh, even in death. What we love about this one is just how far Cronenberg goes, beyond the flesh, beyond what we expect from him and into stranger, uncharted territory; seeking truth in questions not answers.
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