David Cronenberg on “Crimes of the Future” | Hacker News Reader

David Cronenberg on “Crimes of the Future”

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66 pointskeiferski34 comments

I "snuck" in to watch Crash, by Cronenberg, at a con in '96 or '97. I was among the crew/organizers at the con, so "snuck" is an exaggeration. Anyhow. I was 16 or 17 at the time. It was rated 18 in my country at the time. It should've been rated NSFL. :-)

I've never watched a Cronenberg since.

I'm sure he makes good movies, but .. eh, I developed a healthy scare for his movies watching Crash.

If you skip his body horror films (which admittedly is 70+ percent of his oeuvre), and look at Eastern Promises, Maps of the Stars, A Dangerous Method, or a History of Violence, and you'll likely come away with a different view.

Crash, Dead Ringers, and the Fly, while exceptionally interesting films, and well directed, are definitely difficult for a lot of audiences.

While it's rough at times I think Videodrome is worth watching even if you don't care for body horror.

To be fair I found Crash to be his most boring film, wouldn't watch again, eXistenZ is effing great

Check out his non-horror stuff: History of Violence, Eastern Promises

I thought xistenz was also great. some body horror present though.

This was one of the strangest movies I’ve seen in years, in a good way

If you like David Cronenberg's work, definitely check out his son Brandon Cronenberg's films "Antiviral" and "Possessor".

Possessor is on Hulu... thanks!

It was a fantastic movie . Kristen Stewart was phenomenal in this movie .

Post Twilight I’m a huge unabashed Kristen Stewart fan. Saw her in some Olivier Assayas movies at the art museum and fell in love.

I also now see Pattinson's involvement in a film as a sign it's gonna at least be worth a watch.

All I can figure is the script and director demanded wooden, bad acting in the Twilight films, for whatever reason.

Yea, same with Daniel Radcliffe. Emma Watson fails to do anything good since HP.

I'm ready to bet that both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison will get an Oscar in the next 5 years. They are fantastic and it's crazy that both would get the big spotlight thanks to that bankable but utterly uninteresting franchise.

Wish I could share the enthusiasm. Felt like it wasn’t saying anything interesting. That or I missed the point because much of the dialogue was hard to understand in the theater.

In a sense, this is a “process” film, devoted to the nuts and bolts of creation, and thus one of Cronenberg’s densest and most pedantic outings. Yet it’s somehow also among his most immediate works—a kind of intellectual road map for the contemplation of existential questions of such overwhelming scale and urgency that few artists dare to confront them so directly.

Does anyone know what a process film is, or what it means for a movie to be pedantic?

I can’t make heads or tails of this, but I’m glad (sincerely and unsarcastically) that Cronenberg is around to make movies for people who can!

The sentence tells you exactly what "'process' film" means—"devoted to the nuts and bolts of creation", that is, to a process. The quotes on "process" here indicate the author is either using some very-obscure term or (more likely, I think) is coining it themselves for their purpose in this piece, which is why (in either case) it's explained right after.

Pedantic, I think is used in the sense of schoolmasterly or in the manner of a teacher—as in: the film "reads" a bit like a lecture, is concerned with details and plainly connecting A to B in a logical order and clearly demonstrating that to the viewer, that kind of thing. That's why it's contrasted with "Yet it’s somehow also among his most immediate works" (emphasis mine). The author's saying it's not also excessively abstract or distant from life and applicability, as one imagines lectures might sometimes be.

Same root as "pedagogy", though outside certain educated circles "pedant" is almost exclusively used in the colloquial, pejorative sense of "know-it-all, especially one who insists on correcting others unnecessarily"—but it's certainly used in the older, more neutral sense here.

I'm guessing a process film is this:

In The Process Genre Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky introduces and theorizes the process genre—a heretofore unacknowledged and untheorized transmedial genre characterized by its representation of chronologically ordered steps in which some form of labor results in a finished product.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-process-genre

a 'pedantic film' may just mean it's unimaginative/boring, or even ostentatious/preachy

Crikey. The writing from that excerpt is tedious to parse. Why is academic writing so often insufferable?

Are there any other genres of writing that are usually this clunky to read? Maybe legal writing?

> Why is academic writing so often insufferable?

* partially professional domain nomenclature (like programmers talking about Log O2N efficiency);

* probably also defining or adhering to some kind of academic cultural exclusivity, in the same way that managers use ghastly business vernacular with "action items" and "synergy", or military langauge that is heavy with code words and TLAs, or even casual street slang like: "Yo, 'sup dawg?". Comprehension is because you are in the "in group", or at least you are signalling that you belong to that group

Kind of interesting phenomenon, until you have to try to meaningfully communicate with a Manager/Marketing Person/Sales Person, at which point you can't believe you're talking to an alleged human being and wonder desperately how you can make them leave you alone.

Sorry, I didn't author it, I just found it googling around for an explanation for the term. I blame the publisher.

I read it as like a “police procedural”, which is a film that prioritizes the actual procedure of police work over big themes, character development, and action. In this case—-it delves into processes, artistic and bureaucratic. There are “big themes” but there are also odd scenes where bureaucrats discuss the need for cataloging organs, and artists discuss the viability of doing an autopsy as art.

In this quote I read “pedantic” as simply meaning focused on the details, really just a reinforcement of the “process” assertion.

I read process as meaning the film is about systemic effects in a variety of contexts, as opposed to being plot- or character- driven.

Like, "it's about the journey, not the destination", but one step further, because journey implies people and meaningful events.

Pedantic in this case means dull and unimaginative.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedantic

Everyone else’s understanding of process seems fine.

I’ve gotten multiple contradictory definitions of “process film” here, I think yamtaddle’s is most correct though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34177435

"Pedantic" is probably not the most felicitous term they could have used; they clearly meant something more like "abstruse," given their obvious admiration for the film.

Later the interviewer describes his own questions as pedantic. Accusations of pedantry are thrown around so often, (sometimes incorrectly) that perhaps it is gaining a new less derogatory meaning, something like “precise.”

I suspect that by "process" film, they mean a film about the process of doing something.

You don't have to intellectualize movies to enjoy them.

I agree. Some people enjoy movies more by intellectualizing them, though, and certain directors seem to have more to offer them.

Set in a haunted, ancient-yet-avant-garde Athens where people cut each other up for kicks...

No thanks, I've had enough of Cronenberg for one life

You will be left behind as the world changes, holding on to an expired sanctity. The New Flesh has no need for those who would judge sentences instead of organs!

It's very much in the lineage of Videodrome and Existenz.

The movie was terrible, goofy, uninteresting. Don't waste your time if his material already isn't interesting to you.

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