While I appreciate what David Cronenberg does, he’s more the oil to my water. The Shrouds was the first time I really thought I would have a shot to get fully on his wavelength. But being the true auteur that he is, Cronenberg maintains his pure oilyness, and makes a movie that clearly wholly comes from him, and helps him deal with what ever he’s going through. One day I’ll get inside you David. Today is not that day, but I’m definitely getting closer.
Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has really been trying to deal with his feelings about the loss of his loved wife Becca (Diane Kruger). One way he’s trying is by buying a cemetery, and building a viewing experience for the families of the deceased there. Yes: you can watch your loved ones decay in the grave. Any catharsis Karsh was getting gets tossed away one morning, when he finds out several graves, including his wife’s, are trashed. This causes panic among not only the poor families of the dead, but also Karsh’s old double dating friend Maury (Guy Pearce), and Soo-Min Szabo (Sandrine Holt), Karsh’s potential business partner on this cemetery expansion overseas.
Years now of watching David Cronenberg films, I was as close as I’ve ever been to being on his wavelength. For all the weirdness going on here, at its core, what The Shrouds is going after is as universal as he is going to get. Poor Karsh is grieving the loss of his wife. Those emotions don’t come with logic: you feel how you feel. Karsh’s feelings are strange, but he’s better than most by at least trying to deal with them. Cronenberg’s film has a lot to say about the dying process, unafraid to go into parts of that process we don’t usually talk about. If you’re someone who has cancer, and has to go through surgery to alter your body to stay alive, is it even worth it if the person you love doesn’t desire you anymore? Despite the stilted dialogue, the message underneath it is honest and powerful, and really hits home when The Shrouds really tries to go personal with its main story about Karsh and Becca and her death.
But that message alone probably wasn’t enough for a feature film, so Cronenberg had to add a b plot to his tale. Now, what I thought that plot teased was very enticing; I thought Karsh’s grief was going to be juxtaposed against the cemetery and the vandals of the cemetery, becoming a part of a greater discussion about what the right way to grieve is, across various cultures, countries, and communities. But Cronenberg zags away from that, instead trying to go full mainstream with a sexy erotic political/technological thriller. Cronenberg becomes enamored with that part of the plot, and devotes too much time to it without the resources to pull it off. As a result, the only parts that kind of work are the interpersonal ones between Karsh an Maury, or Karsh and Becca’s twin sister Terry (also Diane Kruger) or Soo-Min. Cronenberg’s age shows how little he understands or cares how technology or political issues really work, turning all the plot babble into amusingly stupid dialogue, and condescendingly rendering all of his female characters, though I might also go weak in the knees if Vincent Cassel looked at me like that too. The Shrouds ends up being more of a tease than a revelation, content to live in its bizarre little world.
I wouldn’t really expect David Cronenberg to make a movie any other way. I did wonder if he might Easter Egg us a bit, and have a patient at the hospital Becca is at named Saul Tenser, one of the great recent character names of all time. Or a completely lustful Kristen Stewart just oogling a post-surgery Diane Kruger. Now THAT’s great filmmaking!