Marnie is narratively and technically artless – literal and obvious and shrill and nearly naked in its themes and concerns, a story clumsily built around Freudian repression. Yet Marnie is not the travesty many people think.
It might sound like a lame excuse. But if a man cheats on his wife, he might explain himself this way: “I couldn’t help it. My evolved psychological mechanisms made me have an affair.” And he’d be right. Sort of.
The temptation when writing about Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is to try something really clever.
A History of Violence is a bizarre, challenging film dressed up as a mainstream entertainment, a subversive work bordering on parody yet also deadly earnest. The movie confirms that David Cronenberg has grown into one of cinema’s most sophisticated, rigorous, and probing filmmakers.
All evidence suggests that the people who made Secretary didn’t pay much attention to the failure of David Cronenberg’s Crash. The movies share a similar M.O.: A relatively normal person is introduced to sexual practices that some might consider deviant and violent, and then gives him- or herself over the them. And the films also have the same fatal flaw: They are closed systems that don’t allow access to the characters. Both are beautifully made and so distant that the most I can do is admire their craftsmanship.
