nan | 楠木

David Cronenberg, the cult turned mainstream director, has a knack for exploring the intersections of violence, sex, technology, media and reality. Having only randomly seen some of his works (and much more familiar with his recent flicks, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, which people say mark a sharp change in style), I’m awestruck with the director’s visual imagination in Videodrome.

Starring James Woods as Max Renn, the president of a lewd cable channel, the film follows his discovery of a SM-theme show called Videodrome. Max is fascinated with the show, how real it looks, and unknowingly stumbles into a dark and twisted conspiracy, which ultimately leads to a mind-boggling transformation of Max himself.

Cronenberg lays out for the audience a series of stunning images, exploring the realms of reality versus hallucination and flesh versus machine, and throwing in a good dose of violence Cronenberg style. The film’s obsession with reality and flesh is reminiscent of Cronenberg’s 1999 film eXistenZ - indeed, that later film could be said to be covering much of the same ground, albeit from a different angle with a slightly different focus. What eXistenZ doesn’t cover, and Videodrome does, is a direct criticism (in a satirical format) of modern media’s corruption of man, and Max Renn is certainly representative of the sleazy profit-driven media executive that films like Network portray so well.

This is not the type of film for leisure after-hours. It is disturbing in content and demanding in attention, though it is also ultimately rewarding. I felt one viewing certainly didn’t do it justice, though the heaviness of the content means that I won’t be looking forward to revisiting this film any time soon.

7/10