Cosmopolis [Thoughts]

Another less critically focused ‘thoughts’ post, this time on David Cronenberg’s big screen adaptation of Don Delillo’s near-future sci-fi novel Cosmopolis. This is the first time I haven’t done any background reading for a post (aside from a couple of reviews for context), so expect plenty of oversight and half-assed conjecture. That being said, getting into the habit of working purely on my own intuition will no doubt prove useful, so I expect I’ll try something like this again soon. Note: I’ve not read the book yet, so this post is based purely on the film. 

If you judged it solely on its standing on IMDB, you might dismiss Cosmopolis without giving it a chance. Going into it I certainly expected another let-down a la The Counselor; a film that overcame even my stalwart McCarthy fanboyism and drastically disappointed. Thankfully Cosmopolis, on the other hand, is exactly as good as its director and source material promise it to be. It’s a coldly beautiful glimpse into the rarified top-level of the capitalist hierarchy and an excellent, nuanced character study of the impossibly rich so far removed from the triumphs and terrors of ordinary society that they are - to paraphrase William Gibson - not really human at all. Pattinson plays the young billionaire Packer perfectly; imbuing each deadpan line with just the right shade of apathy, desperation, resignation or amusement as the situation requires. A host of co-stars all shine - I particularly love Kevin Durand’s imposing but perpetually bemused chief of security - but the true co-star for me is Packer’s limo; a fully ‘Proust-ed’ (cork-lined like Proust’s bedroom study) behemoth resplendent in screens scrolling endless data accessed with the barest flicker of movement. More than half the film takes place in the soundproofed limo and when the doors are shut the city crawling by outside feels an eternity away. In one excellent scene Packer sips vodka and exchanges epithets on the philosophy of capital whilst safely cocooned inside the limousine with his chief of theory; outside his security team go toe-to-toe with anarchists in the midst of a full-blown riot resembling a violent, Occupy-style demonstration gone bad. Like a summer shower the brief flare of violence dissipates, whilst inside the limo Packer and his guest barely blink except to remark on the unoriginality of a self-immolating protester. It’s a stark, pessimistic metaphor: the 99% exhaust themselves in protest whilst the 1% pay them no heed, languishing comfortably in the knowledge that any protest, any uprising or attempted revolution will be utterly ineffective. 

For Packer, the true threat lies inside. Like so many SF stories, man’s demise begins with the ego. Packer’s ego is understandably large and for him the joy of winning anything has long dissipated into expectance. He eats and fucks like an animal, shoots guns and tries desperately to feel the thrill of living again. His marriage - a financial arrangement - is stillborn (though we get the impression he’d prefer it not to be), and his intelligence is so imposing his advisors deny him even a conversation for fear of humiliation. Surrounded by people, Packer is utterly alone. He gambles at the impossibly high-stakes tables of cyber-capitalism and as the film opens he makes his first bad move, underestimating the Yuan and losing untold millions in the process. His ego fractured by this blow, Packer begins to engineer his own demise, all in the name of ‘looking for something more.’ His dissatisfaction is an indictment of the relentless pursuit of wealth to which he has devoted himself. His obsession with the Rothko Chapel - for example - is an obsession to own, not to experience: he has reduced everything in his life to a quantity or an asset and has negated his humanity in the process. Hermetically sealed inside his limousine, Packer no longer shares any commonality with the world outside. 

Packer and his limo experience their demise in sync, at least superficially. In the beginning he is impeccably suited and it is polished to a mirror. As the film progresses he loses his clothes and half his hair and is covered in pie whilst his limo is vandalised with paint and bricks almost beyond recognition. He fucks several women and has his prostate examined and breaks down at the news of the death of a musician and friend. By the time Paul Giammati’s character takes a pot-shot at him in a run-down industrial estate on the edge of the city, Packer is no more recognisable than the vehicle he leaves behind. This close to the edge, having already felt the rush of killing, Packer seems finally to almost enjoy himself; he bounces nonchalantly through the dark alleyways grinning and waving his revolver, finally enjoying the game of life now that the stakes are high enough to illicit a real emotional response. 

The final twenty minutes of the film are a powerhouse of acting; a two-man, one act play in which Packer faces disgruntled ex-employee Benno Levin (Giamatti). The two go head-to-head in a sort of mutual analysis-cum-therapy session, in which Packer attempts to deconstruct the fantasy world of which Benno believes himself to be the hero, whilst Benno forces Packer to face the demise he has engineered for himself. Packer quickly realises Benno is not the martyr he believes himself to be; he is simply a weak and bitter old man desperately losing touch with a slick, youthful world. Benno is obsessed with Packer, in his head believing him to be the living embodiment of this world that has discarded him and that no longer makes any sense to him; an increasingly abstract world of cyber-capital and the aggressively excessive consumerism it engenders. Fundamentally, though, the two are alike. Before his haircut Packer pisses in his limo, and at Benno’s squat they both discuss Benno’s improvised waste disposal; and whilst Packer is constantly preoccupied with sex - having it, thinking about it, even talking in its 'throbbing' language - Benno’s sexual anxiety manifests as a syndrome-fear of his penis receding. Remove everything around the two men and they are both living, breathing, shitting, procreating organisms. This is the hard truth Benno faces: he is convinced that killing Packer will be akin to severing the head of the capitalist snake, convinced that it will bring him redemption and martyrdom and fulfil his destiny, when in actual fact this is a delusion, a 'useless fantasy,' and all that is left is the simple fact of murder. 

Benno reluctantly acknowledges his conceits but his fantasy is too engrained, he has devoted too much of himself to his goal and his imagined syndromes too comfortably relieve him of the responsibility of his actions; thus Packer ultimately fails to avoid his fate - but not before he too faces some difficult truths. Having already toppled his empire at the first shock of failure, in Benno’s squat Packer faces the far more terrifying realisation that the world around him is without order or pattern. Inside his limo Packer could predict everything and was surprised by nothing. But outside, his system buckles: Brother Fez dies of a weak heart - surely it should be a gunshot wound? and Benno, a person who should not happen, happens. The Yuan, Brother Fez’s heart, Benno Levin: all represent the uncontrollable, chaotic nature of the universe; a nature Packer (and his real-life financial counterparts) mistakenly denies. 

But what about the very end? Packer dies, certainly; but for most of the film death - or at least the real, intimate threat of death - is his objective, the ‘something more’ he is looking for. He eats, fucks, eats again, fucks again, is tasered, kills his bodyguard, shoots himself; and finally all that is left is death. But conversing with Benno brings Packer to self-realisation. Suddenly the significance of the asymmetric prostate is revealed: it is significant precisely because it is not significant. It’s just a tick, a quirk, a symbol of a chaotic universe impervious to mapping and predicting. Understanding that, Packer is freed from the confines of his limousine - his monument to data and patterns - and thrust out into a world where death lurks behind every door and life is painful and funny and vivid. He says himself his 'situation has changed,' and it has: once a monstrous omniscient ego situated at the center of his own universe, suddenly Packer finds himself one among untold millions, somewhere at the edge of something too big and too chaotic to comprehend. The limousine - the wall between Packer and the world - has disintegrated. The repercussions of this are death; but crucially he achieves his transcendent moment - something his companion Benno fails utterly to do - and thus (I think) Packer achieves a victory, albeit a bitterly pyrrhic one. Packer's chronic fear of death is overcome in these last seconds. As the music rises he opens his eyes to face death, and calmly relinquishes control of his destiny. ‘I wanted you to save me,’ says Benno; but who really saves who?

Man, I really loved this movie, but I don’t think I comprehended half of what was going on. Analysing it without any contextual reading has been difficult too - I’ve pretty much been working out my own thoughts as I’ve been writing and with hardly any editing I fear this post is going to be a touch incoherent and verbal-diarrhoea-y - but relying solely on my own opinion has made for a pretty satisfying, refreshing way of approaching criticism. Definitely something to try again. Also - and I think I must have said this about every film I’ve written about so far - I shall definitely revisit Cosmopolis. I didn’t touch at all on the dialogue in this post, which I found fascinating while watching: the odd phraseology, the occasional specification and the throwaway comments in seemingly important scenes (such as Benno’s remark about mutton right at the end) all suggest something going on with the dialogue that - without a second watch - I can’t quite put my finger on.