Cosmopolis
cosmopolis Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager's day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart..jpg)
Synopsis
28-year-old
financial wizard and billionaire Eric Packer traverses Manhattan in his
stretch limo. His goal: a haircut at Anthony's, his father's old barber.
But on this day his driver has to navigate a presidential visit, an
attack by anarchists and a rapper's funeral. Stuck in traffic, he
anxiously monitors the value of the yen on the limo's computer.
28-year-old financial wizard and billionaire
Eric Packer traverses Manhattan in his stretch limo. His goal: a haircut
at Anthony's, his father's old barber. But on this day his driver has
to navigate a presidential visit, an attack …
Storyline
Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager's day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.'Cosmopolis', which I haven't read, is apparently a re-imaging of 'Ulysses' predicated on its main character, Eric Packer's, desire to travel by limo across New York City for a haircut, at the same time as his vast fortune, bet against the Chinese Yuan, contrary to all incredibly painstakingly detailed forecasts (the fallout of the pains taken is a plot point), free-falls. Packer's cross town limo ride is made an odyssey as the President is also in New York to make a speech, his presence received not only with death threats and the attendant red-alert security, diversions and traffic hell, but also a carnival of protesting anarchists who despise Eric Packer, and stretch limo riders generally, together with all they stand for. His own security detail picks up on a "credible threat" on his life. En route, Packer entertains various employees, early on hearing updates on how his stock is doing but never appearing greatly concerned either way, preferring to engage in mannered, alien-sounding conversations which amount, essentially, to small talk and in-house gossip, some bragging, commiseration over the death of his favourite rapper, and at one point a kind of lesson in techno-capitalism delivered by his Head of Theory (there's also a prostate examinatioCosmopolisn and some shagging thrown in there).
Cosmopolis
Rarely straying far from his limo or staying away long,
COSMOPOLIS is decidedly a chamber piece. In spite of its New York
setting I believe it was made entirely in Canada, possibly entirely on
studio sets, or close enough. If you thought A DANGEROUS METHOD was
insipid or too dialogue driven (I thought it was great), wait till you
get a load of COSMOPOLIS! It opens on a close-up of a kerb-side
limousine's grill, tracks right and glides along for two or three car
lengths, rounds a trunk and approaches Packer – Robert Pattinson in a
Gucci suit and black sunglasses – and his Head of Security loitering on
the broad steps of a Wall Street building. He announces his intention of
getting a haircut and it soon cuts to the interior of his limo, the
body of which, he later reveals, he had lined with cork insulation
against noise. He says it doesn't work but a striking stillness
nevertheless does descend upon the film here, in only the second minute,
leaving one with a sneaking sense that this will not be the violent,
kinetic romp that's being sold in that thirty second teaser. It's a good
thing one is given the opportunity to adjust one's expectations so soon
because COSMOPOLIS is, in fact, so confined and sterile that
Cronenberg's other films from the last ten years - all of them quite
intimate in scale and no longer than a hundred minutes – start to
assume, by contrast, a kind of grandeur. Howard Shore's score, for
example, performed by the band Metric, seems to be channelling Moby at
his least expressive. (The song that plays over the end credits is good
though.)
Cosmopolis
How much you will take away from COSMOPOLIS, therefore, depends to a great extent on how compelling you find the De Lillian post-modernism emporium. Packer's driver and security team's attempts to plot a route across the chaotic city are paralleled with his number crunchers' efforts to decipher the patterns which reveal the incisive moves to make in the currency markets are paralleled with Joyce and the awesome detail that makes up the life of a single day which point to the infinite complexity of destiny in the modern world except that Masters of the Universe like Eric Packer conspire to hold a compulsory purchase order on everybody's future; the Cronenbergian flesh is here the flesh of capital and it subsumes everything and resistance is futile not to mention insincere and unoriginal. Monks set themselves on fire in Vietnam, like, over forty years ago. Think outside the box, people. Bo-ring! Millions of Arabs across Africa and the Middle East of course defy Packer's bland assertion that such a protest is immediately forgotten nowadays, but then again, what would he know anyway? Ultimately this guy-in-a-limo movie is exactly what it appears to be at face value: an out-of-touch-rich-guy movie. In its defence, it's more fun than MARGIN CALL. Ahem.
Action, drama; forget about it, but there's plenty of theory to go around. On the plus side, Packer's concluding back and forth with Paul Giammati's character (who gives a number of different names) is good – finally less blasé and uninflected than the other set pieces – and somehow I left theatre with a more positive than negative overall impression of the film. Cronenberg has changed course once again following his hugely successful foray into more mainstream drama/character studies in his last three films which all share the same final shot. Personally, I liked where he was at before and rank this as a categorically weaker effort, though it's still far from being an outright bad film.
Cosmopolis
n Theaters |
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MPAA Rating | R (for some strong sexual content including graphic nudity, violence and language) |
Genres | Adaptation, , Foreign |
Run Time | 1 hour 48 minutes |
Distributors | Entertainment One Films |
