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Whale's The Invisible Man is possibly a closer point of departure than Neumann's original, in any respect David Cronenberg has his own "cacodemons of carnal pain" to chase. Abstractions become bodies in the opening scene, surely a thematic statement, the "magician" at the cocktail party is a gawky scientist (Jeff Goldblum). His teleportation experiment succeeds with the stocking of the reporter (Geena Davis) but turns meat synthetic, "the poetry of the steak" is lost on computers. His rival is the former lover editing Particle magazine (John Getz), jealousy is like the tiny speck that mars the ideal, the housefly in the pod mixes with human molecules and takes over. Nerd unto athlete, "it makes a man a king" until pieces start falling off. (They're stored in a medicine cabinet as a museum for the old self.) "A deep, penetrating dive into the plasma pool," also one of the decade's great romantic tragedies and the most harrowing portrait of the visceral indignities of disease and aging since Pialat's The Mouth Agape. Megalomania, fear and madness are stages the genius passes through in a pop Gothicism that brings out the cerebral Cronenberg's operatic side. The fantasy of transformation is answered by "general cellular chaos and revolution," sex and sugar are the newfound appetites that mold the tumorous chrysalis. The bloodied paw on the steamy glass, bristles out of the wound, the writhing larva in the delivery room. Bergman's Hour of the Wolf for the protagonist up the wall, with the poignancy of Goldblum's twitchy pantomime radiating through layers of goo. "I'm saying, I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake." The climax reveals the inspired variant of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the stinger is cinema's most sorrowful splatter effect. Cinematography by Mark Irwin. With Joy Boushel, Leslie Carlson, and George Chuvalo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |