Cosmopolis David Cronenberg, 2012
One disaffected techno-capitalist says to another one. The limo as echo-chamber. The 1% as echo-chamber. A series of encounters, two-handers inside a limo, each one seemingly about separate things (like Limits of Control?), but really about late capitalism and about death and about how those two things are seemingly inextricably connected. Pattinson's billionaire has seemingly acquired everything there is; but those impulses don't go away. Characters constantly say "I know this" (as in knowledge being another asset that can be catalogued and acquired, just another piece of capital); Pattinson late in the film retorts "show me something I don't know." Whether that's the shock of pain, the ultimate redemption of death, who can tell. But what's observable here, and what's truly remarkable is the formal precision, the coldness, the mastery, with which Cronenberg does all this. It's been a long time since I've seen a film that seemed so off, whose rhythms and editing patterns felt so alien. And then out of nowhere you start sensing the rampant absurdity of it all, the comic underside to the bizarreness of it all. Pattinson's prostate is asymmetrical, the visual punchline of taking a pee inside your own limo, pie attacks. Just another day. Just another day of trying to screw Sarah Gadon.