Noted director David Cronenberg slams conservative US politics

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Los Angeles, May 24 (IANS) In David Cronenberg's latest genre twister 'Crimes of the Future', Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux play partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery for public nightclub spectacles.

They're enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other's bodies. All of this in a governing society that's not too fond of it.

Cronenberg acknowledged at the Cannes Film Festival press conference that the movie "addresses, though not in overtly political way, the question of who owns whose body," reports 'Deadline'.

"I did write it 20 years ago, but you can feel that this was coming, this kind of oppressive ownership and control," said the filmmaker about how issues of rights over one's body against ruling governments hasn't gone away.

"It's a constant in history: There's some sort of government that wants to control its population and means once again, body is reality."

That control then leads to the government having sway over "speaking, your brain".

"In Canada, and I have said this recently, we think everyone in the U.S. is completely insane, I think the U.S. has gone completely bananas, and I can't believe what the elected officials are saying, not just about Roe v Wade, so it is strange times," said Cronenberg about the right-leaning political attitudes stateside.

"We talk about Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, but then south of the border in Canada we feel the vibrations that are weirdly similar," the filmmaker said.

"The movie is not overtly political. But to me, all art is political or innately political. It is an expression of culture, context and intellect, of a very specific language, so in that sense it's political, whether the creator of the work is conscious of it or not."

The press conference moderator asked about the notion of climate change in the film, specifically pointing out the boy who eats a plastic pail at the onset of the movie.

Consider it intentional on behalf of the 'Crash' filmmaker and a nod to the burgeoning use of microplastics in the globe.

Cronenberg mentioned how stopping the Earth's production of plastics is challenging. How about we embrace plastics as food? "(It would) solve the problem of famine," he said.

"It's a Jonathan Swift, modest proposal, satirical suggestion, but at the same time there's some reality," Cronenberg conceded.

--IANS

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