The poster is almost the same as the French one. The color of “COSMOPOLIS” is different and we can see the UK rating (15 Certificate).
Nothing new on the trailer – almost the same as the first teaser trailer, but now with the eOne (UK and North American distributor) tag in the beginning and the names of the rest of the cast in the end.
Cosmopolis will be released in cinemas in the UK on June 15th
Don DeLillo – Repubblica (Italy)
How did you feel to see Robert Pattinson, actor famous for having played a vampire in a literary creation of yours?
Don DeLillo: The character he portrays is very close to that of the novel. However, I’ve never seen Twilight and when I write I have in mind neither the film nor anyone who can interpret it. I just care that will be played by good actor
David : “You have to betray the book to adapt it because if it’s a literal adaptation, you’re going to fail. You must accept you’re doing a film and you’re not translating a book. You’re making a new thing. It only took me six days to write the script and believe me , it’s a record. You can easily take one year to write a screen play. But here, 6 days were enough because the novel is already working as a film. The 1st three days, I just copied the dialogues without changing anything but I put it in the form of a screenplay. And then the next 3 days, I filled inthe scenes. But after I wrote down the dialogues, I asked myself if it really made a film. And for me the answer is yes. It made a really good film. However, I din’t change any line in the dialogues. The character played by Juliette Binoche has just one scene in the film but it’s a very long scene in the film. In the book, it’s in her flat in NY but I put the scene in the limo. I thought it was more interesting to put them in a more restrained place. Because he has power, he forces people to come to him and his employees must go in his limo to see him. That’s why in the scene with Juliette, I’d rather see her come to him and he doesn’t come to his flat. It’s a metaphor. When you’re inside this limo, it’s so luxurious with all these screens, these drinks, this food and there’s even toilets in there. We got everything we want but we aren’t in the real world. In fact, when we’re in the limo , we’re in Eric’s mind. He’s sitting in his own head. It’s similar to being in a submarine, it’s both hostile and foreign. It’s as if he was under water and he could only breathe was inside the limo. If he gets out, he’ll obviously drowns. Througout the film, he finds out he’s a prisoner and he has absolutely no freedom at all. The blame is not only on the system but it’s as if the system had contaminated his body. From a political point of view, we can say it’s the capitalism that enslaved him. So he looks for darker and more dangerous way to be free. His wife tells him “Free to do what?. To be broke and die?” and he answers her “Yes”. I began thinking about it when I was doing The Fly. I was thinking about Samuel Beckett, an irish playwright whose text are simple and austere. However beyond this austerity and simplicity, there’s a big complexity. That’s what’s interesting for me. I’ve loved the cinema of many directors like Fellini. He made outgoing and voluptuous films but it’s not my temper. I found my own sobriety if we may call it. A kind of austerity, an ascetism. I don’t shoot very much and I do few takes. I don’t multiply the angles. With maturity, you’re more and more confident and we know perfectly what we want and we’re more accurate. We know what’s going to work. So I end up simplifying my filmaking definitively. I’ve always been on cautious with money but I don’t understand anything. I often read financial press but the words they use are more abstract than Heidegger’s philosophy. We invent money. It doesn’t exist as a natural ressource. It comes from society. However , we can’t control it. It has his own life and can destroy people’s. So my relation with money is very simple. I don’t invest money in complex . I’m not interested. I know we can deny money but I try to make it as simple as possible.
Some quotes look familiar because they’re asking the same questions, but looks like it’s a new interview. They talk more about Rob.
Le Monde: This way of perceiving a script can suprise coming from an author so versed in genre movies?
David Cronenberg: It is often thought that the cinema is a visual art. I think that for me, it’s a more complicated combination. For me, the heart of cinema is a face that talks. It’s what we film the most. I heard someone say that the last 22 minutes of the movie – where’s there is only Paul Giamatti and Robert Pattinson in a room – is like theater. I don’t think so. In a play, you woudln’t have wide shots, movements from the camera, change of lighting. This is cinema. Without close-ups, there’s no cinema.
[…]
Le Monde: And Robert Pattinson?
DonDeLillo: The character he plays is really close to the one in the book. I haven’t seen Twilight, but I impressed my two 13 years old nieces when I told them the British Robert Pattinson was going to play in a movie adapted from one of my books. They respect me now!
David Cronenberg: Casting is an occult art. It’s a matter of intuition. There’s objectives factors tho. The character is 28, he’s american. We needed someone who would look that age and that could do a perfect American accent. The movie is partnership between France and Canada. Also, I could only use one American actor and for me, it was Paul Giamatti. I could get an English actor tho.
Then of course, there’s the presence of the actor, he has to be able to portray a complex, crual, brutal and almost vulgar character in a way. He has to be really sophisticated and vulnerable at the same time, naiive and childish. If only to make people believe that he’s capable of accomplishing so much, he needs strength and charisma. Moreover, he’s in every scene. It doesn’t mean he has to be handsome bu he has to be nice enough to look at for an hour and a half. And to finish, he needs to have some kind of notoriety. When a movie cost some kind of budget, you need to be able to tease your financial partners. And with all these restrictions, the list of actors you need, gets shorter. I thought about Rob pretty early on.
Cosmopolis and David Cronenberg interview in Studio Ciné Live magazine – France
ETA: Cosmopolis review added (Translation via RP Life)
A Cronenberg as brilliant as he is firm.
Each in their own genre, David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo are silversmiths of fantastic, unhealthy and sometimes dark atmospheres. As well as of the science of language and characters in shambles and – let’s not forget – of controversy.
It’s then pretty obvious that one would end up adaptating the other’s work. Cosmopolis is the ghostly and hypnotic story of a day in the life of a golden boy who is about to lose his empire because of the crisis, indifferent to the world that surrounds him. He’s hypochondriac and schizophrenic. His long journey across a chaotic New York, rythmed by meetings with his wife, his mistresses and his employees, will lead him to a point of no return. In a perfect balanced cinematic movement, David Cronenberg decided to adapt to the letter the extremely rich prose of Don DeLillo. He filmed with an incredible ingenuity this stifling and unsetlling closed-door.
This preconception to stay faithful to the text of the author is amazing but not without any danger. Especially in the last part of the film, where one could definitely get lost in a verbal flood that becomes complex for the viewer and for Robert Pattinson – who was perfect until then – but seems, all of the sudden, not to be able to manage anything anymore.
As always with Cronenberg, there’s no in between, no second place, no way out. Cosmopolis gets appreciated at full or not at all. Take it or leave it.
3/5 stars
Some HD screencaps from the Cosmopolis Clip posted earlier here. Click for bigger.
Translation:
I’m 41 years and I understand what is the problem, says her/his character in the film. Life is too contemporary.
Don DeLillo’s writing – and the film is very faithful to the novel – it was for me the extraordinary discovery of a universe.
A cold world, without humanity. That forces us to face the nightmare of desire, anxiety to possess everything, the obsession to win, to climb higher up, looking for a “more” is not there.
Although his character is very contemporary, mixing sex and business, and perhaps no longer believe in anything, not even art. What effect did it?
Didi Fincher is a lost woman, just like Eric Packer is lost. It’s just one person, its apparent weight is actually a hiding place where reigns anxiety. Cosmopolis speaks of our need to procure money, sex, power and mix everything. A very dangerous game.
Io Donna: Robert Pattinson, who is the lead in Cosmopolis, is a global icon, a living image of beauty and youth. A perfect choice.
Juliette: I met Robert for the first time on set. I must admit I never saw any of his films. And I discovered in him a fierce passion for cinema, he knows the cinema much better than I do. It was lovely and fun to work with him, he’s a man who’s very ambitious, he will produce and direct his own films one day.
Q: What made you go back to Cannes with Cosmopolis?
David Cronenberg: The festival and I have a long history. In a sense I have the feeling of coming home. I think it is an ideal film for Cannes and I’m excited about the idea of having Rob with me.
Q: Today it is impossible to imagine someone for this part. However, you offered it before to Colin Farrell …
DC: When Colin left the project to film the remake of Total Recall, it made me rethink everything. Anyway he was too old for the part: he’s 35 and I wanted to be faithful to the book, it was necessary to have 25 year old actor. Then I started to check all the actors of that age and that’s how I thought of Rob. I had seen him in Twilight, of course, but nothing he had done so far really predisposed him to act in Cosmopolis. Even though you choose an actor by the perceived potential you see in him and not by his resume. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.
Thinking of Rob 