Following his interesting but relatively conventional thrillers A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises, and the intelligent but alarmingly strait-laced Freud/Jung drama A Dangerous Method, comes a refreshingly bold David Cronenberg film.
The man who brought us The Fly and Videodrome tackles Don DeLillo’s complex novel, not exactly one of the admired author’s most acclaimed works. However, Cronenberg seems to have found himself a new muse in the form of Robert Pattinson.
The British actor is a revelation as 28-year-old billionaire Eric Packer, who goes on an unusual odyssey through a rioting Manhattan, conducting his business in the back of his high-tech limousine. There’s an oddly unsettling futuristic and dystopian feel to Cosmopolis, although its themes are scarily current. As Packer is chauffered across the the city to get a haircut, he keeps an anxious eye on Wall Street, fascinated by his empire’s ruin as the Chinese yuan rises.
[…]
It’s hard to imagine another actor making such a remarkable impact as Pattinson. In every single wordy scene, he is incredible, from his subtly twitchy opening frame to the warped sexual tension displayed during his medical exam and how masterfully he utters every challenging line, imbuing them with world-weariness and logic. It’s a breakthrough performance for the Twilight star, who has consistently chosen interesting projects despite his heart-throb status, and Cronenberg’s brave casting has paid off. Pattinson is riveting throughout – there is a maelstrom of fierce intelligence in his financial wunderkind, bubbling under a controlled stoniness. It’s a layered performance, one of the best of the year, that makes the often pretentious and unrelatable theories believable and compelling. Pattinson holds this stagey yet visually memorable film together, even when it unravels unsatisfyingly – he makes the film worth your while. You won’t see another film starring an A-list idol this brave for a long time.
By way of preparation, Cronenberg showed his crew the 2009 film Lebanon, which takes place inside an Israeli tank, and 1981 war epic Das Boot, which takes place inside a German submarine.
“I said: ‘Let’s not be intimidated by this, this could be quite exhilarating if we do it right.’ We built a limo that comes apart like a Lego car in about 24 pieces. I don’t think of it as a challenge, but as a lot of fun.”
Robert Pattinson’s performance as the billionaire banker has been largely well received since the film’s Cannes debut.
“At its heart is a sensational central performance from Robert Pattinson,” said Tthe Telegraph’s Robbie Collin. “Pattinson plays him like a human caldera; stony on the surface, with volcanic chambers of nervous energy and self-loathing churning deep below.”
Empire’s Damon Wise observed: “Lean and spiky – with his clean white shirt he resembles a groomed Sid Vicious – Pattinson nails a difficult part almost perfectly, recalling those great words of advice from West Side Story: You wanna live in this crazy world? Play it cool.”
What made Cronenberg choose Pattinson as his leading man? “This character is in every scene in the movie which is quite unusual for a movie with a big star,” he says.
“That means he must have charisma, and that he is constantly revealing different tones and shades – and Rob has that.
“Finally, he has to be good with dialogue because this is wall-to-wall dialogue, some of it quite technical, which can be very intimidating for an actor. Once I convinced him he was the guy, he had no problem with it.”
Cronenberg is closely associated with the “body horror” genre through his 1970s and 80s films such as Rabid, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly.
Cronenberg has written a screenplay for a new Fly movie, but says plans to make it appear to have been squashed.
“I was interested in not doing exactly a sequel or a remake,” Cronenberg explains.
“It was suggested to me by the people at Fox who have the rights to the original [1950s] movie and my movie, but there was what we should call ‘creative differences’.
“What I was interested in doing and what they wanted were two different things, so it’s no longer in my control. It’s in their court to play.”
Cronenberg laughs when it’s pointed out that Robert Pattinson was born in 1986 – the same year that he made The Fly. “There comes a time as a director when you are no longer the youngest guy on the set – I used to be and now I’m the oldest!”
DD: What struck you about Robert Pattinson to make you think he’d fit the part of Eric Packer?
David Cronenberg: He’s intensely charismatic and watchable and this is a role in which the lead character is in every single scene, and that’s really unusual, even for a movies with big stars. And that means you have to have somebody who people will watch and want to watch and want to listen to. I’d seen some of his movies that were not Twilight and I thought this guy’s got an interesting range and he seems to be a serious actor, he’s really interested in chances and is willing to take chances.
GQ&A: Robert Pattinson on hip-hop, sex scenes and why everyone needs to wear Gucci
Within moments of meeting Robert Pattinson, GQ.com learns a valuable lesson: you simply can’t compete with Twilight fans. Having previously expressed his admiration for Martin Amis in an interview, it was decided we should present everyone’s favourite server-crashing undead heartthrob with a copy of the new Amis novel Lionel Asbo. Sadly one literary-minded Edward Cullen devotee has trumped our gift. “I got given a first-edition signed copy of Money by a Twilight fan in Germany yesterday,” reveals Pattinson. “She was trying to tell me that she found it in Massachusetts while we were surrounded by all these people screaming.” Pattinson stars in David Cronenberg’s striking and strange new film Cosmopolis, out this week, which sees him as an otherworldly billionaire sating his carnal, financial and intellectual desires riding through town in the back of a limousine in search of a haircut. After some preliminaries (when presented with the latest edition of GQ he cries out “Andrew’s wearing my suit!“), he talks about his hip-hop moment of glory, the worst haircut he’s ever had and what he’s learned from working with Frida Giannini at Gucci…
Rob: it’s nice to see the fans are still excited 5 years after the first twilight movie, even though I was just here two months ago and they’re still excited so it’s good.
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Rob: (about Kristen’s performance in OTR) “yeah, no she’s doing amazing in Snow White as well” …. (would he like to work with Kristen again) “I mean I’d love to, yeah. I mean I don’t know soon, it’s like..but uh, yeah I think she’s great.”
To mark the release of Cosmopolis this week, Entertainment One have given us a signed poster for the new movie. The poster has been signed by star of the movie, Robert Pattinson and legendary director David Cronenberg.
Robert Pattinson
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Robert Pattinson
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