Cosmopolis

I'm convinced Cronenberg simply had a string of semi-conscious fever dreams and strung them together. I'm really unsure what was meant to be accomplished with this movie other than telling the audience: rich people are just like us- miserable people who are unsatisfied with their lives.

Reviews thus far have not mentioned Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, or how Cosmopolis can be interpreted as a dream using Jungian symbology. Cronenberg's previous movie was about Freud and Jung, so it is no artificial stretch to assume that he would apply Jung to a story, or that De Lillo had also done the same.

In Jungian dream analysis, the limousine can be taken as a metaphor of one's self, one's course in life. Each visitor to the limousine ought to be considered an aspect of the occupant's personality, each separate and distinct. There is the intellectual who has been hired to "do theory,"the young one who has been hired to find patterns, the nervous security expert who has tested for system vulnerabilities, the visiting prostitute (profane) who is asked to help obtain "the chapel" (sacred). Each character represents an aspect of a single self. Throughout the journey to get a "haircut," (which is a Wall Street term for taking a loss), the outside security chief relays messages from "The Complex," which might be interpreted as the unified self.

I think this is clearly what Cronenberg intended. The fuller meaning of the movie resides in how the dream reflects the actual world, how it fits with the shared reality in which we all participate. How does this simple journey to get across the city reflect the pleasures and perils of existence? Can we really know the world, or can we only know ourselves? How is the main character a representation of the whole world, which has a kind of self, too? Does the ending of the movie reflect an outcome that is metaphorically plausible as an integration of macroeconomic, political, human forces shaping history?

Cosmopolis is an intellectual work, carefully crafted, and not at all pretentious, as some have said.

Cronenberg's Cosmopolis is an adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel. The Novel is accepted as unfilmable an as one of the few novels which composes a precise image of our zeitgeist. The movie is not just based on Cronenberg's clever written script that could be a marvellous play for theatres but also a well directed movie with a talented cast and gets the audience into the atmosphere of a Japanese surreal anime. Nonetheless the movie is a marketing mistake of its kind. The negative reviews that emphasis the main actor Robert Pattinson's ex-sanguine performance are not to understand, since he is exactly as vampire as his character Eric Packer, a 28 years old egoist with a lot of money. However the reason of the box-office flop can be understood. First reason is the difference of target groups: It is possible that neither real Cronenberg fans (because of the poster of Pattinson on the foreground) nor Pattinson fans (since it's not a teenage movie) had the intention to see the movie. Second reason is he wrong advertisement: The audience watches an action trailer but finds out it is a Japanese surreal anime. This masterpiece of art proves us that even sci-fi legend David Cronenberg can flop on box-office.

Eric Packer, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager, crosses the city of NY in his limo to get a haircut.

All great artists, in this case, directors, have a bad work, and for me, this film is a splinter impossible to remove in Cronenberg's career.

There's no story here to follow, the dialogues are empty and sometimes pretentious, without substance that can be extracted from them, leaving the message of political and economic criticism completely distorted.

The characters have no soul, I simply couldn't connect and create empathy with them.

The photography made me scratch my head and thinking "why you did this?", I didn't see any credible reasons for using so many close-ups shots, or the sly CGI in the limo scenes.

Even Robert Patinson cannot save a scene from this film.

If you are going to watch this movie, you need to give yourself adequate space to do so. This is a philosophical movie and not exactly easy to watch. It comes across more as visual poetry than anything else and therefore won't appeal to a mass audience. Which is partially the reason for a rather low score on this site. In my opinion it deserves more; the reason for this is that I firmly believe a movie has to be critiqued on the basis of it's type - you shouldn't judge this movie on the basis of all movies, but other movies of this sort, which are close adaptations of novels packed with dense dialogue and philosophical themed subject matter. The question you're looking for the answer to is "should I watch this movie?" And yes, you should, but curb your expectations to what type of movie it is. In it's genre, I find it thoughtprovoking and streamlined; It's a limo slowly being covered by graffiti; Something cold, perfect and seamless being torn apart from within. You will find no typical storyline and no lovable characters; at several times I thought to myself that these characters are in fact portraying computers assessing and processing information and various symptoms of the human condition. People do not talk like they do in this movie. The movie is very well executed and absolutely worth your time. If you are interested in this type of movie that is - and if that's the case it will likely leave you inspired in some way because you are constantly thinking throughout.