Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic)

At an Canadian Academy a group of people volunteer to be used as test subjects in an experiment to gain telepathic powers to communicate with after their ability to communicate through speech was removed. Then we slowly watch how the results turn out with sudden changes and obstacles put into motion to see how they adapt to it. While, throughout the observers constantly update us with their progress.

Was it a big mistake that I decided to watch this early Cronenberg art-flick before I went to bed. Maybe so, maybe not? I was fighting to keep my eyes open towards the end, but I can see why people were derailed by this experience. This oddity is real hard to get into and it only goes for about hour, but it does seem longer. Way longer! I wasn't entirely bored from this outing, but I did become rather restless in the final twenty minutes. The film is shot in black & white and there's real no sound, other than a voice-over that crops up every now again. This exhausting narration is bluntly monotonous with it's thick technical jargon that sometimes doesn't always tie in to what's happening on screen and you really have to concentrate to have a clue about what's going. At times I fell in and out of the context, but I still had some sort of an idea to what was happening. It goes on to relate telepathic power with sexual awaking, while looking into the behavioural patterns of these erotic and ESP activities and signals. Most of the time it feels like the film is meandering about aimlessly with a bunch of method actors who are just performing for a live crowd. Like a fellow has user has already mention it does feel like a documentary. While, the intellectual study might be a clever idea, but you can't help but feel disconnected from this lifeless exploration. The look of the film showcases the professional eye that Cronenberg would go on to incorporate into his latter flicks and this was his first 35mm shot project. The atmosphere has a lonely, out-of-this world feel with it's abstract backdrop that lingers on screen. The finesse and execution of such transfixed images is what kept me watching, really. This was the cold and distant style Cronenberg would go one to make his own and the sub-text of the plot shows up again in some way in the film "Scanners".

If you want to be entertained, look elsewhere because you'll mostly be frustrated. But if you want to see where it all began for Cronenberg look no further than here.

Stereo (1969)

** (out of 4)

Ultra bizarre film from David Cronenberg has a group of young people agreeing to have a brain surgery, which will take away their ability to think or feel but they will gain the ability to communicate mentally.

STEREO was the first feature to be directed by the young Cronenber and many people see a connection between this film and his later hit SCANNERS. This film here is certainly a well-made piece but it's one of those movies that you can respect much more than actually enjoy while watching. I say that because the film is certainly very well-made and it has a terrific atmosphere and visual look. I loved the B&W cinematography and I thought the director did a very good job with the look and style.

I'd also argue that the actors do a fine job with their roles but, with all of that said, there's very little else going on with STEREO. The film was shot without any dialogue or even sound effects but every few minutes a narrator will fill us in on the "plot." All of this just really doesn't add anything compelling and in the end the film is rather boring and hard to get through even at just 65-minutes.

While this rare student film of Cronenberg's was certainly a pleasure to come across, it sure as shoot didn't offer much for pleasure or entertainment period once actually viewed. Designed as a "faked" B & W, voiceover-only documentary on the extra-sensory/psychic abilities of a group of young subjects in an enclosed secluded laboratory, with the big problem being that "faked" documentaries on any subject generally manage to make themselves entertaining by being either funny (as was the case with "Spinal Tap," "Waiting For Guffman," "Fear Of A Black Hat," etc.), or disturbing/disgusting/scary/whatever (i.e. "Blair Witch," "The Last Broadcast," "Snuff," etc.) Unfortunately this film didn't seem to try to take any sort of emotional approach to the material--it didn't even have any of the nauseating gore & makeup effects characteristic of his later films like "The Brood" and "The Fly"--and thus simply managed to be tedious and unrewarding.

While it is enjoyable to see some of Cronenberg's early stock actors at work here (some of whom would later have smaller roles in his later films), and the subject matter for the film is an obvious precursor to his later "Scanners," ultimately the darn thing will probably do little more than offer the completists out there some rather unenthusiastic bragging rights. Whatta snooze!

Cronenberg's first feature is a bizarre, distended thing, whose real star is the location. I'm guessing we're looking at York University campus; regardless, every obscure tableau he stages is self-consciously dwarfed by the forbidding institutional architecture that houses it. The sporadic voice-over that occasionally rises from the silence suggests that we're watching a narrative about a sexual telepathy clinic whose mandate goes seriously awry. If you concentrate, you can see how this relates to the on screen shenanigans in a linear and probably even preplanned way - it's not just precious mannerisms, although it is that as well. The film makes the most of its visual material with a special thing for fisheye pans, and it runs free love through a dystopian sci-fi wringer in a way that will be familiar to fans of his later work, even including a giveaway throw to "Scanners". But after a while it does get tedious, and while Cronenberg's iconoclasm remains enjoyable and felt, minimalist sci-fi on no budget was always easier to pull off in print than on screen.

This strange gem fits suitably in the creche of Cronenberg bit it's not for everyone that loves Cronenberg....Just the ones that are insanely in need of everything he has ever created. Its not because it's a bad film, on the contrary it is very intriguing. Its just incredibly slow and the sparse environment lack of color and mostly silent audio makes for a surreal but not very compelling film. There is no soundtrack...At all. There is no real dialog just moments of narration, which of course paints the picture moreso than the acting and mise en scene. Set in the Future, we are treated to a pseudo-documentary based on the scientific workings of a parapsychologist named Luther Stringfellow a famed member of the fictitious Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry. His thesis; It is hoped that telepathic groups, bonded in polymorphous sexual relationships, will form a socially stabilizing replacement for the "obsolescent family unit". The subjects will be seven young volunteers who will submit to experimental brain surgery to endow them with telepathic abilities and quench their ability to speak and be recorded daily. The film serves as a record of said experiment. This is where the film kinda falls down. The film gives us some interesting characters to watch, but their silence doesn't allow us to really know sympathize with them. Its like watching an acting class exercise in "emoting" or "mugging". A pantomime this complex needs some form of interpretive audio. While it is interesting to watch the actors go about their "telepathic" play, the drama comes off as stilted due to the highly scientific nature of the narration. Some long sequences that involve little or no narration do not pass quickly and create a kind of dream logic between film and audience. Are we getting what he is showing us? I dunno, as some of the action is so interpretive that we could be on a completely different plane of reasoning than what Cronenberg could be trying to describe. Heady, perhaps, but I think that Cronenberg was not trying to be pretentious, I think he was doing what a lot of first time film students do. Get in over their heads with grand ideas. I can forgive as I have done that myself, which is why I gave it 7 stars. Its not bad its just not for everybody.