Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic)

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.

Sometime in the future, the Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry is investigating the theories of parapsychologist Luther Stringfellow. Seven young adults volunteer to submit to a form of brain surgery that removes their power of speech but increases their power for telepathic communication.

If you are looking for a film to show at a party, this is not that film. It is black and white, slow-paced and almost entirely silent. Your party people will fall asleep and call you a loser.

If you are someone who loves David Cronenberg or enjoys the study of film and camera techniques, I think you might find an interesting film here. While set up as a faux documentary about the study of "telepathists" at the "Center for Erotic Inquiry", there is very little plot and mostly just interesting scenes and visuals.

Watch the lighting, angles. Pretend you are a guest in the room, a voyeur but not a participant. Notice the dark and creepy feel, despite the fact the story itself is not creepy and no music is added. The angles and lighting alone can give the feeling of darkness and depression.

A beautiful film, and one that really laid the foundation for the next thirty years of Cronenberg greatness. His themes of medical oddities, unusual science and body horror are evident here. The exploration (voluntary or otherwise) of new states of consciousness via sexual experimentation is a major theme in "Shivers", "Videodrome", "Dead Ringers", "Naked Lunch", "M. Butterfly" and "Crash". To understand Cronenberg, one must understand this film.

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.

Stereo (1969) is a bizarre film about human behavior. Cronenberg shot this movie as if was a documentary. A lot of his trademark direction and style is beginning to take shape. He would perfect this technique in his latter films. But whilst watching this movie you can see that he was going to be an excellent filmmaker. It also showcases his style as an documentist.

Not for everyone but it's always interesting to see a well known and accomplished director's earlier work. Stereo has all of

his trademarks, it's cold, clinical and very dark. Only Cronenberg can take something like sex and make it seem like a scientific experiment.

Recommended for Cronenberg fans, others need not apply.

B+

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"Stereo" is an underrated early Cronenberg movie. People tend to find it inaccessible on the grounds that it is 'boring', or due to its quasi-intellectual voice-over soundtrack (which was applied since Cronenberg did not have enough money to spend on soundtrack film) or 'incomprehensible' plot. The voice-over naturally enhances the feeling of "verfremdung", which can be argued as being for the good of the final result.

The topic of a Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry is an extremely difficult one to pull off. The way it's made, however, with its austere milieu, its quasi-academic speaker voice and the contrasts between the harsh milieu and the characters' pursuit of the topic of the 'plot' makes it a rather good film its sparse conditions for creation considered, all the more if one is into austere films rather than bombastic ones. Hopefully some 'madwoman' or 'madman' will release a few copies of this movie on dvd, someday.