Film Reflection: Crimes of The Future

Recently, I’ve been following a path of fascination surrounding the body. My own questions regarding my physical habitat often spark discourse on physiology. It is a matter of contemplating individual capacity, detailing a desire to yield our bodies to movement. For an action that occurs daily, we think of it so seldom. Bodies and their function are the subject of many of my writings and readings. So of course I had an immediate and pressing interest upon learning of the genre body horror. My discoveries surrounding this film genre led me to a so-called figurehead of body horror, David Cronenberg.

Crimes of The Future has a shocking tailer and accompanying teaser; indeed many, and might I mention the only, horrific and truly gory scenes of the movie were included within these two pieces. It left me frightened and fascinated for the film to come. The 50 seconds of veiled plot with interspersed scenes of horror and macabre one-liners set up the suspense for a bold film to come. And I find Crimes of The Future failing to live up to the radical portrayal of performative art that it claimed to be. However, there is a depth to the film that exists implicitly despite the scripted and blunt dialogue that paints context. 

Overall, Cronenberg allows the audience to engage in an intense level of voyeurism, however we are unable to recognize it as such due to an unknown landscape. Indeed, there is a clinical coldness that accompanies the most informative lines within the film. The National Organ Registry exists, but only superficially. The scope and implications of such a department are never quite revealed to the viewers. There is an ambiguity as far as the tattooing of organs as means of identification. Despite the advanced technology that allows for intricate surgeries and a cohesive understanding of the body, all documents are paper against the deserted wasteland of an ambitious city. Moreover, dialogue lines are abrasive in their necessity to the plot; everything said is explicit to a point that deters from fantasy. The world that has been advertised to us as a complex and intricate land is transformed to a flat desert through the lines exchanged between characters. But what is most atonishing within the film, is the opening scene. Indeed many film critics walked out of the theatre within the first few minutes. And this is due to the blatant and honest portrayal of infanticide that characterizes the world Corenberg intends construct.

There is universal acceptance for the punishment of murder. This can not be contended. Yet there is an incredible amount of controversy surrounding the murder of a child, especially a child of one’s own. Legally there is a difference surrounding these deaths and their corresponding punishments. In many states, the murder of a child victim is grounds for receiving the death penalty. Such instances of infanticide evoke a visceral reaction within many, a reaction that overbears the notion of adult murders. Crimes of The Future begins with such a murder as the audience witnesses a mother smother her child to death with a pillow while he slept. This follows a scene where the young boy greedily eats plastic while his mother watches in accepted hatred. There is defeat visible in her eyes as she watches her own offspring commit acts that should very well kill him. Indeed, this child is capable of a type of living that his mother could not imagine.  

I harken back to Medea by Euripides the La Llorona myth, and Beloved by Toni Morrison. Yet within these stories there are women painted by their experiences of tragedy and prosecution. The death of their children is symbolic to a cultural struggle that is innate to worlds dominated by men. For example, Medea’s value to both her husband and her kingdom is reliant on her ability to have children from a powerful man. The murder of these children serves not as a tragedy or outburst of pain, but rather an intense act of rebellion against the male chains confining her value. Medea is not losing her children, she is taking power and potential away from her husband. La Llorona is similar in scope. While there are several different renditions, the general plot is as follows; a young Indigenous woman bears the children of a white man, persumably a conceqandor. It was very likely that the woman was raped and the children are a consequence of that act. Out of defiance, she drowns these children in a river and is subsequently murdered for her actions. She is then said to haunt the countryside and specifically target men in response to her punishment. The outcome of rape can have serious ramifications on the emotional and physical level for the men and women that experience such an event. Yet the production of children symbolic of both sexual and racial oppression often serve as a reminder of the pain the mother endured. I understand this as my mother often loses her thought and falls into fog when she tells me I have eyes that remind her of the man responsible for my conception. But la lorona’s infanticide is not a killing of pain or pity. She fears the life for her children being raised in a world determined to hurt the very community from which they come. Similarly, the infanticide that occurs in Beloved comes from the same idea of saviorship. An previously enslaved mother attempts to murder her children to save them from being forced into slavery after she faces capture. Indeed, the death of children is painful. We often mourn their innocence. But there is a heroism that can be attributed to the mothers. They believe that it is only through death that their children can be free. They are the liberators against classist and racist violence and while their crimes may seem horrendous their actions are rooted in a core principle of motherhood, sacrifice. 

Yet Crimes of The Future gives us a mother that resembles none of these examples. The mother feels disgust for her child and this much is not hidden. There is an apathy that marks her subsequent navigation of the world. This is combined with a sense of pride and ownership of the murder. She goes as far as to turn herself in despite there being no proof of the child’s murder as the body is now artistic property of Saul. The audience is given the image of a woman who has been burdened by the very person she created. Despite an ongoing shift in the typical dynamic of families, contemporary culture still places an emphasis on the prioritization and care of children, especially white children. Note: there is no racial diversity within this film but I will not remark on this aspect. Therefore the portrayal of woman who does not value womanhood in of itself is radical against the backdrop of a world built on women’s capacity to mother exceptional men. And indeed this child is said to be exceptional and is held as the hallmark of the future on behalf of his father and those alike. He is exceptional because his body has defied nature not only dramatically, but also successfully. The landscape of Crimes of The Future informs the audience that bodies are constantly defying the typical model of human being but with each transformation is accompanied with so much pain. And while performance art has emerged from the pain (or lack thereof) it is only a weak arm outreaching towards a fleeting sense of feeling. There is so much numbness as a result of ongoing change that each individual is desperate to feel anything other than the ongoing torture of nothingness their world has to provide. The child murdered is gifted with the ability to endure numbness; forced to seek pain more radical than his predecessors. 

Here our mother feels something that no other characters appear to, disgust. Despite live autopsies and tongues seeking exposed organs, not a single character treats any of these actions with a hint of horror. But the horror the mother experiences is due to the capacity of this child and his ability. Indeed he harbors abilities that the mother can not fathom, but his youth is never diminished. Acts of murder vary from motive to execution and this child’s death is brutal. To smother someone with a pillow is not only incredibly tedious but it is immensely personal. Her body is pressed against her sons as she feels the long exhale of his last breath. 

I do not believe this mother pities her son. But she is terrified of him in of himself. He has a body that desires so strongly to live that it has modified itself on the organic level. The distressed and beaten society of the film is so committed to tearing itself apart people desire unsanitary surgery with the same eroticism one craves from a sexual partner. The abandoned ships and rusted air remind the audience constantly that something very serious has died. There is ongoing death expressed through this perpetual numbness. But this child has found a way to live so that his body is not oppressing its own abilities. This child’s body is truly created for survival in this purgatory of alleyway bleeding and choked breathing. Yes this child is representative of a community beyond himself. But his death is provoked by him. His birth was simultaneously his cause of death. The same could be said of Medea’s children; they are doomed due to the blood that they have inherited. The boy has a capacity that he can not even study for it is so rare and nuanced. He has been murdered because the idea of continuing to live in a world surrounded by decay is a horrid thing. It is grotesque on the psyche, allowing no room for meaning to be absolved. This, his mother can not. And subsequently she takes from him a life that was designed to perpetuate suffering. This child’s murder is not a defense of her own femininity or her role as an agent in her own life. This mother does not seek to liberate the child from the inevitable bleakness his life will become. The child is too large of a representation of horror he must die, and that death must be as personal as a suicide. 

Murder is shocking and there is no portrayal of killing that can be consumed lightly. Yet death is in nearly every piece of media and has fallen as a silent support for plot. Death is rarely a catalyst. Cronenberg’s introduction of infanticide leaves the audience as choked as Saul will become. It is horrific to see the death of a child yet it is an internal cacophony to recognize that subsequent living will only produce suffering so intense that our children are entitled to death.