They Say the Sun is Sometimes Eclipsed by a Moon
Re-watching the David Cronenberg version of The Fly reminds me why I ended up not liking this movie, despite wanting very badly to, and being able to praise it whole-heartedly. Perhaps the issues even came into a starker light now that I’m older.
The Fly seems to be a movie about two creepy guys fighting over the same woman, but with the understanding that you’re only supposed to find one of them to be truly creepy, and that’s only after he starts to mutate. No dice: Seth Brundle is a really unsettling character even before he steps into the teleporter, and his relationship with Veronica Quaife, the thing that is supposed to make this movie stand out above most horror schlock, is so unbelievable the emotional angle just falls flat.
I found myself asking, what woman would allow a creepy guy to convince her to go into the middle of the night to a warehouse apartment just on the incoherent promise that he has made the find of the century--and then become his lover, to boot?
Such things can work if those who make the story seem to grasp how fucked-up they are. Yet there is no sense in The Fly that Seth and Veronica’s relationship is anything but completely unironic in its presentation, rather than the bonding of two mutually disturbed people at whom sane audience members would shake their heads.
And Stathis Borans is supposed to be only be the jerk with a heart of gold…but after he lets himself into his ex’s apartment and starts using her shower it’s impossible for me to accept him as that. Viewers are supposed to view this as a reasonably harmless annoyance to Veronica, who didn’t take away his key…but it’s disturbing on a completely different level than the rest of the movie, and he just keeps doing it. Again, trying to make such a repellent character into the nominal “hero” could work in something more cynical, but The Fly, while undoubtedly gruesome, is also running on earnestness and pathos.
This hurts me more than it would anyone reading this, since The Fly is a great movie otherwise. I’m always fascinated by themes of physical and psychological transformation, as well as by the grotesque and monstrous, and support attempts to bring human emotion to “genre” works. This is the reason the bent handling of the three main characters is so painful. If I could believe in Seth and Veronica’s relationship as deeply as the movie wants us to, and if Stathis didn’t come off as a creepy, controlling bastard rather than an anti-hero, I would love the movie as I was meant to.
It all comes down to whether or not a work can sell its problematic material as part of the creepy “atmosphere” of a work; however dark The Fly is, I never quite believe that the nature of its characters is meant to be part of that darkness. It seems more accidental.
In short, I really wanted to like this movie, but instead I have an intense love-hate relationship with it, one that looks to be pretty durable. Shame.
The Fly seems to be a movie about two creepy guys fighting over the same woman, but with the understanding that you’re only supposed to find one of them to be truly creepy, and that’s only after he starts to mutate. No dice: Seth Brundle is a really unsettling character even before he steps into the teleporter, and his relationship with Veronica Quaife, the thing that is supposed to make this movie stand out above most horror schlock, is so unbelievable the emotional angle just falls flat.
I found myself asking, what woman would allow a creepy guy to convince her to go into the middle of the night to a warehouse apartment just on the incoherent promise that he has made the find of the century--and then become his lover, to boot?
Such things can work if those who make the story seem to grasp how fucked-up they are. Yet there is no sense in The Fly that Seth and Veronica’s relationship is anything but completely unironic in its presentation, rather than the bonding of two mutually disturbed people at whom sane audience members would shake their heads.
And Stathis Borans is supposed to be only be the jerk with a heart of gold…but after he lets himself into his ex’s apartment and starts using her shower it’s impossible for me to accept him as that. Viewers are supposed to view this as a reasonably harmless annoyance to Veronica, who didn’t take away his key…but it’s disturbing on a completely different level than the rest of the movie, and he just keeps doing it. Again, trying to make such a repellent character into the nominal “hero” could work in something more cynical, but The Fly, while undoubtedly gruesome, is also running on earnestness and pathos.
This hurts me more than it would anyone reading this, since The Fly is a great movie otherwise. I’m always fascinated by themes of physical and psychological transformation, as well as by the grotesque and monstrous, and support attempts to bring human emotion to “genre” works. This is the reason the bent handling of the three main characters is so painful. If I could believe in Seth and Veronica’s relationship as deeply as the movie wants us to, and if Stathis didn’t come off as a creepy, controlling bastard rather than an anti-hero, I would love the movie as I was meant to.
It all comes down to whether or not a work can sell its problematic material as part of the creepy “atmosphere” of a work; however dark The Fly is, I never quite believe that the nature of its characters is meant to be part of that darkness. It seems more accidental.
In short, I really wanted to like this movie, but instead I have an intense love-hate relationship with it, one that looks to be pretty durable. Shame.