COSMOPOLIS
COSMOPOLIS is cronenberg's dick, laminated and gloss waxed, existing (at least in his mind) somewhere between THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, AMERICAN PSYCHO, and STRANGE DAYS. A post-objectivist amorality tale of a day in the life of a young one-percenter whose own matrix environment is caste above its own ability to understand the prison it has made for itself. At the end of all the chinese fear and lambast of intellectual masturbation, we end up at the source (in this scenario and the one it tries to metaphor)- with the juden, with the origin of debt, the gift (ultimately of water) of leftovers, just like in the desert. After so many dissonant voices offering so much doubt, so much sex, so much demand in the interest of a public they pay no mind to, after all that it is the coptic and the rabbi talking about the honest work they once did. Is whitey listening? Has he ever? The backgrounds are important to answering this question, throughout the film, even and especially when the foreground is being made most important. In the end, it's still Mary. It's still the diamonds reflecting silent- quieter, even, than the long slow frame of the hershey's logo behind a funeral procession. "how did you lose your eye?" the barber asks the driver, finally seen for all his grotesque honesty. "i can still see..." he replies. The day has wound to night, whitey has half his haircut, his suit jacket and tie lost to those he allows loss to- and in the end, in the dark, he is still just a lost boy, alone in the night with but a gun and a few bullets, a sniper on the roof, a dog loose in the wood. No amount of theory can prepare you for this. 7.