I'm not going to pretend that I fully understood David Cronenberg's latest, Cosmopolis, because I don't think I came close but I walked out of the cinema feeling exhilarated by the experience.
On paper the story is about the day young billionaire asset manager Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) decides he wants his hair cut and the place he wants it cut is across town. So while his business seems to be going down the pan, anti-capatalism riots are in full flow and someone is threatening to kill him, he insists on making the journey in his limo.
During the course of the journey he has sex, has meetings, has a rectal exam and pursues his young wife, a billionaire poet, who doesn't want to sleep with him. Oh and he gets a pie thrown in his face.
But this isn't an action packed thrill ride as the eventful journey (or trailer) suggests, this is an atmosphere laden study on, among other things, capitalism, the value of money, freedom, fate, man's place in the world etc. You get the idea. It does sound dull but it isn't. Well I didn't find it all dull.
I found Pattinson a charismatic screen presence for the first time in his acting career, certainly not just a pretty face here. Its almost ironic because the character he plays is an emotional husk of a man. Packer's knowledge and possessions surpass most peoples wildest dreams and yet he is bent on a sometimes painful search for something new. Pattinson manages to give Packer an intelligent depth, hints of who he once was before the emotional malaise set in, a malaise he tries on a number of occasions to physically jump start himself out of.
And there are some great supporting cameos from the likes of Samantha Morton, Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche and Mathieu Almaric.
Cosmopolis feels apocalyptic on an emotional level begging the question of how we got to this point, where people can lose millions and place so little value on it, and where anything can be bought for a price, where ultimately there is a loss of care.
It's difficult to explain fully why I loved Cosmopolis but I did. It certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea but it was mine. I'm giving it 82%. On IMDb it has 63% and no Metacritic score yet while on Rotten Tomatoes it has 58% with 47% of site visitors giving it three and a half stars or more.
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