David Cronenberg’s latest film is a pointedly messy meditation on grief, voyeurism, and control from beyond the grave
The worlds of David Cronenberg walk a scalpel’s edge between repulsion and obsession, uniquely delving into themes of doubles, death, and transformations that are both deeply emotional and starkly physical in their pursuit of something deeper and profoundly impactful. Although they may appear glossy and distant, Cronenberg’s films uncover rich layers of humor, anger, paranoia, grief, and more–if we are open to engaging with these unsettling topics with the same fascination exhibited by Cronenberg and his characters.
His latest, The Shrouds, is no exception. Its lead, Karsh (Vincent Cassel), is a dead ringer for Cronenberg himself–here an inventor who live-streams the corpse decomposition process for grieving loved ones using high-tech burial shrouds. Still mourning the loss of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), Karsh attempts to provide others with what he desperately seeks himself: by voyeuristically observing her biological dissolution, he hopes his grief will suffer the same diminishing fate. When Karsh’s cemetery is brutally vandalized on the eve of his tech’s worldwide expansion, he descends into a rabbit hole of medical conspiracy, international intrigue, and crippling paranoia.
Much like most of the Canadian auteur’s work, The Shrouds unsettlingly blends the sleekness of contemporary aesthetics with the raw, chaotic essence of the natural world. Karsh’s shrouds (here, bluntly called GraveTech) are technological marvels, showcasing designs worthy of backing firm Saint Laurent, and capable of 8K resolution scans that ensure every decaying stomach cavity and protruding bone is captured in meticulous detail. Time-lapses depicting Becca’s corpse at various stages of decomposition act as idle screensavers on Karsh’s desktop. Despite Karsh’s polished appearance, his dentist observes that his teeth are literally decaying due to grief. Regardless of the outward appearance, any tranquility that Karsh and others seek in their neat, Apple-esque order is disrupted by the gruesome decay that rebelliously and mercilessly seeps through. Like Cronenberg’s previous film, Crimes of the Future, a central tension lies in how long we can impose such cosmetic control on our bodies or the world we live in before we surrender to the natural order of things.
The Shrouds, though, make this incredibly personal, if not autobiographical – it’s directly inspired by the tragic death of Cronenberg’s wife and longtime collaborator, Carolyn, in 2017. The director’s longstanding fascination with doppelgängers and the contradictions they hold is searingly augmented here, as Cronenberg’s own double in Cassel seeks to keep his wife tethered to the world of the living via a Siri-like AI bot of Becca, Hunny (complete with Memoji-like art). Becca, naturally, also has an identical twin in Kruger’s third role in the film, Terry – a surgeon turned dog groomer who finds arousal in Karsh’s deepening conspiracy theories. Kruger is fascinating in her three roles, and The Shrouds’ fascination with her is even more so; despite being three distinct characters, Cronenberg keeps each at a distance that is both alienating and intimate, as if we, like Karsh, should grow to blur these characters into the same person emotionally. As a whole, Karsh’s treatment of Becca/Terry/Hunny reveals how The Shrouds’ central tensions exist between the dead and the living left behind; how, in their absence, we try to manufacture new, servile life for them, whether in the form of perpetually viewing their corpse or in virtual avatars modeled after them – all at our demand, with no agency but our own. This should result in the solace that Cassel’s Karsh craves, yet despite his creature comforts at the cost of the dead, Karsh appears just as lifeless and vacant as the corpses he puts on camera.
I feel a critical obligation not to reveal the further twists of The Shrouds’ descent into conspiracy thriller. Still, it conflicts with the sentiment that one of the most humorous and successful aspects of The Shrouds is how its intrigue devolves into such shaggy-dog meaninglessness. If this film’s for anyone besides Cronenberg devotees, even more niche fans of David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake will appreciate how The Shrouds spins its wheels in search of deeper meaning in its paranoid ravings. The film has understandably drawn bemused scrutiny from audiences since its Cannes debut last year; the deeper Karsh buries himself in the mysteries surrounding the physical vandalism of his cemetery, or the suspected biological/political vandalism of Becca’s corpse via strange postmortem bone growths, the slipperier The Shrouds becomes. The fascination we’re invited to indulge in threatens to extend into thematic overreach, widening the existing gulf between audience and auteur.
But the real meat of The Shrouds lies in who that comfort is for–in pacifying grief, in solving a mystery, in achieving closure at all–and how those who offer said closure can weaponize it. We don’t quite realize how immersed we are in Karsh’s grief until we’re forced to keep pace with it. He searches for clarity in his relationship with Becca, both during her life and after her death, as the intimacy they once shared diminishes, transferring instead to her doctor. Cronenberg explores a painful, admittedly selfish jealousy that is rarely acknowledged when a partner passes away: how medical professionals can become more emotionally and physically connected to our loved ones in palliative care than we can offer. In The Shrouds, with every passing procedure, they grow to “possess” our loved ones both emotionally and physically; leave it to Cronenberg to craft a film about, of all things, medical cuckoldry. Ultimately, it’s fitting that Karsh, in his grief, channels these feelings into a baffling conspiracy. Instead of confronting and overcoming his sorrow, he perceives that a more concrete antagonist is the architect of his anguish, one lurking just beyond his all-seeing gaze.
It’s a messy as fuck metaphor that only metastasizes in complexity and confusion as The Shrouds goes on–but it nevertheless rings true thanks to the vulnerable insights of its creator.
The Shrouds is now playing in theaters courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films.
