Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.
Chuck says:
As with most of David Cronenberg’s films, his latest, “The Shrouds” is a bit messy both literally and figuratively. A meditation on love, grief, and mourning, it at times gets bogged down by plotting that’s too clever for its own good and narrative tangents that ultimately mute the power of the filmmaker’s message. Yet, that seems to be part and parcel of the director’s mindset at the time he was making the film. Having lost his wife four years ago, the film is a vehicle through which he’s searching for some rhyme and reason as to the meaning of death and what might await those who’ve passed over. That there are no concrete answers is a given.
Vincent Cassel, his appearance far too similar to be a coincidence, is Cronenberg’s on-screen surrogate Karch Relikh (say the name aloud), a tech businessman who’s yet to come to terms with his wife Becca’s (Diane Kruger) death four years earlier. Unable to let go, he’s created a cemetery for the social media age he’s dubbed GraveTech. The headstones of each of the interred are fashioned with a video screen through which you can watch your loved one decay. (There’s also an app, so you can check out the latest stage of decomposition when you’re on the go.) To facilitate this process, the corpses are wrapped in an electronic shroud, which helps produce high-resolution imagery.
Surprisingly, there are other bereaved people who partake in this unique service, the initial GraveTech site in Canada growing rapidly, while others in Europe are set for construction. As one would surmise, not everyone is supportive of this endeavor, conservative and religious groups outraged by what they see as a moral breach. So, it comes as no surprise when the cemetery is vandalized, headstones and video monitors destroyed, Becca’s included.
The mystery as to who is behind this and why is the film’s MacGuffin, a search that turns out to be a red herring, albeit a clever one. Yet, as Relikh falls into a rabbit hole of his own making, he’s forced to come to terms with his inability to move on from his wife’s death. Whether he makes any progress or not is open to interpretation.
A fascinating cast of supporting characters complicate this journey to self-awareness(?). His brother in-law, Maury (Guy Pearce) is a paranoid hacker who Relikh enlists to track down the perpetrators. The answers he provides are, on the surface, nonsensical…perhaps. Becca’s sister, Terry (Kruger, also), is significant as well, her animosity towards her ex, Maury, palpable, her seemingly cold nature in Relikh’s presence indicative of something deeper. What she reveals about her sister’s past fuels each man’s paranoia. As to what Relikh’s potential new love Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt) wants, is anybody’s guess.
Par for the course, the film is filled with off-putting imagery, none of it gratuitous or sensationalized, these images treated as just another part of Cronenberg’s typical mise en scene. The glimpses of the decaying corpses are disturbing but contain a fascinating beauty as well. More troubling are Relikh’s dreams in which he’s visited by Becca, each successive one finding her with fewer limbs and more scars. To be sure, no one can juxtapose the grotesque with the beautiful quite like Cronenberg. Thankfully, his dark humor is at play as well, making this all go down with a sense of bitterly ironic glee. That Relikh takes a first date to see his eternally degrading wife is indicative of the director’s approach.
I would advise that you try not to make heads or tails of the plot. Frustration will likely set in, but more importantly, like Relikh you’ll likely get distracted from what’s truly important. In the end, you may become envious of the dead. Unlike Relikh and us, they cannot fall victim to fear or paranoia, do not have to contend with others’ troubles, there are no more questions to be asked, nor doubts to wrestle with, only quiet and peace. Ultimately, “The Shrouds,” like the Bard, sees death as a fate “devoutly to be wished.”
3 Stars
