Cosmopolis," an adaptation of Don DeLillos typically provocative novel of the same name, is the first feature film since 1999's "eXistenZ" that filmmaker David Cronenberg has directed and scripted. This in part explains why "Cosmopolis" is such a triumph: its both an exceptional adaptation and a remarkable work unto itself.
Cronenberg makes slight but salient changes to DeLillos source narrative. These changes, which are best described by one character as slight variation, prove that Cronenbergs given serious consideration to what should and shouldnt be represented in his adaptation of the authors ruminative, conversation-driven narrative. For example, in Cronenbergs film, Eric Packer (a surprisingly adequate Robert Pattinson), an ambivalent and self-destructive power broker, does not get to have sex with his wife like hes wanted to do throughout DeLillos book. Other changes, like the fact that Packer is investing and studying the steady rise in the Chinese yuan in the film and not the Japanese yen, as in the book, are equally striking. These differences noticeably enrich DeLillos original story, making Cronenbergs "Cosmopolis" that much more rewarding in its own dizzying way.
Its fitting that Pattinson, todays It boy, plays Packer, considering who Cronenbergs Packer is. As a former start-up wunderkind, the 28 year-old Packer is comically death-obsessed. We die every day, he risibly exclaims to one of his sizeable retinue of advisors. Packer gets daily check-ups from his doctors partly because he enjoys the routine of it but also because hes looking for something to confirm his suspicions. Hes convinced hes found that something when hes told that his prostate is asymmetrical. Its pretty funny to see Pattinson, being the young, pretty tabula rasa that he is, play Packer, a wheeler-dealer that used to be hot **** but is now unable to sleep because he fears that hes no longer relevant.
Throughout both versions of "Cosmopolis," Packer searches for a break in his routine. Against the advice of his over-protective bodyguard Torval (Kevin Durand), he fights back anarcho-protestors and gridlock traffic caused by the Presidents visit to another part of town so he can go get a haircut. The ritual, and also the familiarity of this ritual, is what matters to Packer. But Packer also insists on going out and getting his haircut now because, as he explains during one of many declamatory speeches, of the turbulent conditions Torval has warned of. Hes no longer waiting on his death, hes inviting it.
Packer is in that sense, as is also later explained point-blank in a speech, a contradictory figure. For example, he allows Vija Kinski (Samantha Morton), one of the more decisively outspoken of his advisors, to tell him that the anti-capitalist protestors that are impeding his progress are actually just another part of the capitalist system. Pattinsons Packer latently agrees with this assessment but that changes when he sees one protestor self-immolate himself. Kinski insists that the protestors gesture is unimportant, but Pattinson sulkily protests that it has to be. The fact that Pattinsons practically pouting when he rejects Mortons negative assessment is telling. His death wish is sheer petulance, something that doesnt come across as directly in the original novel.
Cronenberg and Pattinsons Packer is a different kind of suicidal but their character isnt significantly less active in constructing his own demise. In DeLillos "Cosmopolis," Packer knows whats happening with the yen, whose value keeps exponentially increasing, but is keeping that knowledge close to his chest. In Cronenbergs variation, he's less sure. Packer is thus more immediately defined by his frustration with the finite-ness of his capabilities. He looks to others for solutions to his problems and finds that his yes-team can only confirm his own impotence. He is not slyly organizing his own downfall, but frantically seeking it out, unsure of whether or not he can find what hes looking for. Packer only succeeds by sheer dumb luck: the man and an assassin looking for him have a lot more in common than the two realize.
At the same time, Cronenberg doesnt slim down DeLillos simultaneously sprawling and precisely dense narrative as much as he carves his own flourishes onto it. A couple of scenes, including Packers interest in bidding on a chapel full of art, and his visit to a night club full of drug-fueled ravers, are only necessary to establish a uniform pace to Cronenbergs narrative. But in that sense, these scenes are just as essential as the ones where Kinski and Torval give Packer advice. Everything matters in Cronenbergs "Cosmopolis," but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillos book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We cant wait to rewatch it. [A]