‘The Shrouds’: A Study in Grief
A review of ‘The Shrouds’, by David Cronenberg; Prospero Pictures.
When they lowered the body of his wife into the coffin, Karsh had an overwhelming urge to get into the box with her. So he tells his date over dinner in a restaurant next to a graveyard. And he does not mean he wished to metaphorically: he really did want to climb into that coffin. Unable to do so, he set up a company that lets the grieving watch their loved ones rot beneath the ground. When he takes his date to see his wife’s decaying corpse, she is, quite understandably, taken aback. She goes off for a cigarette. We assume there a second date is unlikely.
The Shrouds is David Cronenberg’s latest, and perhaps most personal, film. The title character, played by Vincent Cassel, has the filmmaker’s build and shock of white hair; like Cronenberg, he has lost his wife (Diane Kruger) and is struggling to come to terms with the fact. When several graves including that of his wife are desecrated, Karsh sets off to find out why. What follows is a kind of detective story (Karsh even says this explicitly) but it there is a porridge of subplots involving shape-shifting AI helpers, schizophrenic geeks, foreign state interference, grisly dream sequences, and a sister-in-law who grooms dogs.
The Shrouds is David Cronenberg’s latest and perhaps most personal film. The title character, played by Vincent Cassel, has the filmmaker’s build and shock of white hair.
All of this unfolds in a way that is decidedly one-note. Typically tension rises after that first inciting incident, and the story unfolds logically towards its climax and dénouement. Convention isn’t everything, of course; but it is still curious that from start to finish, with the odd bit of body horror standing out as an exception, the film fails to elicit much feeling. It progresses; things happen. But the effect is deadening.
And I suspect that is the point. For this is a film about grief: grief is the ruling theme. And grief makes itself known to us as a kind of numbness and bewilderment. We no longer take joy in the things that once thrilled us and we generate explanations for whatever it is we cannot take. The subplots in The Shrouds are like the small conspiracies that appear in the mind of the griever as he denies and bargains with reality.
Unlike his dead wife, Becca, Karsh is an atheist, as well as a technologist. His life is about certainty and control. The believer may not have made his peace with death, but his faith gives him a way in which to think about it. He is of necessity open to mystery, at ease to some extent with ambiguity. Karsh is not like this. Indeed, he says he could not bear the thought of his wife rotting alone in her coffin. He invented GraveTech so he could keep an eye on her. Yes, it is a somewhat unconventional response; but the picture painted is one of a man who simply must know what is happening.
Grief makes itself known to us in a kind of numbness and confusion. We no longer take joy in the things that once thrilled us.
However personal the film, it asks questions about how we face death in an age in which we have so much control. We can manipulate the world in countless ways; we have been taught we can even control who and what we are. But as Horace tells us, ‘You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, and she keeps on coming back.’ Reality always wins. As it is, we are not all-powerful, and we have not defeated death. In The Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer tries to shows us what happens when we try. But life extension and transhumanism are big industries. Through drugs and technology, goes the thinking, we can already make life longer. So why stop now? This is not the worst argument in the world.
The question soon grows more philosophical than practical. It is dearness only that gives everything its value, as Tom Paine wrote in ‘The Crisis’; and death is a fairly dear price to pay. In other words, that life ends is what makes it worth living. How would we live if we could live forever, or even for a little longer? As for grief, perhaps we become ever-less equipped to handle it. Believing that the miracles of modern science could protect us from grief, the demise of our loved ones might destroy us.
That life ends is what makes it worth living. How would we live if we could live forever, or even for a little longer?
The Shrouds is shot beautifully. The colour palette is monochrome, as if the film itself is in mourning; but it is still gorgeous, and cuts a rather stark contrast with the decaying corpses and dismembered bodies to which we are treated from time to time. The cast—Cassel, Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Hold—do their bit. But Cassel, who may possess the world’s most interesting face, is perhaps better-suited to roles in which he can express himself more forcefully (I am thinking of La Haine, Eastern Promises, and Irréversible). Here he plays a sedate and rational technology entrepreneur. But then you see his resemblance to Cronenberg and it all makes more sense.
Peoplesay that the length of The Wolf of Wall Street is part of the point. The film is about excess, so the length is excessive. So goes the argument. That is all very well and good; but in the end what matters is that the film works, not whether the form of the film is perfectly true to the content. When style gets in the way of story, something has gone awry. And this is the trouble with The Shrouds: it has the numbing, never-ending, unfeeling character of grief – but – well, sadly, that does not make for a deeply satisfying film.
