SP Reviews #3: 3 New Things I Watched this Weekend, by Adam Lehrer
David Cronenberg's 'The Shrouds', Lena Dunham's 'Too Much', Alex Ross Perry's 'Pavements'
The Shrouds, directed by David Cronenberg
Since emerging from the long creative nap that preceded his 2014 freak show Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg has managed to churn out two more films. Maps, scripted by the brilliantly deranged Hollywood surrealist Bruce Wagner, wasn’t Cronenberg’s final interesting film—but, bafflingly, it seems to have been his last good one.
What I mean is that Cronenberg’s recent additions to his filmography—Crimes of the Future (2022) and the newly released-on-Criterion The Shrouds—aren’t exactly good movies. Despite the refined, artful stylizations that have become his signature, both films are absolute slogs. I saw Crimes of the Future two days after my wedding, in a theater in Astoria, and came away thoroughly underwhelmed. Weird, stilted performances. A modernized rehash of the body-horror and techno-dystopian themes that defined his iconic ’80s work. Sure, it had a vibe (drearily dreamy) and a great setting (Athens, Greece), but it never managed to grab me. And yet—I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
The same can be said of The Shrouds. Vincent Cassel stars as a grieving tech tycoon whose wife recently died of lymphoma. He’s developed a burial technology that allows the bereaved to watch their loved ones’ bodies decompose in real time on high-definition screens. The story kicks off when Cassel’s burial yard—including his wife’s tombstone—is vandalized. What follows is a collision of global espionage and warring political factions vying for control of this new technology (very contemporary, of course), but in the end, all the convoluted plot intricacies don’t really matter. The film is Cronenberg’s meditation on grief—his own wife passed in 2017—and the narrative’s political threads ultimately wither beneath the weight of that sorrow. Cronenberg deftly depicts the totality of loss: the world keeps turning, the news keeps flowing, but everything experienced through the prism of mourning becomes an extension of grief itself. Once it takes hold, grief is life.
But the movie isn’t good—at least not in any way I can confidently defend. Cronenberg seems to have abandoned formalist innovation; his films now serve primarily as launching pads for existential philosophy. The Shrouds isn’t enjoyable, but chances are, you won’t be able to get it out of your head.
6/10
Too Much, created by Lena Dunham
When Girls launched in 2012, its then-22-year-old wunderkind creator famously declared to the camera, “I think I might be the voice of my generation—or at least a voice.” What makes her new Netflix series, Too Much—her first return to television since Girls ended in 2017—so successful is that she’s no longer trying to be the voice of her generation. Her generation (and mine) has grown up. Here, she settles for being a voice—and it’s a remarkable achievement.
What’s truly ironic is that Lena Dunham was one of the most important voices—and artists—of the millennial generation, something that’s become painfully clear in hindsight. I was a grad student in New York when Girls premiered, and I was skeptical, mostly because I was surrounded by NYU clones of Hannah, Jessa, and Marnie. But damn, no one else nailed the soul-crushing alienation of being a talented millennial armed with a fancy social sciences degree, only to find the job market had evaporated like cheap champagne. Dunham brilliantly captured the weird entitlement millennial life bred, while never sugarcoating what a colossal scam it was to be $100K in debt, working for bosses who made you feel guilty—and entitled—just for demanding a wage that actually lets you live, save, and maybe, just maybe, build a future.
Dunham’s outsized media persona, her fearless depiction of herself in compromising sexual situations, and her sharp insight earned her detractors across the political spectrum—and probably shredded her confidence. Progressive critics frequently slammed Girls for its overwhelmingly white, privileged cast and setting, accusing it of “class blindness.” They hammered its feminism as “problematic” and “exclusionary.” Right-wingers, never ones to hide their rank philistinism, attacked the show for moral decay, decadence, “narcissism,” and pushing a liberal agenda. Their evidence? An episode where Hannah’s true love Adam (Adam Driver) learns his new girlfriend Mimi Rose (Gillian Jacobs) had an abortion. The right seized on Mimi’s chilling lack of remorse as proof of cultural leftism, utterly missing the point that Mimi was portrayed as the show’s most evil character, and if anything, viewers were meant to sympathize with Adam—denied the chance to be a father without his input. But I digress…
Where Girls was most misunderstood, however, is that it stands as the most powerful artwork about romantic and sexual love created in the 2010s; a notion that still remains utterly absent from the show’s discourse over a decade after it began. Adam and Hannah’s relationship—and its slow unraveling—is as gutting to watch now as it was during its original run. The series serves as a sharp critique of feminism, particularly the notion that women should reject comfort and love in pursuit of “independence.” It’s an elegy to a generation of women who forgot how to love, and the soaring rates of women turning to IVF today stand as a tragic confirmation of Dunham’s thesis.
Too Much is also a love story—unmistakably so—though infinitely less culturally complicated than Girls, which I’d argue is for the better. Free from the burden of speaking for her entire generation, Dunham turns inward, focusing on the personal. Critics say the show depicts her dysfunctional relationship with music producer Jack Antonoff, who, if his fictionalized counterpart played by Michael Zegen is any indication, comes off as a complete piece of shit. That said, the show never leans too heavily into darkness; its black comedy is mostly incredibly hopeful. Lena’s avatar here is Jessica, played by Megan Stalter (with Lena as her older sister), who moves to London for a job to escape the pain of a recent breakup. She meets a handsome half-Japanese rock singer, played by Will Sharpe, and the two embark on a whirlwind romance. It’s worth remembering that Dunham has proven herself to be one of the best casters of male actors, with two of Girls’ male leads—Driver and Christopher Abbott—rising to become formidable movie stars. I think Too Much might do the same for Sharpe, fresh off his memorable performance in the second season of The White Lotus. He shows impressive range by playing a confident yet troubled, naughty yet romantic, and cerebral yet highly physical young man.
Sure, the couple hits roadblocks along the way, but Too Much ultimately serves as an antidote to the tragedy of Girls—a show about a woman who lets herself be loved and courageously embraces love, even knowing it might all blow up in her face. In that way, the show is an excellent palate cleanser and a perfect welcome back for one of television’s great auteurs. I loved it.
9/10
Pavements, directed by Alex Ross Perry
I’m not sure what I expected from this. I like one Alex Ross Perry movie—2014’s Listen Up Philip. I’m also a Pavement fan. I hoped Malkmus’s witty cynicism might help Perry recapture the nihilism of Listen Up Philip, but unfortunately, this is just a really dumb attempt at an “experimental” rock documentary—and it really sucks.
Perry decided to butcher the traditional band documentary by smashing it together with a cheap-ass biopic, casting Joe Keery as Malkmus, a bunch of no-name actors as the rest of the band, and Jason Schwartzman as the owner of Matador Records. And honestly, who cares? It’s fucking idiotic, pretentious, and shreds whatever fragile rhythm the film had. Just when you think you might actually learn something about the band, along comes some cringe-worthy fictional reenactment to murder the mood. A conceptual disaster of epic proportions. If you think you’re too fucking cool and “artsy” to make a proper band documentary, just don’t make one.
Even worse is the attempt to shoehorn Pavement alongside the literati of New York indie films, as if anyone actually cares to watch Malkmus awkwardly introduce himself to Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig. The whole thing feels way too New York—or post-hipster New York—and it just doesn’t make any sense. Pavement’s from the Pacific Northwest. Fuck this shit.
If you want to see a decent rock documentary about a seminal band, check out Ian White’s insanely in-depth film Mutiny in Heaven about The Birthday Party.
1/10