Toronto filmmaker David Cronenberg is back this month with his latest film, The Shrouds. Yes, it’s a film that combines cutting-edge technology, burials, grief, conspiracy theories and, yes, love. Here’s our interview:
Am I crazy or does the lead actor (Vincent Cassel) bear a striking resemblance to you?
Well, I have to stress that I did not cast Vincent Cassel because of his hair. It does look a little like mine, but really, when you look at Vincent carefully, you’ll see that he looks nothing like me. But there is, it’s true, a sort of a weird resemblance.
What inspired the film originally, and how personal a story is it for you?
Well, certainly, I wouldn’t have made this if my wife of 43 years hadn’t died in 2017. So definitely it was my response to that, and my dealing with that was the genesis of the project. But then once you establish that, it becomes something else. As soon as you start writing it, it becomes fiction.
OK, so it wasn’t too hard to handle for you once you turn the cameras on?
Despite the fact that there are some very potent emotional scenes in the movie, for me, it’s not suddenly like I should be curled up in a ball in the corner. It’s technical. You know, you’re worried about the lighting, the sound, the framing, what lens are you using. And so there’s distance. However passionate you are about the project, you need distance to create the art.
Tell us about some of the personal elements incorporated into the film.
The people that I might have cannibalized for the characters, I will say nothing. But, yes, it’s a very Toronto movie. I’ve always lived in Toronto, so it was very exciting for me to be able to shoot the film here and have it be a Toronto-based movie with various restaurants and things. There’s even a scene at a restaurant, and across the road you can see out the window is the Royal Cinema, which was, under the name the Pylon, my childhood cinema, and I would go there every Saturday and watch movies.
Does the film reflect any of your own beliefs in terms of religion and atheism?
My lead character is basically, yes, he’s an atheist, he’s an existentialist, and he makes that very clear and that his interest in burial in religions is basically because he is introducing a new kind of burial, and that is always inevitably connected with various cultures and various religions.
What are you hoping people take from the film?
First of all, I think the movie’s funny. I think all of my movies are funny. If Torontonians don’t get the humour, then I don’t know who will. So there’s that. It’s my approach to life. Without humour, I don’t know how we would possibly exist in this world.
I caught your daughter Caitlin’s first feature last year. How does it feel to have three filmmakers in the family?
Fantastic. Well, yeah, even my oldest daughter, Cassandra, has actually made a movie as well (so, four). So it feels just very comfortable and inevitable. I knew that Cate would do that. I mean, she was always a photographer right from a very young age. She has a great eye, and she has a great sense of drama, so I wasn’t surprised to see that she could handle it.
