The Inimitable Canadian

One of the great directors of the past 20 years, too often ignored outside the rarified circles of real cinefiles, is the idiosyncratic Canadian David Cronenberg. From his bizarre but brilliant work including Videodrome (1983), eXistenZ (1999) and Spider (2002) to his more mainstream films, like The Fly (1986), A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) he has always mixed a fascination with violence and the macabre with deeper philosophical, existential and cultural questions. At the heart of his work is the relationship between humans and technology and the ways notions of social progress can elide deeper questions about our being and relationship to one another. This is particularly true in Videodrome and eXistenZ, but is a theme that reappears over and over again. Really he is David Lynch with deeper ideological concerns, a penchant for combing the far reaches of humanity and taste at just the right pitch. In any case, his new film A Dangerous Method  has just come out after a four year hiatus and there is an interesting interview with him here: Salon. If you have not yet explored his work and love film, I highly recommend taking the plunge ...