Adapted from a novel by Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis follows young multi-billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) on the day he travels slowly through gridlocked New York in his obscene limousine in search of a haircut on the other side of town. This is one of those rare and funny instances in which a huge teen heartthrob decides to try something different and difficult and it ends up on general release in all the main multiplex chains in the country. This is the kind of film you would normally have to hunt the city for, scour the independent cinema timetables for and ultimately miss the last train for, as the only screening you can make ends up being late on a Sunday night.
But it’s Robert Pattinson, so it’s Cineworld. It’s a fairly full room of people and a fair few walkouts along the way as couples (it was all couples in my screen) realise that this is not the film they were expecting.
Cosmopolis is difficult to penetrate and engage with. It is supposed to be. Not in a snobby exclusive way but because it deals with a man who has lost the ability to engage with others. It takes the form of a succession of lectures by the people Packer has appointments with throughout the day – business advisors, bodyguards, doctors and his newly married but already estranged wife. All are arranged, structured; even those he has sex with are all employees of one form or another. His whole day is run like a business, cold like the numbers he analyses to protect and perpetuate his cyber-capitalist nightmare.
Nightmare because Packer finds himself on this particular day yearning for something more genuine, a social exchange of real substance. In the middle of a conversation with his wife he comments with surprise how they almost sound like normal people. As detached and emotionless as he finds himself, ultimately Packer’s only way out is to gamble with his assets beyond the tipping point where he finds his empire slowly dismantling. The more he loses the more deranged with revelation he becomes until he ends up risking more than just his money and comes face to face with his own assassin.
As I mentioned, the early part of the film (Act One I suppose) has the feel of lecture about it. It reminded me very much of the film Waking Life (2001) where the main character spends one night in a lucid dream in which he meets several people, one after the other, all espousing great wordy monologues on the subject of dreams and their wider connections to existentialist philosophy. The main character contributes little more than facial expressions and the odd prompt here and there; for their time on screen they are the focal point. Exactly the same goes for Cosmopolis where the supporting cast features excellent performances from reliable greats such as Samantha Morton and Juliette Binoche. 
Pattinson himself is brilliant, holding his own next to these established professionals and proving himself outside of that Twilight cauldron. It’s a very close performance… lot’s of stone-faced holds and slight ticks, expertly timed and delivered. The director pushes us to scrutinise his every move – we’re supposed to try everything to connect somehow with Packer and yet fail. And that is exactly what happens. It is the kind of conceit that can break down immediately if an actor is slightly off his/her game, but thanks to Pattinson, no such problem arises.
As for the narrative of Packer’s downwardly spiralling journey, I’m a big fan of the Ulysses-style ‘everything happens in a single day’ idea. I like it in a great number of films. It works to perfection in 1980’s teen films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (’86) and The Breakfast Club (’85) because of the super-charged rollercoaster of emotion felt by adolescents in a short time frame. Those are comedies though and so I suppose Rebel Without a Cause (1955) particularly springs to mind in relation to Cosmopolis as both end badly and the stakes are high throughout. The distinguishing factor is that the stakes in Cosmopolis are financial. Because Packer has no emotions left to play with, he throws his money away in the hope of stirring something more human inside of him. Rather than truly feeling the desperation of the character we are allowed only to know it on an intellectual level. That’s where the tragedy comes from and that’s why, although so accomplished, this film could never make it into anyone’s favourites list.
Devoid of any unusual framing or weird camera angles, David Cronenberg’s direction instead brings a functionality and pace. His job is to tell the story and so he films the action like a play, simply, with as few cutaways as possible but clever coverage of different characters’ reactions at just the right moments. I wish I could compare this approach to that of Cronenberg’s other work but his films have yet to cross my path – I will fix this soon.
Some have bemoaned the fact that Cosmopolis fails to make any grand statement or hard-hitting satirical jibes at its subject. The relevant but well-trodden themes of greedy businessman at the top of vast wealth/power pyramids and money vs. happiness certainly offer up extensive opportunity to ramble on about inequality. I’m glad that the film does not do this (enough things do at the moment) and instead chooses the form of a dramatic vignette which offers an exploration into what kinds of human psychoses might be behind global economic crashes. Maybe a slice of the mind of the 1% is what is missing from this #occupy palaver after all.
Jon Bates Writes 