The Shrouds review – pre­ci­sion film­mak­ing of the high­est stripe

It’s become a cliché to say that David Cronenberg’s The Fly remains one of the most heart­break­ing films of the 1980s, a film which cul­mi­nates in an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist hav­ing to put down her sci­en­tist boyfriend for being too overzeal­ous with his toys. With his rumi­na­tive lat­est, The Shrouds, Cro­nen­berg once more makes a play for the heart­strings in what must be one of the most naked­ly mov­ing and rev­e­la­to­ry films with­in his canon.

There is, of course, a lot of iron­ic lev­i­ty too, as seen in an open­ing sequence in which melan­choly wid­owed tech mag­nate, Karsh (Vin­cent Cas­sell, made up to look exact­ly like the film­mak­er), decides to dive into the dat­ing scene once more, organ­is­ing a lunch with a match for­mu­lat­ed by his den­tist in a restau­rant that’s adja­cent to a grave­yard. The joke is, it’s his restau­rant. And his grave­yard. And what’s more, his late wife, Bec­ci, is buried there – would you, dear date, like to come and see her decay­ing corpse in 8K res­o­lu­tion via live-relay videofeed?

Karsh is the founder of GraveTech, a com­pa­ny who have, in tan­dem with a Chi­nese firm named Shin­ing Cloth, devel­oped a new type of bur­ial shroud which allows the bereaved to be in con­stant con­tact with the recent­ly depart­ed. Ever the roman­tic, Karsh is just itch­ing to dive into his plot next to Bec­ci so they may enter the eter­nal rest togeth­er, but in the mean­time, he’s can zoom in on her des­ic­cat­ing skull and won­der­ing what those lit­tle nod­ules grow­ing on her bones might be.

Explo­rations of grief on film are ten a pen­ny and so often lean on maudlin sen­ti­ment to achieve their intend­ed goal. The Shrouds offers some­thing that’s at once more nuanced, more com­plex and more rad­i­cal, as Karsh finds him­self hav­ing to deal with the fact that some­one may be sab­o­tag­ing his sys­tem to use it as a sur­veil­lance tool, some­thing one of his oper­a­tives and ex-broth­er-in-law Mau­ry (Guy Pearce) may have a hand in. This cen­tral con­ceit of man attempt­ing to dis­cov­er the prove­nance of strange broad­cast images and being swept into a world of polit­i­cal intrigue is a ful­some call-back to 1983’s Video­drome, and as a film about a husband’s con­spir­a­to­r­i­al obses­sions with his dead wife, there’s quite a bit of 1991’s Naked Lunch in there too.

On a pro­duc­tion lev­el, this is just pre­ci­sion film­mak­ing of the high­est stripe, and there’s a heart­beat-like rhythm to both the syn­tax and syn­co­pa­tions of the dia­logue, and the beau­ti­ful­ly judged shot/​reverse shot edits. Howard Shore deliv­ers anoth­er one of his gor­geous synth scores, this one with an apt­ly fune­re­al vibe, and long-time pro­duc­tion design­er Car­ol Spi­er threads the nee­dle between a world of pris­tine mod­ern inno­va­tion, and Japan­ese minimalism.

The Shrouds is a new type of cin­e­mat­ic love sto­ry, one that deals with our abid­ing con­nec­tion with the dead through dreams and real­is­tic inno­va­tion rather than hav­ing to lean on such time­worn crutch­es as ghosts and fan­ta­sy. Like much of his late work, there are a cer­tain set of demands placed on the view­er, but if you’re will­ing to take what Cro­nen­berg is giv­ing you and tap into the film’s rich emo­tion­al main­frame, then the gifts (and heart­break) will be plentiful.