David Cronenberg has a request: no questions about his old films. “I avoid it,” he tells me. “If you want that information, you can look at the interviews I did when they were alive in my head.” The 82-year-old Canadian auteur wrote and directed Videodrome, Crash, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and other masterworks that were so indescribable they gave a bloody birth to the word “Cronenbergian”. But today, we’re discussing his new feature, The Shrouds, a sci-fi drama that, fittingly, is about a man moving on from his past.
Out in UK cinemas this week, The Shrouds is a startling yet poetic exploration of how science could ease the anguish of grief. In the Toronto-set story, Karsh (Vincent Cassel) is an entrepreneur behind GraveTech, a piece of technology that allows cemetery visitors to view a 3D image of a loved one’s corpse as it decays inside the coffin. I realised when I was sold: Karsh demonstrates how you can stretch your fingers on the screen to zoom into the crumbling skeleton.
I admit to Cronenberg that I would use GraveTech if it existed. “I would, too, actually,” he says. “I would have done that if it had been available when I was burying my wife.” In 2017, Cronenberg’s wife died of cancer; they had been together for 43 years. “I really felt the separation from her. I wanted to get into the coffin with this dead body.”
When Karsh’s wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), dies of cancer, Karsh responds by setting up GraveTech. “In my case, I made a movie instead,” says the director. “I’m glad to hear you’d use it. I’d be happy to sell you a franchise. You could start with one little grave in your backyard, and then work your way up to a full cemetery.”
Cronenberg originally wrote The Shrouds as a potential TV series for Netflix. However, the streamer rejected the project after reading the first two scripts. As a TV show, The Shrouds would have changed country from episode to episode. “I studied burial rituals from around the world,” he says. “They involve religion, money, language, and nationality. It’s a very complex thing, how you get rid of the dead. It could be a lifetime project for you, if you ever wanted to change career.”
In its two-hour feature film format, The Shrouds remains in Canada as Karsh deals with hackers who take down GraveTech. Karsh also juggles two love interests: a blind woman, Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), who develops elements of Becca’s body in dream sequences, and Becca’s identical twin sister, Terry, also played by Kruger. If Soo-Min and Terry aren’t enough to replace Becca, Karsh also has Hunny, an AI assistant depicted by Kruger.
Technology has beautiful aspects, and it has hideous, destructive aspects as well. We can anticipate the hideous, destructive aspects of AI, whereas at the same time it’s incredibly useful and thrilling creatively
Hunny was created by Kruger wearing a motion-capture suit with sensors in front of 14 cameras in a warehouse. However, Hunny resembles a blonde emoji. “Because of iPhones, there’s enough data on anybody to make a realistic version of a dead person who you could talk to in their actual voice,” says Cronenberg. “But Karsh doesn’t want something photo-realistic that’s uncanny.”
If I’d seen The Shrouds a decade ago, I’d have found the AI assistant hysterical, but instead I was moved in the screening room when Karsh finds solace in Hunny’s manufactured voice. Then, a few days later, I shuddered at the idea of receiving emotional support from an algorithmic cartoon that’s scraped together from a dead person’s data. Could an audience’s reaction to Hunny be swayed by which article on AI they read on the way to the cinema?
“Every aspect of technology is a reflection of who human beings are,” says Cronenberg. “That means it has beautiful aspects, and it has hideous, destructive aspects as well. We can anticipate the hideous, destructive aspects of AI, whereas at the same time, it’s incredibly useful and thrilling creatively.”
Cronenberg admits he’s feeling increasingly distant from The Shrouds, a film that premiered a year ago at Cannes. “Normally, I don’t think about my old films,” he says. “And this is starting to be an old film.” His mind has drifted towards an adaptation of his 2014 novel Consumed. “I’ll write the script, and we’ll see what happens. It would not be cheap.” I ask about his description of AI as “thrilling creatively” in regards to Consumed. “I wish I could just say, ‘ChatGPT, write the screenplay based on my novel,’” he says with a laugh. “That’s not going to happen for a long time.”
I explain that I meant more in terms of AI reducing the film’s budget. “We’ve been using AI for years in film,” he says. “For example, Maps to the Stars was shot in Toronto except for three days in LA. We made the background look like LA. AI is not new to filmmaking. It might be a shock to actors who suddenly see that their voices and images can be stolen and used. But it’s not new stuff, and it’s not something that saves you money, because it’s still expensive to use. It actually costs you money. True, it saved us having to move a crew to LA for more days, but it’s just another tool in the toolbox.”
Breaking the rule a bit, I ask about a slightly older film: the 2021 short he made with his daughter, Caitlin Cronenberg, called The Death of David Cronenberg. In the minute-long film, the elder Cronenberg hugs his own corpse, much like you imagine Karsh wished he could do with Becca. Cronenberg reveals it was a result of acting in the TV show Slasher. “They made this very lifelike corpse of me, and I thought we could use it. I felt a kinship to that corpse. It was quite strange.” He adds, “It’s about accepting your own death.”
In fact, most of the interview ends up being discussions about accepting death, including Cronenberg’s surprise that I’ve never been to a funeral before. I also acknowledge that I’m an atheist who’s never fully understood the purpose of funerals. “My character’s an atheist, and so am I,” he says. “You can’t just say, ‘We’ll meet in heaven later, so it’s not worth grieving.’ You’re very young, and eventually you’ll think about these things in a more personal, intimate, close-up way. It’s inevitable. It’s part of what human existence is. All art is an artist trying to understand and come to terms with the human condition.”
The Shrouds is out in UK and Irish cinemas on July 4
