David Cronenberg paved a new career path for Robert Pattinson in two horror stories of wealth
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Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
Cosmopolis (2012) and Maps To The Stars (2014)
Robert Pattinson was wrapping up the final entry of the Twilight saga when out of the blue came a script for the new David Cronenberg movie. The YA heartthrob wasn’t exactly known for his dramatic chops at this point, but the Canadian master must have seen in Pattinson and his chiseled jadedness a quality well-suited to the lifeless cool of Cosmopolis, the Don DeLillo late-capitalist odyssey he was adapting for the screen. Looking back, we might thank Cronenberg for changing the direction of the actor’s career: Pattinson transformed into a champion of arthouse cinema following his icy turn as a dead-inside billionaire. And two years later, he reunited with the director for the Hollywood roast session Maps To The Stars. Both movies are 21st-century horror stories about the privileged and wealthy and their eerily solipsistic worlds. Pattinson as the uniting factor is key: There’s something in his statuesque, pallid beauty that speaks to the veneers of perfection explored by these films, and the rot and vacuity beneath such sleek, pretty surfaces.
Cosmopolis follows Wall Street financier Eric Packer (Pattinson) as he journeys across Manhattan in a white stretch limo to get a haircut. A visit from the U.S. president, a rap star’s funeral, and anarchist rioting cause bumper-to-bumper traffic, so Eric moves forward at a snail’s pace. It’s no matter—the limo functions as a sort of traveling office where he receives visits from his doctor and his poet wife, and enjoys sexual trysts with colleagues and his go-to prostitute. Pattinson is on screen in nearly every shot and speaks in a flat, affectless manner. It’s not a showy performance, but that’s intentional: DeLillo’s bleak, sardonic vision of American life demands that human emotion be dialed down. Pattinson’s manicured appearance and cold, lobotomized presence embody the dispassionate chill of the novel. But he also imbues each of Eric’s encounters with an inexplicable sadness.
Eric peers out his tinted windows at the death and chaos around him and feels bored, even when he gets news that his bad bet on the Chinese yuan might dismantle his fortune. Pale and shimmering, he seems to float above reality—the cost of reaping the benefits of a brutal capitalist economy while remaining sealed off from its crushing effects. A protestor sets himself on fire outside the limo; Eric watches, along with his financial advisor, Jane (Emily Hampshire), who claims the act is “not original,” citing the countless monks who’ve done the same. “Imagine the pain,” Eric responds with a twinkle in his eye. He’s desperate to feel something, which accounts for all the mindless sex. But this desire evolves into something more violent and self-destructive as the limo hurtles toward its destination.
Between Cosmopolis and Maps To The Stars, Pattinson has a great deal of backseat limo sex under Cronenberg’s watch. But in the latter film, the actor gets behind the wheel as a limo driver and aspiring actor/writer in Los Angeles. Cronenberg’s most recent film focuses mainly on Havana (Julianne Moore, who won Best Actress at Cannes), an egomaniacal actress with staggering amounts of emotional baggage. Havana belongs to a constellation of sickly Hollywood folks, including a morally bankrupt celebrity shrink (John Cusack) and a bratty, Bieber-esque child star (Evan Bird). She hires Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a mysterious, timid woman with severe burn scars on her body, to be her newest “chore whore,” which unravels a twisted, perverse history.
Cronenberg piles on the sexual violence, psychosis, and murder as the story gradually reveals the disturbing interconnectedness of its various characters, and the inbred, closed-loop economy that sustains the industry. Havana’s obsession with starring in the remake of the movie that made her own mother a star in the ’60s is one of the many bizarre ways she hopes to exorcise her trauma as a victim of childhood abuse. As Jane puts it in Cosmopolis, there are no new ideas. Cronenberg and screenwriter Bruce Wagner contend that inbreeding is both a literal and metaphorical force in the business, which constantly churns out more and more of the same thing. As the hapless outsider Jerome, Pattinson plays the film’s most relatable character, passively cruising in and out of the lives of others, his starry-eyed desire for fame intact. The glittery fantasy of the chauffeur and limo, a sign of status and success, is deceptive. Put a blacklight to the seats and you’ll find all sorts of stains.
Availability: Cosmopolis is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, VUDU (with ads), and Tubi (with ads), and can be rented or purchased from Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, and Microsoft. Maps To The Stars is currently streaming on Netflix and can be rented or purchased on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango, Redbox, DirectTV, and VUDU.
29 Comments
Predictions for the next 2 films? Personally, I’d go with The Rover and The Lighthouse. But given this is The AV Club, my money’s on The Lost City of Z and High Life (especially if Dowd and Ignatiy are getting to vote), with The Lighthouse as a possible alternate, though I kinda feel like it’s too well known at this point to make the cut for this feature.
The rover is long overdue for some retrospective love. That movie and Cosmopolis combined were what cemented my love for Pattinson as an actor.
The decent, but nothing special James Dean movie he made called Life would also be a semi-obscure recommendation I’d love to see featured.
The Rover is a very good watch. Just good all around. I second the motion for a retrospective.
I agree with you about all three movies. I watch Rover and Cosmopolis about the same time and it really made me like the guy. He was really solid as a supporting role in Life and Lost City of Z, which if anything makes me enjoy him more knowing that Pattinson can be a supporting actor and a leading guy and just blend into characters as well as seize the scenery.
Did Pattinson die or something? 3 articles about him in 3 days. Tenet I guess?
Yes, the dearth of new movies has meant they’ve had theme weeks to revisit older movies, and his appearance in Tenet was apparently enough to justify this.
Plus that trailer for The Batman trending last week, I’m sure.
I’m down with it. Let’s face it, since Twilight the guy has made some really interesting and ballsy choices with his career when he could have been cashing big checks in teen heartthrob dreck.
Him and Daniel Radcliffe. Like right after they finished their huge YA adaptation franchise game they immediately leapt into weird artsy stuff that has really worked out for them. I’m glad, props to them both.
True, but Radcliffe isn’t the face man that Pattinson is. Regardless, they definitely both made enough money very early to essentially do whatever they want from here on out.
I dunno, Radcliffe is a pretty handsome guy. Not quite Pattinson-tier but pretty good. Good enough to be a young Jon Hamm in “A Young Doctor’s Notebook” haha
To the general public he is by far best known as the Sparkly Twilight Vampire (and I guess followed up by a Pretty Boy in Harry Potter).He is about ready to play Batman, in an era when Batman is expected to be dark and gritty. In a movie that is THIS mainstream it could completely change the public image of him.So its either a media blitz to show off his darker side to say “hey, this buy may make a good Batman”Or its just driven by the buzz searching for his films to see what they are in for with Batman.
Did you not read the preface to the article? Or did you do the blasphemy of just going straight to the comments section to voice your idiocy and inability to read the actual…article?Inquiring minds want to know.
Do you feel like an important person now? Keep raging away at the keyboard there, hero.
Also “The Batman” trailer just dropped, so he’s in the public eye even more whilst people dissect it and compare him to Keaton and Affleck and Bale etc.
well, now he’s got covid, sooo
I appreciate you’re covering movies I’ve actually seen rather than Harold Porter and the Fantabulous Contraption, but I worry you might trick readers into watching Maps to the Stars. It’s not worth viewing, and Pattinson isn’t interesting in it. A shame Cronenberg hasn’t made anything since.
Maps to the Stars is so bad. It’s difficult to believe that Cronenberg directed it. It’s obvious and unfunny. The only compliment is that the actors all pretty much throw themselves into the material, especially Julianne Moore. But they all deserved better material.I’ve been meaning to read the novel, but I thought Cosmopolis was one of the better movies movies to try and grapple with the 2008 crash. I’m actually surprised that novel came out in 2003, but I guess DeLillo’s always been prescient.
DeLillo always knew. I read “White Noise” 15 years ago and I still think of it every day.
In the age of social media, The Airborne Toxic Event somehow is even more relevant than when the book came out.
Yeah I really appreciated Julianne Moore going balls to the wall in her role, though that’s pretty typical for her, she rarely phones it in even when the material is beneath her. I didn’t hate all of Maps to the Stars, but I despised the ending. The first half is pretty solid though and I thought Mia and Pattinson had a good connection.
I’ve read the novel and it is totally worth it. Like the review says, Pattinson brings a sort of sadness to the role, and I think that is the biggest change because in the novel Packard is almost totally empty. And not to spoil anything but there is so much more weird limo stuff that they didn’t have in the film. So definitely read it if you have the time.
Economic crashes are a recurring thing. The film “Up in the Air” was taken as a commentary on the same recession, but it was based on a book inspired by an earlier one.
What? No! Don’t tell people to watch Maps to the Stars! It’s Cronenberg’s worst. A massive disappointment on the heels of the brilliant Cosmopolis.
Cosmopolis is mad underrated (I was meh-to-nope on Maps To The Stars). Really wish someone would get around to adapting ‘White Noise’ someday, speaking of DeLillo. It’s my very favorite novel (though 2666 comes close), though it might be pretty much unfilmable.
I caught most of Map To The Stars on cable. It was very off-putting. Because it seemed so damn trite, with unpleasant people. You can have one or the other of those qualities, but not both together. Another “satire” about Hollywood people where they’re awful because they’re very damaged. And the pacing was as slow as molasses. I never developed an interest in any of the characters. I’ve never seen a Cronenberg movie this tired, dull, and unimaginative.
Big fan of Don DeLillo but Cosmpopolis—the novella, as DeLillo hasn’t published a big book since Underworld—didn’t do anything for me. Maybe the film is more exciting. Wait, it’s directed by the same guy who did Map To the Stars? Eh, maybe not.
He also did “Eastern Promises” and “A History of Violence” so I’ll give Cronenberg a pass for Maps. “Cosmopolis” was excellent but (purposefully) slow paced, so if you aren’t a fan of that style then you might not like the adaptation. I enjoyed the source material, though I agree it isn’t up there with DeLillo’s best. Sort of how one can enjoy “Inherent Vice” but know that it isn’t as complex or mindbending as “Gravity’s Rainbow”
Neither of these rank with Cronenberg’s best, obviously, but they’re all of a piece with his larger Project.
Honestly I didn’t read Maps to the Stars as much as a satire of Hollywood insularity (maybe that’s part of it) as much as just being about the cycle of abuse and the way trauma perpetuates himself. It’s a lot like The Brood in that regard. Has its flaws, but it was interesting.