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The Fly (1986)
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Les Carlson, George Chuvalo
Director: David Cronenberg
Screenwriter: Charles Edward Pogue, David Cronenberg Cinematographer: Mark Irwin Composer: Howard Shore
Price: Rs. 499
Director David Cronenberg describes “The Fly” as a romantic comedy. One’s first instinct is to wonder what Cronenberg was smoking when he made that comment, considering “The Fly” created a creature-feature template and a
lso has one of the most famous tag lines of the Eighties, “Be afraid. Be very afraid”. However, after the initial reaction of stupefied disbelief, when one thinks about the film, one figures out where Cronenberg is coming from.
“The Fly” is a romance, has some of the smartest, wittiest lines, a gloriously gory horror flick and a gut-wrenching tragedy. The fact that the genre switches happen so smoothly and so seamlessly is one of the movie’s greatest strengths. Throw in extraordinarily clever writing, brilliant acting, the sure hand of an auteur and drop-dead gorgeous leads and voila, a celluloid classic is ready to be served.
The movie starts with a pretty journalist Veronica Quaife meeting brilliantly nerdy scientist Seth Brundle at a scientific convention. Seth persuades her to come to his lab to see his invention, a genetic transportation machine.
Veronica is duly impressed even though when she first sees the machine, she mistakes it for a designer phone booth! While the machine works perfectly with inanimate objects, it is stumped when teleporting living beings. Veronica and Seth fall in love; he is able to crack the “flesh” code and successfully teleports a baboon.
When he decides to try it himself, however, the experiment goes terribly wrong as there is literally a fly in the ointment and the computer splices the two together. In the beginning Seth enjoys all the positive aspects of the transportation with an almost superhuman energy. But then things start to come apart and Veronica watches her charming, intelligent lover mutate into Brundlefly, a creature that is neither man or fly, but rather a blend of the two.
The dialogue is richly evocative as one remembers Alexander Pope when Seth cajoles Veronica to “Drink deep, or taste not, the plasma spring” and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” when Seth says: “I’m saying I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake.”
However, that is not to say that the film is abstruse and inaccessible. With Cronenberg’s fascination for graphic portrayal of decay and disease, Seth’s transformation from nerdy scientist to mutant freak is lovingly photographed with the camera lingering on each repugnant stage with obsessive stillness. All who have a fondness for gross-out stuff would be thrilled to little bits.
And there is humour too from Seth’s comments on his medicine cabinet turning into the Brundle Museum of Natural History to his throwaway comment to Tawny about building bodies and “It mated us, me and the fly. We hadn’t even been properly introduced.”
Based on a short story by Charles Edward Pogue and a remake of 1958 film, “The Fly” has three main characters, Veronica, Seth and Veronica’s ex-lover who is also her editor and general rat, Stathis Borans.
Another of the film’s strengths is crackling chemistry between the leads. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis were a couple when the movie was shot, gives an emotional core to the film. Goldblum has given his all to the film and even when he buried under layers of makeup as Brundlefly he still makes us care deeply for him. It helps that he looks sizzling hot with his big bug (pun unintended) eyes and tousled hair.
Originally offered to Tim Burton, Cronenberg came to the project after he walked out of “Total Recall” due to creative differences with producer Dino De Laurentiis. It is interesting to wonder what Burton would have made of “The Fly” and Cronenberg of “Total Recall”!
Extra features include a short making-of feature and interviews with the cast and crew. Goldblum talks of how difficult and claustrophobic it was for him under the many layers of makeup while Geena Davis says what a normal guy Cronenberg turned out to be — considering Cronenberg’s oeuvre, which included “Dead Zone”, “Videodrome” and “Scanners”.
“The Fly” is a wonderful genre-busting film with a perfect mix of intelligence and surrealism that effortlessly lift the film to the level of a classic.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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