5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager's day devolves into a odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Jay BaruchelDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
My vote for Most Surreal Television Moment of 2012 was not Mitt Romney warbling “God Bless America”, though it is an image (and sound) I’ve found hard to shake from my synapses. (I should add that my nomination of Romney’s “singing” for this self-created "prize" has absolutely nothing to do with politics and everything to do with musicality, or lack thereof.) Instead, there was a much stranger and maybe even more embarrassing escapade on a show diametrically opposed to everything Romney and Conservatism stand for, namely Jon Stewart’s proudly left leaning The Daily Show. In the midst of all the completely silly brouhaha surrounding the absolutely earth shattering announcement of Kristen Stewart’s affair with her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders and her subsequent messy breakup with Robert Pattinson, Stewart had Pattinson on his show, ostensibly to promote Cosmopolis. So here was this huge pop cultural moment, an instant of collective schadenfreude and one which Stewart joked about a little uneasily leading up to the interview with Pattinson, an interview which was prefaced with one amazingly bizarre scene from the David Cronenberg movie (like there being a weird scene from a Cronenberg movie was a big surprise). And then virtually without comment about the completely weird little scene we’d all just witnessed, Stewart just launched into his “but, seriously, are you okay?” routine with Pattinson, replete with a pint of Ben and Jerry's to break the ice, as if the patently outré film clip we’d just seen wasn’t worth mentioning. There are two twin ironies about this so-called Surreal Moment. First, there probably was nothing that Stewart could have said, for in many ways Cosmopolis is an incredibly dense and internal piece that almost willfully defies description, and attempting to talk about a 30 second snippet of the film would be like attempting to generate a commentary on one sentence from War and Peace. But second, the really ironic thing is that Cronenberg’s film is about a cold, ruthless plutocrat, a billionaire hermetically sealed off from Everyman like a modern day Howard Hughes fearful of catching some dread proletariat disease, and who is thus part of that much discussed “1%” that none other than Mitt Romney also exemplifies.
Cosmopolis is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. My hunch is this is the same transfer that Entertainment One released on their British Blu-ray which my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov reviewed. While I share Svet's admiration for the overall look of this digitally shot film, I'm just a tad less pleased with some of the shadow detail, especially since so much of the film is so intentionally dark. While this is never a huge issue, I've subtracted half a point for some instances (notably in a club where Packer visits) where some of the background information seems just slightly murkier than it would be in ideal conditions. Otherwise, though, this is indeed a sterling transfer, with Cronenberg's intentional decision to paint the green screen urban landscape of Manhattan drifting by the limousine windows in a slightly unreal way popping really well, and with the interior of the limousine offering abundant fine detail, especially since Cronenberg frames so much of the action in close-ups. Colors are accurate and very well saturated, and contrast remains strong (though it seems to have been intentionally pushed in some scenes, as in the early sequence with Eric and his wife at the diner.
Cosmopolis features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that is probably going to underwhelm those needing nonstop showy immersion, but which in fact is a very subtle, often quite nuanced, track that delivers an appropriate sense of a confined, muffled space which then suddenly opens up into the various sounds (at times violent sounds) of a throbbing metropolis. Fidelity is excellent throughout this track, with dialogue always crisply presented, and there's a rather surprising amount of dynamic range, including in the aforementioned club scene. A couple of unexpected bursts of LFE may in fact startle the unprepared listener.
Cosmopolis is frankly not an easy film to like, let alone love, but it is an extremely easy film to admire. Its cold, dispassionate take on an unlikable character may not be everyone's (or indeed anyone's) cup of tea, but for those who have the patience to really let this film's hypnotic spell slowly ensnare them, Cosmopolis is unexpectedly rich, a philosophical masterpiece that manages to make a ruthless technocrat somehow impossible to ignore. The film is solidly crafted and is in fact a technical tour de force that should be studied alongside other (more or less) single set wonders like Hitchock's Lifeboat and the two films Cronenberg mentions in his commentary. Video and audio are largely exemplary, and the supplemental package contains an unmissable documentary. Highly recommended.
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