David Cronenberg

David Paul Cronenberg was born on March 15, 1943 in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), where he has lived regularly throughout his life, and which is close to New York, where he has always gone often. His parents, Milton and Esther, a book publisher and a pianist, each instill in him their passion for their work, and so the boy ends up giving guitar lessons while, from a young age, he becomes an avid reader of authors like William S. Burroughs and Vladimir Nabokov .

His childhood was a breeding ground for the ghosts that he has dealt with in his filmography. For example, his fondness for portraying isolated characters stems from the fact that he was a lonely child, who, for example, received classes at a Jewish school despite the fact that his parents did not practice any religion, so he was always the “weird”. His obsession with the physical and mental deterioration of his characters has its roots in the terrible unclassifiable degenerative disease suffered by his father, who confined him to bed until he died in 1973, which caused the boy enormous suffering due to his sense of impotence.

He enrolls in Science at the University of Toronto, but is disappointed in the cold, institutional and unemotional way of teaching the professors, and ends up dropping out to major in Literature, where he discovers that his calling is to develop his artistic ability. While contemplating dedicating himself to writing fiction books, he discovers cinema and ends up directing the shorts Transfers and From the Drain . With Ivan Reitman (later the director of Ghostbusters ) and other Canadian filmmakers, he creates a company specializing in experimental cinema, with which he shoots a medium-length film in black and white, Stereo , and another in color, Crimes of the Future .

Eager to dedicate himself to fant-terror, he could not find producers interested in the genre in Canada, so obtaining financing for his first feature was not easy. After searching unsuccessfully in the United States, he obtains a grant from the government of his country that allows him to shoot the chilling They came from within… , produced by Reitman. The film, about parasites created by a scientist that enter people, unleashing his sexual passions, anticipates several of the later constants of his work. It did not convince the critics, but it was a great success.

This tape marks the line of what will be the first stage of the artist’s work, in which he shoots low-budget Canadian horror productions. After Rabia –very similar to his first film– he shoots his well-known Chromosome 3 –about a psychotherapist who develops a new therapy to treat his patients, Scanners –about individuals endowed with psychic powers– and Videodrome –about a violent television channel that alters human perception.

The Dead Zone , an impeccable adaptation of a novel by Stephen King , an author who has always tempted great creators, inaugurates the American stage of the filmmaker, more conventional and academic. But it affects his favorite theme, the mental alteration that an exceptional situation causes in an individual, specifically here the acquisition of psychic powers. His greatest success in Hollywood is The Fly (1986) , also about the mental and physical metamorphosis suffered by a scientist ( Jeff Goldblum ) who, after one of his experiments, gradually turns into an insect. It covers a little horror classic starring Vincent Price in 1958 .

Thanks to the benefits achieved with this tape, Cronenberg can afford to take a radical turn towards the most personal phase of his career. He shoots Inseparable like this , with Jeremy Irons giving life to two twin brothers, based on two real characters whose story was collected in the book “Twins”, by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, which the director wanted to take to the cinema for a long time. He finally had to opt for self-financing. Although it departs from the fantastic horror genre, it is still a sinister and morbid story, one of those that fascinate the filmmaker. It addresses another of his favorite themes, identity, completely different in two biologically equal beings, two medical brothers, as well as showing, as usual, their deterioration, in this case due to drug addiction.

Encouraged by the critical and public success of this latest work, Cronenberg embarked on his most daring project, Naked Lunch , which takes to the cinema an unadaptable text by William S. Burroughs , that writer he adored when he began to read literature. But the film, about William Lee, a writer, Burroughs’ alter ego who suffers from strange hallucinations, did not connect with the public.

Cronenberg got his start as an actor with bit parts in a few of his own films, until Clive Barker cast him in a major role, the psychopathic doctor-turned-villain of the film, in Night Races . He has also been a doctor in various productions, such as Jason X and the Alias ​​series .

Divorced from Margaret Hidson, with whom he had a child, but who eventually joined a sect, Cronenberg began a relationship with Carolyn Zeifman, who played small roles in some of his films, and who gave birth to two other offspring. Cronenberg often repeats with some of his collaborators, especially with the musician Howard Shore , his usual composer, and with his ‘inseparable’ sister Denise Cronenberg, who is the costume designer.

He also reprized with Jeremy Irons in M. Butterfly , in which he plays a diplomat who develops an unhealthy relationship over time with whom he believes to be an opera singer, ignorant of his true masculine identity. The darkest and most twisted film of his filmography (and even though the level of depravity was already quite high), is undoubtedly Crash (1996) , based on a novel by JG Ballard , where various characters have sex of different kinds in cars at colliding point.

After eXistenZ , once again about technology, specifically about an organic game that alters human perception, and Spider , a journey into the mind of a schizophrenic, Cronenberg shoots two films that, although they do not completely shed his personal stamp, about all in the seedier moments, are narratively much more conventional: A History of Violence and Eastern Promises .

In both is Viggo Mortensen , who has become the favorite actor of his last years, and who also stars in A Dangerous Method , about the relationship between the young psychiatrist Carl Jung and his mentor, Sigmund Freud. He competed in the official section at the 2011 Venice Film Festival.