Beautiful portrait of a man’s finding the need to take stock and make amends—“I just hope I’m not too late.” Indeed.
The cinematography. The score. Richard Farnsworth’s incredible blue eyes. The memory of David Lynch hovering over it all. What more do you need?
Watch it and weep.
Criterion Challenge 2026*
1990s
*One year I must have hit 4 deer in total. I got the paranoid feeling that they were throwing themselves in front of my car to commit suicide. So I feel that lady’s pain.
Loved seeing Robert Culp in a role quite different from his TV work. He made a good teacher of the way of the gun and found some emotion as well in his interactions with rape victim Raquel Welch, desperate for revenge. Reminded me a bit of Peter Fonda in his westerns.
Quite a cast in this little British movie. Strother Martin, in fine form as usual, plus Jack Elam and Ernest Porknjne are the bad guys, and I couldn’t wait…
This film is my favorite Cronenberg and my favorite Jeremy Irons performance(s) as well.
Cronenberg’s usual fascinations are there: complicated feelings about women, fascination with surgery, mutation and technology, and questions of identity and intimacy.
But unlike most of his other films since this one, Dead Ringers is low on body horror scenes of explicit gore and more concerned with a drama of interpersonal relationships and identity. The tools for surgery on mutant women are terrifying and disturbing, as are…
Between this movie and Cronenberg’s The Brood, we get the picture: Divorce is Hell, especially on the children. And it makes screaming, drooling, bloody monsters of us all.
The film’s famous and incredibly intense performance from Isabelle Adjani has to be seen to be believed. She is an actress known for portraying emotional extremes, as she did in The Story of Adele H. and Camille Claudel, and this tops them all.
But even more surprising to me was the equally…
