Short of the Week: David Cronenberg’s portrait of a dying actor
Fondly known as the ‘Master of Body Horror’ by fans everywhere, David Cronenberg has been one of the most original artistic voices in the world of horror cinema for a long time now. Through masterpieces like Videodrome and Crash, the Canadian auteur reshaped the landscape of the genre while engaging with his boundary-pushing artistic pursuits. The result of that is a filmography full of incredible gems, each unique in its own way.
Although Cronenberg took a long hiatus from body horror, the acclaimed director eventually returned to the subgenre with his 2022 film Crimes of the Future. Imagining a world where evolution has become a laughable absurdity and surgery has been converted into performance art, Cronenberg’s latest feature digs deeper into the world we are creating for future generations. Although not as widely loved as his previous body horror efforts, it still bears the unmistakable mark of its pioneering creator.
For this edition of Short of the Week, we have decided to highlight another horror film by Cronenberg, which completely eschews his characteristic approach to body horror. Starring his Videodrome collaborator Les Carlson as an ageing actor, Camera is a study of an artist who has succumbed to the inevitability of time. When he finds an obsolete camera in his house, he is forced to confront the tragic mortality of his own condition.
“One day, the children brought home an old camera,” the actor begins. “I don’t know where they got it. They were very excited about it. I used to be an actor. Well, I still am an actor, but I don’t work much. My best days are behind me, as they say. And naturally, I had mixed feelings about a camera in the house because, really, if you look at it in a cold light, photography is death. It’s all about death. Memory and desire, ageing and death. For an actor in particular, these things are not abstractions. These things are as real as looking in a mirror.”
Oscillating between profound meditation and anecdotes, he adds: “I had a dream a long time ago before I had achieved anything professionally. I dreamt I was in the cinema watching a movie with an audience. And suddenly, I realised I was ageing rapidly, growing horribly old as I sat there. It was the movie that was doing it. I had caught some kind of disease from the movie. And it was making me grow old, bringing me closer and closer to death. I woke up terrified.”
Camera deals with the most universal fear our civilisation has ever known, the terror induced in our minds by ageing and the proximity of death. Carlson’s character equates his own mortality with that of the cinematic medium, ruminating on the ontological obsolescence of an apparatus that has been left behind by the technological advancements of the future.
Watch the film below.
