Last week on The Movie Blog we posted a piece on David Cronenberg, this and the Halloween season has compelled me to bring Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly to your attention. This movie is superbly done, maintaining the premise from the original but pushing the story into a modern setting. The Fly very well may be one of Cronenberg’s best works.
Jeff Goldblum is Seth Brundle, an obsessed scientist who has been working on a teleportation process which could change the world as we no it. Eager to talk about his work, he recruits a local journalist Veronica Quaife who is played by Geena Davis, to document his work for a book, once the process is ready. Due to the amount of time these two spend together, a relationship is formed. Brundle, is not exactly Don Juan, and becomes extremly jealous when Veronica must deal with an ex-lover. Jealousy is a green eyed monster and when Seth loses his control he decides to enter his teleportation pods completing the human testing on himself. Technically all goes well, but as you probably already know, he isn’t alone when he is transported as billions of molecules and reconstructed at the other end of the room.
After Brundle’s “successful” teleportation test on himself, he begins to notice changes in how he feels. Beginning as feelings of better health, Seth shortly finds out that his body is decomposing and then as each day passes, parths of his body start to fall off. Fearing death, he uses his gift for problem solving to determine what is causing his cancer. A fly was found in the pod and was genetically merged within his DNA and now, Seth Brundle is becoming “Brundle Fly”.
Cronenberg directs the complete metamorphoses of Brundle Fly not only physically but mentally as well by following the 5 stages of death perfectly. Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Each stage places Seth into a different attitude and personality, but it is the acceptance stage were he becomes truly dangerous.
The Fly is one of those movies you forget how good it is, until you stumble upon it in a bargain bin for 9$. Jeff Goldblum is one of the smoothest actors in the biz and he does not disappoint in The Fly.
As the Halloween season draws closer to it’s third week, don’t pass up the opportunity to get close with your honey and watch this sci-frightful favorite.
See if you can find Cronenberg’s character in the movie (and don’t cheat)?
