On 4K UHD - David Hare welcomes the new (French) edition of CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (David Cronenberg, Canada, 2022)

The Cronenberg CRIMES OF THE FUTURE has just streeted in Oz thru Madman but they limited their release to BluRay/DVD, no 4K disc.

I’m glad however I forked out for the French 4K disc which is a limited deal through fnac. (Cover above)

The movie was shot with Arri cameras and Arriwa primes in native 3.4K uprezzed to 4K workflow for DCP which of course delivers a flawless and effectively lossless image quality on the UHD disc.  

I have to say the quality (and especially on a big projection screen) is a very persuasive element of the film’s impact on me.  

While I can sympathize with a relatively positive but reserved review of it like Melbourne critic Isabella Trimboli’s in The Saturday Paper, the criticism she and others express over perceived narrative and thematic inadequacies is something I actually found just as fascinating as his last movie insofar as the “performance” and “political” frameworks which rival groups are setting up based on the original murder are to me as much Cronenberg himself throwing back the need for narrative containment to his audiences who seem to always need it. 

The movie strikes me very much as highly romantic, even elegaic in mood and I feel Cronenberg is very much aware he’s probably giving us his last work. Hence the doodling with narratives.