Cosmopolis (2012)

David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis glides through Manhattan in a stretch limo while the world outside comes apart. Eric Packer, a twenty-eight-year-old currency speculator, wants a haircut. Around him, protesters wave dead rats, spray-paint his car, and paraphrase the Communist Manifesto. They later pie him. The film is an explicit autopsy of the super-rich, and it does not blink. A ruined former employee indicts the system that left him adrift. The anti-capitalist pulse is loud, sustained, and close to the surface. This is not a subtext. It is the text, upholstered in leather and lit by screens.

Most other contemporary identity markers are absent or incidental. The cast includes K'naan and a few international actors, but the ensemble is overwhelmingly white and assembled for artistic effect, not representational argument. Race never becomes the film's subject; class and capital do. Women appear as Packer's wife, lovers, and advisors, yet they orbit his detachment and do not generate a feminist critique. There are no LGBTQ themes, no climate concerns, no body-positive message in the asymmetrical prostate motif, no neurodivergent characters, and no revisionist history. This is a contemporary satire of money and meaning, not a survey of modern grievance categories.

The lecture energy is present and unmistakable. Characters deliver rhythmic pensées about capital, symmetry, and decay, often while seated in a limousine that functions as a confessional booth. Cronenberg keeps the temperature low. The result is an art film with a thesis, not a sermon with a collection plate, though the thesis is repeated with liturgical patience. Critics split accordingly. Some found a precise match of filmmaker and material. Others found coldness and abstraction. Both camps are correct. Cosmopolis is a chilly vintage, heavy on the rot of capital, light on the identity politics that usually define our cultural flashpoints. It is serious, airless, and very pleased with its own discomfort.