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"Spider," which had its North American premiere at theToronto International Film Festival on Monday, instead relies almost solely on the performance of Oscar-nominated actor RalphFiennes as a schizophrenic man tormented by the murder of his mother.
"There are no spiders...I thought it would have been too obvious, and I had my favorite and best Spider already (Fiennes), so I didn't need to add any more. I thought it was remarkably restrained of me to not have any spiders," Cronenberg told a media conference.
"To me the special effects aspect of filmmaking is nothing special at all. It's not different from editing or acting or costuming....it's a tool that you use if you have to."
The film, which made its world premiere in May at Cannes, weaves the story of the title character, a muttering, confused mental patient prematurely released from an asylum into the East London neighborhood where he was raised.
As he revisits his old haunts, the truth about his mother's death is revealed in a web of memories and flashbacks.
NO EXPLODING HEADS
"Spider" marks a significant departure for Cronenberg from his gore-filled films of the 1970s and 1980s. Movies like "The Brood," "Scanners," and "Videodrome" earned the director both a cult following and a reputation as an auteur who could weave high art from horror.
Most of Cronenberg's films abound with repellent and stomach churning images -- giant maggots, exploding heads and typewriters that change into talking bugs. But "Spider" is a slow moving character study with little of Cronenberg's trademark carnage and almost no violence.
"Spider" also lacks the controversial subject matter of his 1996 feature "Crash," a story of people erotically obsessed with car crashes that won a special prize for "audacity, daring and originality" at that year's Cannes film festival.
Cronenberg said he did not feel any different working on "Spider" than any of his other movies, and that the subject matter appealed to him on a deeply personal level.
"I think I'm just that far away from being Spider at any given moment frankly, to find myself walking the streets mumbling, probably about the film business, in an old coat with a tattered lining and all my possessions in one small cardboard suitcase," he told reporters.
"I can see that happening at any moment, so there was something about Spider that was very compelling and close to home."
KNOWN BY REPUTATION
Fiennes said to prepare for the role he met several schizophrenics and studied the disease. He said the decision to portray the character with almost no dialogue proved to be relatively easy.
"In a curious way I felt quite freed by not having a lot of dialogue. I liked the chance to, as it were, express a character mostly physically or through inarticulate mutterings and mumblings," he said.
Fiennes, along with co-stars Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne, told reporters they knew of Cronenberg's reputation well before filming started and it was one of the attractions of working on the movie.
"My feeling is that there are too few filmmakers working in cinema today whose
films are provocative. There are people who have varying reactions to
Cronenberg's films, but...you come out of a Cronenberg film and you are
thinking," Byrne said.
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on September 12, 2002
EL STEPHO