Hollywood Hollywood-bashing is practically as old as Tinseltown herself, going back at the very least to the first version of A Star is Born (William Wellman 1937). David Cronenberg, ranked high on The MacMahonian´s pantheon of contemporary directors (on the whole somewhat lesser, in case you hadn´t noticed, to the classical pantheon), makes a gloves-off contribution to the genre with Maps to the Stars.
Maps to the Stars is David Cronenberg´s 21th feature film, and it confirms a trend from outer to inner violence in his work. Excluding Cronenberg´s film school days production, and so starting with Shivers (1975), that trend would run: non-stop gore until The Dead Zone (1983) and subsequent alternations of inner/outer until Eastern Promises (2007), the last explicitly violent film Cronenberg directed. Maps is his 3d film in a row that doesn´t require extensive FX, and that constitutes a record (absolutely nothing wrong with FX, I hasten to add, I´m just noting this).
Maps charts the troubles of Havana Segrand (Julian Moore), Hollywood actress and überbitch, as a pretext to portray a gallery of Hollywood film industry characters with unsurpassed misanthropism. Think Ernst Lubtisch/ Billy Wilder meet Alan Parker/Arthur Penn in their worst days and lose their sense of humour. The Hollywood crowd featured in Maps are a bunch of narcissistic sociopaths, crass, cruel, materialistic and neurotic to the bone, who think and behave ten times worse than Ab Fab characters. You´ve seen this before, but probably not quite like here: Havana actually sings and dances of joy when she learns the infant son of actress “friend” of hers has drowned in a swimming pool, leaving the mother too distressed to play a role that´s therefore going to be offered to her...
Maps to the Starts received mixed reviews, as many critics appear to feel Cronenberg diverged from his usual subject matter to dally with unnecessary vulgarity in a field already covered with honours from The Bad and the Beautiful (Vicente Minnelli, 1952) to SOB (Blake Edwards, 1981) and back. Not an impertinent point, but I´d look at it in reverse: Cronenberg´s theme has always been “the beast within”, and his films are often more disturbing when the beast remains hidden, as in Maps, or for instance in Dead Ringers [1988, maybe Cronenberg´s magnum opus, although admittedly he is as effective in gory films like The Brood (1979) or The Fly (1986)]. Maps is often discomforting, maybe that´s what caused some critics´ resistance; to them The MacMahonian quotes Magritte: "We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world." Or maybe even more to the point: “This is not a pipe”.
Although not at the level of Eastern Promises or A Dangerous Method (2011), Maps to the Stars is major Cronenberg and it belies those who thought (wished?) 2012´s rather dodgy Cosmopolis marked the decadence of the Canadian director´s creativity. And, yes, it goes to the 10 best list.