‘On the stairs of Death I write your name, Liberty...’
Master director David Cronenberg has just returned to the fold for the first time since 2014 with this year’s Kristen Stewart starring body horror Crimes of the Future. What better time to revisit his last cinematic outing Maps to the Stars? Now, Cronenberg is, of course, mostly known for his contribution to horror, and it is worth noting that while Maps to the Stars purports not to be a horror film, it certainly contains horrific elements. And I am here for all of it…
Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a trouble woman who has self-inflicted burns over much of her body, returns to L.A. and to her showbiz family. Her younger brother Benjie (Evan Bird) is a monstrous child star, her father (John Cusack – playing against type) is an abusive psychopath, and her mother Christina (Olivia Williams) is too weak to stand up to him. Despite this, Agatha manages to get a job as an assistant to a troubled Hollywood actress (a wild eyed Julianne Moore) as well as striking up a relationship with a hunky limo driver (Robert Pattinson).
A tangled web, then, and one that is rendered even more complex by the fact that we have no real protagonist here. Agatha is a sympathetic character, but she is also violent and unhinged. Benjie has endured terrible hardship, but he is also a racist bully. It is easy to see why audiences were turned off by such an objectively awful family. But what Cronenberg does do here, perhaps better than he ever has, is present the viewer with some of the most horrifying and powerful imagery of his whole career. It helps that everyone in the cast knocks it out of the park, Moore and Bird are particularly charismatic, both of them somehow managing to imbue humour and pathos when required whilst still ensuring that the darker scenes are particularly jet black.
Maps to the Stars will be too macabre for some. Too much. But for fans of Cronenberg and his unconventional style, this is well worth checking out. An odd and ambitious movie.