Recommended: David Cronenberg - Author or Film-Maker? by Mark Browning

One of the best Christmas presents I received this past holiday season was Mark Browning's fascinating examination of the career and influences of David Cronenberg, perhaps the most overlooked and under-appreciated filmmaker of the past several decades. With the exception of 1986's The Fly, few of his movies have been box office smashes, and yet taken as a whole they constitute a virtually uninterrupted 30-year streak of intelligence and excellence that, in my humble opinion, cannot be matched by any of Cronenberg's peers. While his hardcore fanbase has grumbled about his last two 'mainstream' films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, it was his earliest works that instantly divided audiences into blissful devotees and repulsed detractors. As a kid, I vividly remember how it actually meant something profound to say you saw one of his films. Of course, we were just suburban teenage boys impressed with exploding heads, armpit parasites and stomach vaginas, not really aware of the deeper significance of his plots, but then again there were all kinds of horror movies we were eager to see back then that you couldn't pay me to watch nowadays. I own all of Cronenberg's movies on DVD; I could watch them all back to back with no problem. Clearly, something was there far beyond the now-dated special effects.
And that is what Browning's book delves into, taking several key films from Cronenberg's career and exploring not only their themes but also their (perhaps uncredited) inspirations. I won't attempt an official review after just one reading, but Browning delivers the most penetrating look at Cronenberg's creativity in action (albeit the creativity underneath the surface - clearly a risky and subjective task) that I've ever encountered. Of course, Browning has himself mentioned that his is only the second English-language book devoted to such an attempt; there is hopefully much more to come, but Browning does set a very impressive bar to reach.
For someone like me, unfamiliar with J.G. Ballard until Crash was filmed, and unaware of the 1977 novel Twins by Bari Woods and Jack Geasland even years after I saw Dead Ringers, discovering the literary parallels to Cronenberg's work was interesting just in its own right, but it's the ambiguous relationship Cronenberg seems to have to the source material that makes for an intriguing read. Browning provides ample evidence of filmmaker-as-frustrated-novelist, and perhaps frustrated just enough on occasion to resort to a subtle plagiarism that seems quite odd in light of Cronenberg's uber-intellectual demeanor. And while I find Browning's closing line a bit too harsh, I admit it isn't something that can be easily refuted despite my knee-jerk desire to do so immediately upon reading it. (And no, I won't quote it to you here. Treat yourself to your own copy.) But Browning is definitely not one of the repulsed detractors of Cronenberg's films; quite the contrary. And one of the things that makes this such an impressive and entertaining book is the respect he maintains while probing deeper into the flesh of Cronenberg's movies than has ever been done before.
If all goes according to plan (and the plan goes according to press release), Cronenberg's first novel will be published by Penguin Canada in 2010. While Browning may have to write a new afterward, everything else will remain relevant for a long time to come. And while I'd be a bit reluctant to recommend this to someone unfamiliar with the movies themselves, this is obviously a must-have for anybody who might chuckle at the realization that the guy that made Shivers wound up becoming one of the most brilliant minds in modern cinema.