Susto - Cosmopolis & Bad Timing - DeLillo & Roeg

“Sing a song of sad young men....”

Don DeLillo's novel, Cosmopolis, was published in 2003. Nicolas Roeg's film Bad Timing was completed in 1980, but (barely) released twelve years later. Cosmopolis has been made into a movie by David Cronenberg, and subjected to very limited release (in Columbus, Ohio in any case).

  Cosmopolis, because of DeLillo's poetical writing, reminded me of Mike Leigh’s film Naked. Cosmopolis and Naked, each in its own way, invokes poetical language to give us the bad news, to let us in on what it’s like to lose one’s soul - death of the soul or susto. 

  Rorg’s Bad Timing brings to mind the Vienna of Schnitzler, Freud, and Klimt. Indeed, the film’s male lead, played by Art Garfunkel, is a professor of psychoanalysis. And Gustav Klimt’s paintings are a prominent part of the film’s decor. But it is also the Vienna of John Le Carre and Len Deighton - a city full of spies and voyeurs. 

  Love Crime (Crime d‘ Amour) by the late Alain Corneau is also a recent film about post-modern love. Let’s say Bad Timing is about modern, obsessive, over the top love, while Cosmopolis is about post-modern auto-erotic love, the thrill of money, speculation, and power (among other similar things).

Music. 

  Vienna has been a music town, at least since papa Haydn. Paris, France (where Love Crime is set) is a music city, also. I listened to bits of Cronenberg’s sound track for his film of Cosmopolis. The music was composed by Howard Shore and performed by Metric and K’Naan. It might be microtonal, minimalist, indie.

  The music for Bad Timing consisted of recorded music by Tom Waits, The Who, Billie Holiday,  Keith Jarrett, and Harry Partch - Partch’s music could certainly be viewed as having influenced both techno and indie composers and sound-specialists.

  I was totally enthralled by Love Crime (Crime d’Amour); I viewed it four times. It is a murder-suspense commentary on capitalism and its multinational corporate manifestations. It has these similarities with the other three films also - it might not be on the surface of Leigh’s Naked, but it’s viciously displayed in the character of the landlord. Music in Naked often consists of duets between a contrabass and harp. Love Crime has no music until the very end. The music is by Pharoah Sanders and consists of a duet between koto and Sander’s tenor saxophone. Contrasts of high and low instruments in both cases.

  In a large way each of these films is about love, manipulation, and power. Love as treated in Bad Timing has been called, among other things, by reviewers ‘erotic’, ‘obsessive’, ‘sordid’, ‘perverse’. “Love is sometimes sad, sometimes sad; but beautiful”, as the song goes. Billie Holiday in an interview said the same things about the blues.
  Based on the limited distribution in the United States of America that the films mentioned herein have received, it seems that bad news doesn't play well in its movie houses. Creativity in film also seems to be an undesirable attribute of film, too. One can read about these films and Don Delillo's novel in the usual internet places.
  Susto is explored lyrically and seriously in these films and novel by Messrs. Leigh, Roeg, Cronenberg, and DeLillo. Stop, Look, and Listen.