and that was initially what sparked the idea, just try- ing to think of a character who might be able to see disease as sort of an intimate thing. It occurred to me that a celebrity-obsessed fan might desire disease and that connection; they might see it as a way of connecting to a celebrity and that seemed like a very interesting metaphor or a platform for discussing stuff that was worth discussing.
Why do you think there is so much hysteria around celebrity? I think celebrity culture connects to an older impulse to divide people. I mean, it’s manifesting in a strange and extreme way in our culture now but I think it’s something that we’ve been doing for a while. When you look at the saints, the idea that people are ele- vated to the status of gods, essentially, and even with the saints there is that obsession with the physical. You see old churches that claim to have the finger bone of a saint or the blood smear on the cloth they were wearing when they were impaled. I’m not sure why that impulse exists but I think it’s a very old one that’s just manifesting in this way because that’s the context that we live in.
At the centre of all of this is Caleb’s character, Syd March. One of the criticisms of the film is that you can’t identify with him, that he’s very cold. What’s your take? I wanted the protagonist to seem removed from that world, to be someone who imagined himself to be above it and looking down on it, but who was actually completely a product of it. Because I think it’s really easy to sneer at celebrity culture and to criticize it, but at the same time we are all sort of defined by the culture we grow up in and we’re all affected by it to a certain degree. So, I guess I meant his coldness to be a bit of a front. He seems so removed and emo- tionless and not affected, and then he’s actually just as much a part of it as anybody else.
What does Caleb embody as an actor that you wanted for the film?
Messy Business: Syd’s sickness sets in, and (opposite) a Cronenbergian tableau of man and machine.
I think he’s incredible to look at, like he can do any- thing, and it’s completely fascinating, which was im- portant because he’s on the screen pretty much all the time. Having someone that had a certain screen quality that would be consistently interesting was im- portant. And also he’s just a really intense actor and that intensity was really important for the character, that was one reason that we wanted him.
How would you describe Syd’s journey in the film? I think he’s completely immersed in this culture in a sense. It’s his life, it’s his work, his hobby and yet he looks at it with a clinical distance and he’s actually harbouring his own obsession that’s completely, in a sense, the same as the people he looks down on, and that manifests as the film goes on and he’s forced to control that.
MORE CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY Starring Michael Eklund, Karoline Herfurth and Tómas Lemarquis
Directed by Eron Sheean Written by Eron Sheean and Shane Danielsen Instinctive Film
The Cronenbergian influence continues to spread with
Eron Sheean’s feature film debut, Errors of the Human Body, a chillingly realistic and precise scientific nightmare. Michael Eklund – who played the unforgettably terrifying
heavy in last year’s The Divide, which was written by Sheean – is guilt-ridden, divorced Canadian geneticist Geoff Burton, who relocates to wintry Dresden, Germany, to pursue his work on a human regenerative gene. It’s a much-needed change of scenery for him, following the loss of his son to a rare ge- netic disease, and he secretly hopes his new research will lead to personal redemp- tion. Yet, once there, unforeseen complications await him, as his research with (and feelings for) colleague Rebekka (Karoline Herfurth) arouses considerable suspicion and jealousy from other workers, propelling Burton into a whirlwind of despair and anxiety, which only escalates as he finds himself maddeningly close to the scientific breakthrough of his career.
There are a lot of things that are uncomfortable, grotesque and outright horrific in the film. Are any of your own fears reflected in the movie? The grotesque elements were all very thematically relevant and mattered to the story and were certainly intended to put people on edge with this bodily horror. In a film that’s about the body, I think it’s very impor- tant. But I don’t know, I don’t really have any interest- ing fears; there wasn’t anything in the film that was particularly related to my own fears.
What about a scene that you find particularly un- comfortable to watch? I think I’m too close to it right now to be affected. I re- member when I was working with E.C. Woodley, the composer, and we were talking about the horror of the film, he said something interesting, which was that the macro close-up of Caleb’s eye was actually
Entirely shot on location at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and
Genetics in Germany, Errors of the Human Body succeeds through the realism of its mise-en-scène and the subtle resolve of its performers, namely Eklund, Herfurth and chilling antagonist Tómas Lemarquis (previously seen in Noi: The Albino). And while somewhat removed from the more gory body horror exploits of the Canadian genre maestro himself, Sheean’s movie proves fundamentally Cronenbergian in its ideas and themes of personal and familial disintegration. Like Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral, it recalls David Cronenberg’s early films, such as Crimes of the Future (1970) and Stereo (1969). Like those works, Errors proves a feat of stylistic restraint and vi- sual austerity; the clinical setting makes for a stunningly powerful and uncanny backdrop to Burton’s personal downward spiral, which mani- fests in foreboding delusions, sombre visions and an ultimate, scientifically driven decision that will put his life in jeopardy during the crushing final act and prove heroic, if only in Cronenbergian terms of self-sacrifice and utter madness. Quiet, beautiful, alienating at times and profoundly, satisfyingly
nihilistic in its outcome, Errors of the Human Body (now playing festivals) is without a doubt one of the strongest scientific thrillers/body horror films in years. ARIEL ESTEBAN CAYER
21 RM
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