There’s something peculiar about the swathes of glowing, yellow celestial fabric that cascade over the opening credits of David Cronenberg’s latest film, “The Shrouds." Initially, these microscopic specks look like little more than space dust floating around the ether until they form almost human shapes. Their silhouette is so familiar it’s almost tangible, as though, if you reached through the screen and ran your hand through it, you’d feel a sensation you recognize and remember. But it would only be a memory.
Just as soon as viewers have settled into his ambient galactic atmosphere, the masterful auteur Cronenberg yanks us out and puts us into the literal mouth of Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a tech entrepreneur who’s at the dentist for a checkup. “Grief is rotting your teeth,” the dentist tells him. After spending time in the divine abyss, we’re back in reality, ripped from the stratosphere and placed into one of life’s most mundane torments: the hygienist’s chair. It’s a jarring, distinctly funny transition, one you might not initially expect from one of Cronenberg’s most personal films. “The Shrouds” is a meditation on grief, born from the passing of the director’s wife, Carolyn Zeifman, in 2017. And though the film is heavy, laden with reflections on the crushing indignity of surviving a loved one’s death, it’s also genuinely hilarious. Just like those specks of celestial dust that begin to look like human shapes, “The Shrouds” is not exactly what it first appears to be.
