“I read all the grief books and none of them matched exactly my grief,” director David Cronenberg told the LA Times in April; his wife of 38 years, Carolyn Zeifman, died in 2017. The Shrouds is about her absence. It’s not autobiographical, though its protagonist, Karsh (Vincent Cassel), dresses only in black and wears his hair in a white-grey swoop in a vague imitation of the Canadian auteur.
Karsh also feels as Cronenberg does. He explains that his grief is not literary, nor intellectual – but visceral, a tangible pull towards the dead. He feels an urge to climb into the coffin with his late wife, Becca (Diane Kruger). His is the belief that we love not only the soul of someone, but its precious home: the body.
