The science of The Fly makes as
little sense as the original 1950s version. Apparently, the
transportation machine can reassemble any substance perfectly, except
for DNA. I imagine that realistically, Dr. Seth Brundle (Jeff
Goldblum) should have faced instant death rather than a gradual
transformation into a fly-monster when his DNA was accidentally
spliced with a fly as part of a teleportation experiment. Still, the
movie makes the imagery gritty enough and ‘Brundlefly’ disturbing
enough that we can suspend our disbelief.
By the standards of most horror films,
this movie is unbelievably subtle. We get extended sequences without
dialogue in which emotions other than abject terror are communicated
to the audience. The most notable of these is one in which Dr.
Brundle is able to put on an acrobatic display in his lab to impress
his love interest, reporter Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis). He’s able
to spin around a bar until he touches the ceiling with his feet. We
can see that Seth believes this to be a great achievement, and
believes that his teleporter has somehow improved him. However,
seeing this sequence, the tension builds as we and Ronnie know that
there is something wrong with him.
When I see this film, I fundamentally
see a deconstruction of traditional masculinity. Seth meets Ronnie
by showing her his teleporter, which she suggestively allows him to
demonstrate with her stocking. He explains that the machine works on
non-living things, but will kill anything living in gruesome ways (he
demonstrates this point with a baboon). It’s clear that it’s his
intelligence that makes him attractive to her. Furthermore, it’s
sex with her that inspires him to finally reprogram the machine so
that it’s able to safely transport a second baboon.
What destroys him, however, are his
macho urges. Before the baboon can be properly tested, Seth gets
drunk and decides to test the machine on himself out of some
misguided attempt to prove his courage. He fails to see a fly that
lands on the inside of the pod door. The fly comes to represent his
most primitive urges. They feel good, but they’re destructive and
unhealthy. Seth tries to force Ronnie into the teleporter, still
unaware of the fly and believing the teleporter to have “purified”
him. When she refuses, he goes out, challenges a redneck in a bar to
an arm-wrestling contest, maims the man with his super-strength and
uses the event to pick up a woman named Tawny (Joy Boushel).
While Tawny’s scenes are brief, they
make the subtext extremely overt in regards to Seth’s behavior. He
impresses her with his strength and then shows her his teleportation
machine. Unlike with Ronnie, he doesn’t even bother to explain
what it is, simply allowing her to believe that it’s some sort of
magic trick. When Tawny refuses to go through the teleporter
herself, he grabs her and says “you’re going to like it!” This
gives us the obvious metaphor of Seth as a rapist, playing with other
people’s bodies the way he played with his own, and only Ronnie’s
intervention stops him from forcing Tawny into the pod.
Seth’s actual deformities develop
gradually. He first grows a few unusually tough hairs from his back,
then begins to develop a rash. Eventually, his skin becomes a pile
of boils, his hands become distorted, and his teeth fall out. He
becomes unable to eat solid food, instead dissolving his food with
acid. His hair falls out and his ears fall off. The final act of
the movie begins with him discovering the fly through his computer
records. And from that point forward, the movie consists of us
watching him decay, both physically and mentally.
Towards the end of the movie, Seth
feels himself losing empathy as he becomes increasingly insect-like
in his thinking. He gives a speech in which he said he’d like to
be the first “insect politician,” meaning the first insect
capable of compassion and compromise. However, he fails at this.
When he finds out Ronnie is pregnant and seeking an abortion, he
breaks into the clinic and kidnaps her, viewing her as a possession.
He attempts to force her into the transporter pod, believing that he
can merge with her and the baby to become a being that’s at least
closer to human than his current form. When he tells Ronnie this,
his skin begins to fall off and we see him fully transformed into a
fly-creature, the humanity ripped away with the last traces of his
empathy.
The cavalry comes in the form of
Stathis Borans (John Getz), Ronnie’s ex-boyfriend and editor. He’s
a character I haven’t mentioned up until now, mainly because his
interactions were primarily with Ronnie. I’m a bit uncertain how
much we’re supposed to feel about him. During her initial meetings
with Seth, Stathis tells her that he’s a fraud and acts jealous,
despite Ronnie having broken up with Stathis before the movie even
starts. I believe director David Cronenberg intended to set us up
with an expectation of a traditional happy ending, with Stathis
attempting to call the military who wrongfully view Seth as a threat
in retaliation for Seth “stealing” Ronnie, Seth finding a way to
cure himself and Stathis receiving his comeuppance.
Instead, Stathis arguably undergoes the
exact opposite of Seth’s journey as he becomes more empathetic to
Ronnie over the course of the film. He fully supports Ronnie in her
decision to get an abortion, entirely for sympathetic reasons. When
Seth takes her, he comes to Seth’s lab with a shotgun, and despite
being mutilated by Seth, Stathis is able to disable Ronnie’s
telepod, causing Seth to be merged with the machine itself.
There were originally several different
endings filmed, all of which were hated by both test audiences and
the filmmakers themselves. They gave us variations of Ronnie is
pregnant, Ronnie is not pregnant, Ronnie is ambiguously pregnant,
Ronnie is back with Stathis and Ronnie is single. I think it’s not
hard to see why these endings didn’t work: all of them attempted to
give you closure on a movie that was about a situation that could not
be easily resolved. Literally, any true “ending” to the story
would seem false.
So instead, the movie closes with
Ronnie fatally shooting Seth, now in agony from his fusion with the
telepod and crying over his death. There is no final answer. There
is no silver lining. Instead, there is only tragedy and despair.
One thing I want to draw attention to
in this movie is the lack of overt phallic imagery. Given the
obvious masculine nature of the fly, I suspect that not giving the
final form of Brundlefly a more prominent proboscis was a conscious
decision. The film seems to see the male body as completely
unconnected to the reckless and aggressive actions that destroyed
Seth Brundle.
If the movie has a failing, it’s that
it’s too short. It’s only about an hour and a half, and only the
final third deals with a visibly mutating Seth. I think another
half-hour of watching him fall apart little by little would have
greatly increased the impact of the movie.
As it is, however, this movie is a fine
example of horror filmmaking that scares you with both horrifying
visuals and creepy ideas while questioning societal expectations.
Gene Siskel outright accused the Academy of snubbing Goldblum for a
Best Actor nomination due to their prejudice against the Horror
genre. This is Cronenberg’s best-known film for a good reason!
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