Is this a romance we’re having? — Seth Brundle
Be afraid. Be very afraid. — Veronica Quaife
There is no denying that David Cronenberg is the Shakespeare of Horror, a man who expertly weaves tragedy, pathos, and graphic violence as though they were not ostensible opposites, but rather intrinsically made for each other—star-crossed lovers, if you will. To put it another way, for Cronenberg, repugnance is every bit as poignant as love, because the former can test the mettle and, in fact, shape and even define the latter.
We’re kicking off our February theme of Twisted Big Screen Romances with Cronenberg’s 1986 film The Fly, a remake of the 1958 Vincent Price creature feature. This modernization, first written by Charles Edward Pogue and then rewritten by Cronenberg, chronicles the doomed—in the most tragic sense of the word—relationship between brilliant scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and journalist Veronica “Ronnie” Quaife (Geena Davis). Brundle successfully cracks the secret to teleportation by constructing two interconnected “telepods,” both of which are controlled by a super-computer. One of these “designer telephone booths,” as Ronnie wryly calls them, disintegrates matter, while the other reintegrates matter; in other words, an object is broken down inside the first telepod, and then reassembled, “atom by atom,” in the other. Brundle’s pièce de résistance of this scientific breakthrough is teleporting himself the ten feet or so between pods and thus changing, in his own words, “the world and human life as we know it.”
Sadly, the only thing Brundle really changes is himself, as an unseen stowaway—the titular insect—travels with the man on his molecular journey. The supercomputer, confused by the separate sets of DNA, decides to simply fuse man and insect together, creating “something that never existed before…Brundlefly.”
What follows this “sin against nature” is the very definition of body horror, and one of the most upsetting hours of footage cinema has to offer, rife with blood, oozing pus, vomit, mutilation, breaking bones, dismemberment, and the sloughing of flesh (all courtesy the Oscar-winning effects work of Chris Walas). We watch in excruciation as a man disintegrates both mentally and physically as he succumbs to this one of a kind “disease” and becomes something undoubtedly inhuman.
But far more harrowing than this slow Jekyll and Hyde transformation is the dismantling of Brundle and Ronnie’s relationship, which begins as innocent and pure and becomes, by the narrative’s end, toxic and polluted. The comparisons between Brundle’s deterioration and the ravages of cancer or AIDS—at the time a “newly discovered” epidemic—are immediately apparent. What is more heartbreaking and devastating than watching a loved one waste away, a victim of noxious elements within their own body? (Davis especially embodies this plaintive horror—her gut-wrenching performance moves the viewer to tears.)
But of course, as is always the case with Cronenberg, this comparison to contemporary and “known” illnesses is merely the skin of the metaphorical body; his true designs lie beneath the surface, among the muscles, viscera, heart, and mind. To unravel the filmmaker’s deeper motivations, we must delve into the very beginning of Brundle and Ronnie’s romance, and examine Brundle’s hamartia, or tragic flaw, that basic fault in our hero’s personality that instigates his downfall.
What am I working on? Uhhh…I’m working on something that will change the world and human life as we know it. — Seth Brundle
This is the first bit of dialogue in The Fly, and it is also the very first indication of our tragic hero’s fatal flaw: impulsiveness. Brundle speaks these two sentences to Ronnie while at a convention hosted by his financial backers, Bartok Industries. She’s been sent there by her boss (and former lover) Stathis Borans (John Getz), editor of the scientific journal Particle, to find the story of the century. Ronnie makes it clear to Brundle that she is a journalist, but Brundle isn’t speaking to her for this reason; rather, he’s flirting, but because he has no life outside his work, he doesn’t really know what else to talk to her about; moreover, he wants to impress her, and again, his only means of doing so (at least he believes) is by revealing his top secret project.
Ronnie is clearly attracted to Brundle as well, but she is of course very impressed when, after taking her back to his warehouse loft, he demonstrates his scientific breakthrough by teleporting her personal stocking. Eager to begin work on her article, Ronnie takes out her tape recorder and proceeds to interview Brundle. Here Brundle panics, insisting that if he knew she was a journalist, he never would have revealed his project. This despite the fact she told him at the convention that she had numerous interviews to conduct before the night was through.
Brundle eventually convinces Ronnie to chronicle his entire journey toward perfecting his creation and to write not an article, but an entire book. This places them in close and intimate proximity to each other and allows their romantic feelings to grow into a full-blown relationship. But this set up of Brundle’s fatal flaw from the very beginning is key to the tragedy that befalls them because it establishes not just his proclivity for impulsiveness, but also the root of this impulsive behavior: loneliness. Brundle readily admits he’s been “working alone too long,” but what he really means is, he’s simply been alone for too long. He seeks companionship and love as a cure for this loneliness—which isn’t to say that he and Ronnie do not have genuine chemistry, that he only loves her because she is there and available. The couple get along fantastically, and their deepening love is visible in the way they look at each other, their smiles giving the audience glimpses of wonder and awe felt for this other, amazing person (aided, no doubt, by the fact Goldblum and Davis were dating in real life at the time).
The inciting incident, the moment that puts this romance onto a trajectory of terror, revolves around Ronnie’s own hamartia: fierce independence. On the same evening Brundle sends a live baboon through the pods without turning the poor creature inside-out—the first successful teleportation of living flesh and the first step toward completing his work—Ronnie receives a cover mock-up for the next issue of Particle, featuring Brundle’s face and a lurid headline promising to reveal his scientific secrets, effectively stealing her story. The jealous (read: creepy stalker) Stathis sent this as a kind of “fuck you” to Ronnie for jilting him and choosing Brundle. Here, Ronnie makes a terrible mistake: instead of communicating with Brundle, showing him the mock-up but assuring him that she could handle the situation and bring Stathis to a heel, she simply tells Brundle she has “the residue of another life” and that she has to “scrape it off her shoe and get rid of it, once and for all.”
In part, Ronnie’s actions here are protective: she doesn’t want Brundle to panic at the sight of the mock cover. But in shielding him from the truth, Ronnie inadvertently sets Brundle on his path of destruction. Left alone at this ultimate moment of triumph, he drinks the champagne meant for the two of them and, as he grows drunk, works out that Ronnie and Stathis were an item—and falsely believes they might still be. Feeling hurt and vulnerable, Brundle makes the unwise decision to go through the pods, once again revealing his impulsive side. Because of his intoxication and revived loneliness, Brundle does not take the necessary precautions before transporting himself.
And of course, we know what happens next: Brundle’s DNA fuses with that of a common housefly, and slowly he transforms into a monster, a creature of pure impulse that knows only hunger and survival.
And yet, even this is not entirely accurate. There is enough of Brundle left in Brundlefly to recognize the danger of the thing he is becoming. Just before his final transformation into an unimaginable horror—when he still has a mouth and the mental faculties to communicate ideas—he attempts to warn Ronnie away:
You have to leave now, and never come back here…Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects…don’t have politics. They’re very…brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect…
I’m saying…I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over…and the insect is awake…
I’m saying…I’ll hurt you if you stay.
Here lies the ultimate tragedy of Cronenberg’s tale: a man who, despite his desire to be good and to change the world, despite the intense love he feels for another human being, must accept the monster emerging from within and acknowledge that, while he does not want to cause harm to Ronnie, he knows his impulse to do so will win out; and a woman, who can see shards of the man she loves buried underneath his misshapen flesh and worsening madness, but who also must accept that, no matter the glimpses of Brundle still visible, Brundlefly has truly taken over, and no amount of rationale evident within his mind will stop the impulsive insect from doing what it must.
There is nowhere else to go from here other than toward blood and ruin, and this is where the narrative inevitably ends. But for all the visceral decimation of flesh, Cronenberg makes it clear that true horror begins in the mind and works its way outwards. It was ultimately Brundle’s fatal flaw, his impulsiveness, that led him down this path of destruction. And so, as with all aspects of life, one must tread into the waters of love with a cleaner, more actualized self; otherwise, something that seems small and insignificant—like a fly—can grow into something utterly unspeakable.
