Showbiz people love movies about showbiz. For instance, the Academy just gave their Best Picture award to Birdman, a film about the truthfulness and artistic value of acting. That choice was a surprise to many. I thought Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel were far better films, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that they thought Birdman was the best of last year. But it’s a movie about acting. In retrospect, of course Birdman was the Academy’s favorite.
Maps to the Stars bears some resemblances to Birdman – both tell stories of actors with broken families, who talk to hallucinations of characters from their past, and whose mental illness leads them to magical thinking. However, Maps to the Stars won’t likely be embraced by Hollywood the way Birdman was. This is surely the ugliest, most unglamorous portrayal of Hollywood ever made. The characters all have warped minds, shameful secrets, and self-destructive habits. All are self-aggrandizing and pompous in public, yet full of insecurities in private. The message of the film seems to be that the dreams we see on-screen are masks hiding nightmare realities underneath.
This would be shocking from a Hollywood director, but for David Cronenberg this just cements his outsider status. He is notoriously prickly with the media, and until this film has never shot in America. Film is his art, and he would rather ignore all the show of show business. Assuming Maps to the Stars reflects his true feelings about the business, it’s a wonder he can work with studios and actors at all.
Cronenberg’s early career focused on visceral horror, such as Scanners and Videodrome. He tried to scare us by crossing over fundamental body-boundaries. Perhaps the best way to interpret Maps to the Stars is as a return to that body-horror form. It’s more subtle without the exploding heads and sentient televisions, but these characters do horrifying things to themselves and each other. What’s terrifying is the thought that we watch and enjoy the work of such monsters.
Maps to the Stars, with all its terrible people, is a difficult film to enjoy. I can’t say that I recommend it. The film does work, though, as a parable about wealth and fame. The characters luxuriate in palatial homes and employ servants to satisfy every whim, yet none feels any joy or satisfaction. Worse yet, most of them are too caught up in their own lies to realize that any other life might be better. Their desires, their hearts, are broken. For, as Proverbs 27:21 says (in the Message translation), “the purity of silver and gold is tested by putting them in the fire; the purity of human hearts is tested by giving them a little fame.”
You might also find this review of Maps to the Stars helpful: