100 Essential Directors – David Cronenberg

One of the most established voices in cinema, Canadian-born David Cronenberg is perhaps best known as the father of “body horror”. It’s this that will always define Cronenberg the adjective (though it has yet to be established whether this is Cronenbergian or Cronenbergesque), despite the fact that much of his work deviates wildly from the narrow constraints of what these descriptors commonly mean. Even his most mainstream films though involve troubled relationships between humans and their bodies, whether  by masking sexual transgression through fantasy (M. Butterfly [1993]), brandishing tattoos as an underworld code (Eastern Promises[2008]), or using disfigurement to signify a history of violence (A History of Violence).

Read the rest of the entry within our 100 Essential Directors series.