This article contains spoilers for the film Crimes of the Future.

Canadian horror maestro David Cronenberg’s latest film, Crimes of the Future, is certainly polarizing, to say the least. When it premiered at Cannes this May, it inspired some audience members to storm out after only five minutes and others to give a seven-minute-long standing ovation after it ended.

But if one can stomach its menagerie of grotesqueries, Crimes of the Future is a brilliant, captivating, and thoughtful vision of — you guessed it — the future. And without a doubt, one of the most unforgettable moments of the movie is the final shot.

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The final shot distills all the movie’s themes into a masterful, emotional few seconds. But in order to understand this essential moment, one must first understand the movie’s context, its themes, and a classic French film called The Passion of Joan of Arc.

What Is Crimes of the Future About?

     Neon

Crimes of the Future is, at least partly, about the evolution of humanity. The protagonist, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), is a mutant whose body continuously grows strange new organs. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul does performance art shows that involve surgically removing his mutated organs on stage. This is a statement about the disastrous direction humanity is going in (using Saul’s mutated organs as a metaphor).

Saul eventually runs into Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman), the leader of a peculiar group of plastic-eaters. Lang insists that disposing of our out-of-control industrial waste (by eating it) is the natural and necessary next step of human evolution. It is the only way to save the planet and humanity itself.

This is the central dilemma of the film: whether the trajectory of human evolution really is that bad. Should Saul keep cutting out his mutated organs? Or should he let them grow and see what new possibilities they might bring for him and the rest of humanity? Should he embrace or deny human evolution? All of this culminates in the movie’s stunning final moments.

Crimes of the Future’s Final Shot

In the film’s final shot, Saul eats plastic for the first time. As the audience desperately studies his face for a reaction, the camera inches closer and closer. This could be the moment that determines the fate of humanity. Will Saul be able to digest the plastic? Will it finally solve his eating problem? Will he embrace his evolution and stop cutting out his newly formed organs? Or will he find the plastic disgusting? Will he reject it and continue removing his new organs? Or even worse, will the toxic plastic kill him? As the camera glides forward in its slow, contemplative motion, we await Saul’s possible revelation.

However, when the camera finally stops, impossibly close to his face, we see a single tear fall down his cheek, and the credits roll. But was it a tear of joy? Of sadness? Pain? Relief? Defeat? The lights come on in the theater, and the audience is left wondering.

However, a crucial piece of the puzzle is that this final shot is actually a recreation of a French film from almost 100 years ago.

The Original Shot

     Société Générale des Films

The shot shown above is from The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a legendary silent film by Carl Theodore Dreyer. Although it’s a century old, it is still considered one of the greatest movies ever made and remains consistently in the artistic imagination.

The film follows the persecution and eventual execution of Joan of Arc (Renée Falconetti) for alleged acts of heresy against the Christian church. Joan is interrogated, tortured, and burned at the stake by the English clerical judges. Much of the film consists entirely of close-ups, which highlight Falconetti’s brilliant and subtle performance and help the audience experience the same confusion and isolation that Joan feels.

Although there are dozens of such shots in the film, when one thinks of The Passion of Joan of Arc, one always thinks of this iconic image: Joan looking up (toward heaven), desperation in her eyes (pleading for God’s help), her head (which has been shaved to humiliate her) tilted to the side, and a tear rolling down her cheek. What is expressed is her profound suffering, her endless torture by the judges, and her inevitable demise.

All of these aspects are mimicked in that final shot of Crimes of the Future: the upward gaze, the tilted head, the sadness in the eyes, and the single tear. The film even slowly zooms into that extreme close-up synonymous with The Passion of Joan of Arc and digitally transitions from color to black and white. Cronenberg himself has confirmed that the shot is meant to recreate the iconic silent film, though they didn’t think to do so until the editing stage.

Why the Reference Matters

Why does it matter that Cronenberg’s film references The Passion of Joan of Arc? Well, the reference is astute and not only fits into the themes of the movie but adds a considerable new layer of depth. When Saul emulates Joan’s tortured pose, he casts himself as a martyr. The shot highlights, first of all, his intense suffering and the constant pain he endures every day.

In this final shot, we are searching for Saul’s reaction. Will the plastic solve his eating problems and point toward a new future for humanity, or will it be just another absurd torment that he must endure? Comparing Saul to Joan certainly points toward the latter: as Cronenberg has said of the shot:

But like many things in the movie, there are several interpretations. Saul adopting Joan’s iconic pose could also symbolize the suffering of all of humanity. Either the suffering we must endure in order to create a better world (in this case, eating plastic) or the suffering as a result of our ceaseless descent into lower and lower depths of depravity (Saul’s original “evolution is bad” view).

Or on the other hand, if the plastic has worked and these are tears of relief (because Saul can finally eat without pain), then this is a different matter entirely. This shot would then be a brilliant reversal of The Passion of Joan of Arc: Saul gazes up to heaven not to plead for help, as Joan does, but because he glimpses a paradise: a world without suffering.

No matter our interpretation, this is the perfect way to end the film. Perhaps a dozen possible emotions are distilled into one beautifully constructed image, and all of the suffering, confusion, and hope of Saul’s world are brought to the boiling point. The recreation of The Passion of Joan of Arc is the perfect vehicle to achieve all this with.

This moment is about capturing these emotions, but the ambiguity of the ending is important as well. If Crimes of the Future is about the fate of humanity and ecological crisis, then a simple feel-good (or feel-bad) ending would be a cop-out. The question is too difficult and too important to end the movie with a quick and easy answer. Perhaps we are left wondering because the answer is our own to provide.