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David Cronenberg’s 1986 film The Fly, adapted from the 1958 B-movie based on George Langelaan’s 1957 short story, is 96 minutes of mad science and grotesque, pulsating body transformations. It’s about an inventor who, while researching teleportation, accidentally splices his genetic code with that of a fly and gradually mutates into a hideous monster. It’s also about the woman who loves him. I just rewatched it for the millionth time, and it made me cry, like it always does. Those poor kids. If only it could have worked out for them!
I understand if watching fingernails and jaws falling off, corrosive vomit melting body parts to bloody stumps, and baboons being reduced to puddles of writhing flesh doesn’t get you in the mood. But trust me, The Fly is one of the most romantic movies I’ve ever seen. Maybe not a sexy one — not in the long run, anyway — and certainly not a feel-good one. But it’s a moving story of doomed love.
This is the thing about Cronenberg, the body-horror maestro who directed Videodrome, Crash, Rabid, and many other disturbing classics. He may be a total weirdo, but he’s also a clear-eyed dramatist with a deep compassion for his characters and a sharp sense of the clearest route to the emotional heart of the story. His best movies, from Dead Ringers to A History of Violence — The Fly very much included — flit from horror to psychodrama to crime thriller on the surface. But underneath, they’re all economical but heart-wrenching melodramas about people who just want to be happy, getting defeated by their own worst instincts.
The Fly might be the only one to focus purely on a single romantic relationship, and that focus is relentless, from its first moment to its last. Scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meets journalist Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis), and as a pick-up line, invites her back to his lab/apartment to see the scientific project he’s working on, which he promises will “change the world.” She doesn’t believe him, but goes with him anyway, because she thinks he’s cute. When they arrive, he plays her some cocktail-bar piano before unveiling his revolutionary telepods. He asks her for a personal item for a demonstration and she, dubiously but also flirtatiously, slides off a single stocking.
They’re just into each other! The chemistry is real; Davis and Goldblum were dating at the time, and both have seldom been better in a movie. Their energies are as well-matched as their tall, rangy physiques. Sex powers the science: Seth’s erotic awakening with Ronnie leads him to realize why his device isn’t working on organic matter. It’s because he hasn’t taught the teleporter’s computer “to be made crazy by the flesh, the poetry of the steak.”
The Fly is an intimate pas-de-deux that locks the rest of the world out, apart from one other character: Stathis Borans (John Getz), Ronnie’s editor and ex. Stathis is a creep — and a crucial plot device. Seth only recklessly commits to testing his teleporter on himself because he’s fuming with jealousy about Ronnie going to see Stathis late at night, instead of celebrating a successful baboon teleport with him. But Ronnie went to see Stathis to tell him to back off and leave her and Seth alone. See? Tragic!
The fly DNA initially turns Seth into a stud — there’s a coolly erotic scene of Ronnie watching him perform midnight gymnastics as he marvels at his new physical strength. Then he evolves into a steroidal, hubristic jerk. She’s driven away, but as his transformation becomes more monstrous and disgusting, she’s drawn back toward him out of pity and love. Davis plays these moments with heartbreaking sincerity that sells the raw emotion of the scene, even when she’s embracing him after watching him throw up on a donut and pull his ear off.
In a way, this is classical monster-and-the-maiden stuff: Esmerelda and Quasimodo, Ann Darrow and King Kong, the beauty and the beast. But the monster isn’t a redeemable outcast, he’s an abomination who is disintegrating before his lover’s eyes. She isn’t moving from repulsion to love, but from attraction to tragic compassion; she isn’t learning to see his hidden humanity, she’s watching in horror and sorrow as it sloughs away.
When Brundlefly does abduct Ronnie, as the pulp monster-movie genre dictates, his motivation has an awful beauty to it. He discovers that she’s pregnant with his baby and wants to abort it, fearing it, too, will be a mutated monster. Ronnie is distraught, but not terrified; Brundlefly is mournful. “Too bad, too bad,” he moans. His poignant plan is to use the telepods to reclaim some humanity by fusing his DNA with hers and the baby’s. “We come apart, and we come together. You, me, and the baby,” he says. “A family.”
Stathis does rescue Ronnie by interrupting this process, almost by accident. But the movie is not about him saving her. It’s about her saving Brundlefly in an act of pure and tragic mercy. The climax of this hit horror film is an intimate moment between two people who know they can’t be together anymore, and have to finally face it. Davis, as raw as she’s ever been, makes Ronnie’s devastation painful to watch. Brundlefly — who at this point has devolved into one of Cronenberg’s most repellent, pitiable creations — meets her with a final gesture that’s heartbreakingly human. It’s the saddest instance of a monster getting its head exploded in movie history.
This is some Brief Encounter shit. It gets me every time. The Fly is the most beautiful gross movie I’ve ever seen, because it has such a tender, melancholy, romantic heart. Flesh is weak, impermanent, decadent, disgusting. But love is always dignifying.
