Plot
A tour into the heart of a Hollywood family chasing celebrity, one another and the relentless ghosts of their pasts.
Release Year: 2014
Rating: 6.4/10 (14,491 voted)
Critic's Score: 72/100
Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson
Storyline
The Weiss family is the archetypical Hollywood dynasty: father Stafford is an analyst and coach, who has made a fortune with his self-help manuals; mother Cristina mostly looks after the career of their son Benjie, 13, a child star. One of Stafford's clients, Havana, is an actress who dreams of shooting a remake of the movie that made her mother, Clarice, a star in the 60s. Clarice is dead now and visions of her come to haunt Havana at night... Adding to the toxic mix, Benjie has just come off a rehab program he joined when he was 9 and his sister, Agatha, has recently been released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania and befriended a limo driver Jerome who is also an aspiring actor.
Cast: Julianne Moore -
Havana Segrand
Mia Wasikowska -
Agatha Weiss
John Cusack -
Dr. Stafford Weiss
Evan Bird -
Benjie Weiss
Olivia Williams -
Christina Weiss
Robert Pattinson -
Jerome Fontana
Kiara Glasco -
Cammy
Sarah Gadon -
Clarice Taggart
Dawn Greenhalgh -
Genie
Jonathan Watton -
Sterl Carruth
Jennifer Gibson -
Starla Gent
Gord Rand -
Damien Javitz
Justin Kelly -
Rhett
Niamh Wilson -
Sam
Clara Pasieka -
Gretchen
Trivia:
Actress and novelist Carrie Fisher appears as herself in Maps to the Stars (2014). Fisher is best known for playing the role of 'Princess Leia' in the Star Wars (1977) series. David Cronenberg's regular cinematographer Peter Suschitzky was the director of photography of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). See more »
Quotes:
User Review
Author:
Rating: 8/10
Written by the acerbic Bruce Wagner, it is about the cynicism of the
industry, about the actors who are motivated by vanity and the
money-minded executives who exploit them. These people's heads have
been long removed from their shoulders, their molly-coddled lives are
run by other people as they incessantly try and top up their serotonin
through drink, drugs, sex and bastardised spiritualism with
increasingly less success. It has been called 'narratively unwieldy' by
the 'tomato-meter', and the events in the latter stages of the film are
certainly dramatic and in quick succession, however Maps to the Stars
is a great, grotesque satire from David Cronenberg, who could also be
described in such terms!
Julianne Moore is brilliantly unhinged and crude as Havana Segrand, a
deeply warped, neurotic actress who's haunted by the vivid apparition
of her actress mother Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon) who died in a fire.
When she's isolated in her large home, she's never far away from a
breakdown, and we see her experience particularly wayward instability
as she obsesses over securing the lead role in the remake of a film her
mother starred in. Havana has expired her Hollywood leading lady
shelf-life, however she's desperate to be at the forefront of the
business and in the process has ground herself down into a drug addled,
hallucinating mess. Havana's manipulative conversations with colleagues
makes for awkward viewing, she fawns at a moment's notice, even with
people who privately drive her into psychotic episodes.
Evan Bird is very good as Benjie, a child star who is often obnoxious
but really a product of his clearly unhealthy environment. He is
introduced to us in a hospital room as he visits a young terminally ill
fan with Hodgkins Lymphoma; when presented with such misery he deals
with it the only way he knows how by arranging for her to be given an
iPad. After this he has a brief argument with his adult assistant, the
sweary exchange is concluded with Benjie calling him a 'Jew faggot'.
His sometimes vulgar, churlish exterior belies a rather precocious
character with an articulacy that's beyond his years. Even when he's
unpleasant he's not entirely loathsome, his language is so gratuitous
that it was almost comical, especially when expressing his unashamed
contempt for the sycophants around him. I suppose he was hard to take
seriously owing to his elongated neck and sloped, pre-pubescent
shoulders.
Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) is a timid, unusual young woman who, with
multiple burns across her body, is destined to fail in the industry.
She's in Los Angeles after corresponding with Carrie Fisher on Twitter,
and Agatha soon finds herself being interviewed for the position of
'chore whore' for Havana. It is here that her burns actually help her
odds in Hollywood, as the injuries remind Havana of her mother. It
eventually arises that Agatha is in the city to 'make amends',
unravelling a twisted cauldron of lies and incest.
John Cusack is also well cast as Stafford Weiss, the self-help
charlatan father of Benjie who is made very creepy by Cusack's dark,
dead eyes and blank expression. His wife is Christina (Olivia
Williams), a woman bereft of any charisma who spends much of her time
posturing anxiously with a cigarette in her hand.
Unlike Cosmopolis, Robert Pattinson's character Jerome Fontana, a shy
limo driver with ambitions of being an actor/screenwriter, is strictly
a supporting one. In a film full of freaks, Jerome is the ordinary
Hollywood wannabe, the one with which we can most relate to. However it
appears his foray into this glitzy, red carpeted hell is in its
infancy, he mentions to Agatha early in the film, albeit
half-heartedly, that he's considering Scientology for better career
prospects, which is an amusing dig at both fad culture and that absurd,
unsettling religion.
I'm not sure what to make of the film's final act, everything goes awry
for the characters in a manner that is perhaps too fast and too crazy.
I tried to get the measure of the aberrance and the immorality upon
leaving the cinema, I wondered whether Maps to the Stars was grounded
in much reality, I then remembered Natalie Wood, the Black Dahlia,
Elliot Rodger and the myriad other of Hollywood's victims, pill-
poppers and prima donnas.
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