Crimes of the Future (2022) Best Movie Quotes

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Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Scott Speedman, Welket Bungué, Don McKellar, Lihi Kornowski, Tanaya Beatty, Nadia Litz, Yorgos Karamichos, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos

OUR RATING: ★★★½

Story:

Horror sci-fi written and directed by David Cronenberg. Crimes of the Future (2022) is set in the not so distant future, where the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, and the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed. Their mission, to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.

Our Favorite Quotes:

'It is time to stop seeing. It is time to stop speaking. It is time to listen.' - (Crimes of the Future) Click To Tweet

Best Quotes

Caprice: There is a new hormone in your bloodstream.
Saul Tenser: Ah. Great. It’s about time. I thought I was all tapped out. Dried up.
Caprice: You always think that, and you’re always wrong.
Saul Tenser: One day, I’ll be right.
Caprice: Not today.

Saul Tenser: What do you see? I can feel you pulling things around in there.
Caprice: It seems to be some small sort of endocrine gland, about the size of an adrenal gland.
Saul Tenser: Small. That’s disappointing. It’s not very dramatic.
Caprice: It’s a brand new organ. Never before seen. And it’s functioning. Can you feel it? That new hormone?
Saul Tenser: Yeah.

Saul Tenser: This new organ, it’s shifting my pain centres.
Caprice: For better or worse?
Saul Tenser: So far, just different.

Caprice: [referring to registering a new organ] Sorry, we’re a little confused about procedure. This is our first time.
Timlin: But you understand the necessity of organ registration from a security standpoint?
Saul Tenser: We understand human bodies are changing. I know this quite well. And, apparently, this is of some concern to the governments of the world.
Wippet: Human bodies, yes. “Human” is the operative word.

Wippet: Human evolution is the concern. That it’s going wrong. That it’s uncontrolled, it’s insurrectional. It might lead us to a bad place. Look what’s happened to the pain thresholds, for instance. The world is a much more dangerous place now that pain has all but disappeared.

Wippet: Pain has a function. It is a warning system that we don’t have anymore. And how did this happen? What does this mean? Or what about infections? Infections? What happened to them? Nobody washes their hands anymore. Or what is that new, fad? What do they call it? Desktop surgery? In public! It’s repulsive.

Timlin: Our records indicate that you’ve been producing random and novel bodily organs for some years, but that you’ve had them consistently removed.
Saul Tenser: Who wouldn’t?
Wippet: You’d be surprised.
Caprice: We would be surprised. They’re basically tumors, right? Who would want to keep them? They could kill you.

Timlin: What is the relationship between you two?
Caprice: I remove these tumors as part of our performance. We are performance artists. We perform together.
Timlin: And you’re qualified to perform surgery?
Saul Tenser: Well, as Mr. Wippet was saying, everybody’s qualified to perform surgery these days.
Caprice: If consent is legally given, there is really no issue there.
Timlin: I was speaking of your professional relationship. You wouldn’t want to kill your performance partner, would you?
Saul Tenser: You never know. There’s a lot of improvisation in our shows.

Caprice: We met when Saul was cut up on duty. I was a trauma surgeon at First General. We unleashed things in each other. We both changed, left our professions. And now we are what we are.
Wippet: Oh. You’re stars, that’s what you are. Gosh, everyone wants to be a performance artist these days. It’s all the rage, but not everyone can do it.

Wippet: Well, we here at the National Organ Registry have just instituted a new policy of tattooing novel organs, or idiopathic organs, that is, new organs whose function is unknown, so that they can be registered and kept track of. Our fear is that some of these neo-organs might establish themselves genetically, and then be passed down from parents to children, who would then no longer be, strictly speaking, human. At least, in the classical sense.

Caprice: [referring to Wippet and Timlin] I don’t think you should have invited those two creeps from the registry to our show.
Saul Tenser: Why not? Why not get them on our side?
Caprice: I don’t trust them. The woman, Timlin, she’s especially creepy.
Saul Tenser: I thought she was rather attractive. In a bureaucratic way.

Saul Tenser: [referring to Sark autopsy module] Do you ever work on one of these?
Berst: They stopped making them before our time. I’ve never seen one in the flesh before.
Router: They’re legendary.
Berst: What do you use it for? You’re not in the autopsy business, are you?
Caprice: It’s my paint brush.

Timlin: Do you mind if I ask you something intimate?
Saul Tenser: Hi. No, go ahead.
Timlin: That surgery is sex, isn’t it?
Saul Tenser: Is it?
Timlin: You know it is. Surgery is the new sex.
Saul Tenser: Does there have to be new sex?
Timlin: Yes. Yes, it’s time. When I was watching Caprice cut into you, I wanted…
Saul Tenser: Yes?
Timlin: I wanted you to be cutting into me. That’s when I knew.

Caprice: [referring to Timlin flirting with Tenser] What was that all about?
Saul Tenser: Just another epiphany. Art triumphs once again.

Router: Saul Tenser is an artist of the inner landscape. Creation of art is often associated with pain. And pain, as we know, is always associated with sleep.

Router: A good night’s sleep is a hard thing to define when you’re an artist and you seek pain.

Wippet: [referring to new organs] It’s like discovering a new species of animal.
Timlin: Well, more like discovering a new Picasso.
Cope: How can a tumorous growth be considered art? Where is the emotional shaping, the philosophical understanding, which is basic to all art?

Cope: Look, I have a lump on my abdomen. You see it? Picasso? Duchamp? Francis Bacon, perhaps? Am I an artist?

'I don't like what's happening with the body. In particular, what's happening with my body, which is why I keep cutting it up.' - Saul Tenser (Crimes of the Future) Click To Tweet

Timlin: [referring to Tenser] He takes the rebellion of his own body and seizes control of it. Shapes it, tattoos it, displays it, creates theatre out of it. It has meaning, very potent meaning, and many, many people respond to it.

Wippet: [referring to Tenser] See, right from the beginning, after he met Caprice, all his neo-organs were tattooed while they were still inside his body.
Cope: Caprice is his lover?
Timlin: Caprice is his performance partner. She does the tattoos. And the surgery.
Cope: Looks to me as though Caprice is the artist. Tenser is just a glorified organ donor.

Wippet: We believe, that on a certain level, perhaps a subconscious one, Saul Tenser wills these new organs to grow.

Caprice: Your bed says that you’re working on something new. Can that be right? So soon?
Saul Tenser: The bed is very quiet. The bed is never wrong.

Adrienne Berceau: [referring to Klinek] The ears. They’re cute. They’re striking. But a thousand ears is not good design. Surround sound? The extra ears don’t even work. They’re just for show.

Adrienne Berceau: Are you working on anything new, Mr. Tenser?
Saul Tenser: I never really know when I’m working on something new. It doesn’t seem to be my decision.
Adrienne Berceau: What if it is?
Saul Tenser: If it is?
Adrienne Berceau: The creation of inner beauty cannot be an accident. Forgive me for quoting you and your show.

Lang Dotrice: [referring to the Sark unit] Have you ever thought about using it for a real autopsy? As part of your show?
Saul Tenser: Perform an autopsy?
Lang Dotrice: On a corpse. I have a corpse for you. It’s a very special corpse. You could do a live autopsy on a dead body. And there would be surprises. I can guarantee a few surprises.

Lang Dotrice: I mean, how radical are you? Are you afraid of a little emotion?
Saul Tenser: I’m afraid of everything.

Caprice: Are you in discomfort?
Saul Tenser: No, it’s a compelling fullness. Not a completely bad feeling. At least not uninteresting.

Saul Tenser: I don’t know where the law is on acts degrading to human remains. We’ll have to be outrageous to make it worthwhile. We have to go deep.

Cope: Listen, illuminate me. Why is Saul Tenser doing undercover? I mean, you seem to be pretty deep into that body-art stuff.
Saul Tenser: Well, what I’m saying with that body-art stuff is that I don’t like what’s happening with the body. In particular, what’s happening with my body, which is why I keep cutting it up.

Cope: Your partner, Caprice, she’s in the dark about this? The under the covers?
Saul Tenser: Yeah.
Cope: Totally?
Saul Tenser: Yeah.
Cope: She can’t read your insides? There aren’t any traces there that say undercover stoolie?
Saul Tenser: You really are imaginative.

Cope: I heard it was a good show. Very disturbing. Multiple ears. Wow. Got to be good.
Saul Tenser: It was okay. If you like escapist propaganda.

Saul Tenser: Why is your body-crime unit called New Vice? I don’t get the vice part.
Cope: Somebody in the Bureau thought it was sexier than Evolutionary Derangement. Sexier means easier funding.

Router: [referring to Tenser] What happened to him?
Caprice: The body-growth thing.
Router: Is there a name for it?
Caprice: Accelerated Evolution Syndrome. Your body gets very inventive and throws a lot of new stuff at you. I guess it wants to see what sticks for the next generation.
Router: Yeah, but Tenser’s not letting anything stick, is he? I mean, not if he’s getting rid of it all. The new, improved body parts?
Caprice: It’s pathological. It’s not healthy. It’s a breakdown of the system. An organism needs organization. Otherwise, it’s just designer cancer.

Dr. Nasatir: This is very exciting.
Saul Tenser: Is it?
Dr. Nasatir: Seeing you here, is like a lightning bolt from the blue. It strikes you very hard and very convincingly.

Dr. Nasatir: Saul Tenser and the Inner Beauties. It’s a marriage made in heaven.

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Dr. Nasatir: Listen, me, I’m just a mechanic. I install doors and windows into the future. Politics will come soon, when you’re registered.
Saul Tenser: Registered? For what?
Dr. Nasatir: He doesn’t even know. For the Inner Beauty Pageant. I’m sure you’ll be a contender.

Saul Tenser: I seem to be a contestant in the Inner Beauty Pageant. It’s very hush-hush. Might not be quite legal.
Caprice: The things you drag home.
Saul Tenser: I’m entering in the category of Best Original Organ With No Known Function. This is like a raincoat for internal organ flashers.
Caprice: Wow. A new world opens up.

Caprice: Have we just been made obsolete?
Saul Tenser: No, of course not. It’s just a functional thing. It’s a zippered fly. It’s not art, it’s not sensual. Besides, remember what our Registry friend said, “Sex is surgery.” A zipper can’t replace our Sark.
Caprice: I think she said, “Surgery is the new sex.” Besides, zippers have their own sex appeal.

Djuna: [referring to Brecken] He ate a plastic wastepaper basket. What would you do?
Saul Tenser: I wouldn’t kill him. A little kid, my own son.
Djuna: But he wouldn’t be your own son. He wouldn’t even be a little kid.
Saul Tenser: What would he be?
Djuna: A creature. A thing. A thing my husband invented to torment me.
Saul Tenser: A thing that can eat a plastic wastepaper basket.

Saul Tenser: [referring to Brecken] He could digest plastic?
Djuna: He had this weird, thick white drool that he’d sometimes slurp over everything. It was like acid. It’d dissolve any kind of plasticky stuff. It would sting if you got it on your skin. Didn’t bother him though. That lizard.

Saul Tenser: [referring to Lang] He invented your son?
Djuna: Yeah. That’s how I think of it. And here’s another thing I think of, the thought of that slimy worm growing in me still makes me sick.

Djuna: If you’re a Barbie Doll, then they’re cannibals.

Saul Tenser: If the police found Brecken’s body and did an autopsy, what do you think they’d find inside it?
Djuna: Outer space.

Odile: Oh, you have no idea how hard it’s been for me to find plastic surgeons who understand that I do not wish to be made more beautiful.
Caprice: Surgeons tend to be very focussed and unimaginative. It’s considered a strength. I was a surgeon myself. Not cosmetic surgery though. Trauma.
Odile: Trauma. But that’s very provocative.

Odile: I enjoy trauma. What I do to myself is very traumatic.
Caprice: Is it? You seem so peaceful, so beatific while your surgery is going on. Watching you suddenly filled me with the desire to cut my face open. It’s a feeling that shocked me.
Odile: A desire to be open is often the beginning of something exciting, new.

Saul Tenser: [sees Caprice has done cosmetic surgery on her forehead] A desire to be open?
Caprice: Metaphorically. Emotionally. Artistically.

Saul Tenser: You want to take over the Brecken show.
Caprice: I want to perform the autopsy. I want to perform.
Saul Tenser: Well, this is new.
Caprice: Yes, it is.
Saul Tenser: Maybe, you were too shy before.
Caprice: I’m not too shy now.

Saul Tenser: [referring to new organs] I do have something cooking. Maybe a few things. But I’m happy to let them stay inside for now.
Caprice: That might not be healthy.
Saul Tenser: We can extract in private, if it’s a problem. It doesn’t have to be a performance.
Caprice: Don’t let it go too long.

Wippet: So, this is where we archive our more provocative material in here.
Saul Tenser: I thought it was all provocative.
Wippet: You, you provoke us. You provoke me.

Wippet: I said it makes emotional sense for you to be with the Inner Beauties, and it does. But, you know, doesn’t make logical sense.
Saul Tenser: No?
Wippet: No. Because the Inner Beauty Pageant is all about acceptance. It’s about acknowledgment, aesthetic empowerment, And you, Saul Tenser, you’re all about anger,
and rebellion, and rejection by scalpel.

Saul Tenser: What if I won for best original organ, and then I ripped it out in public at my next show? Wouldn’t that humiliate your group?
Wippet: It’s star power. We’ll cover it. We’ll settle. We’ll give you whatever you want, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll begin to see it our way.

Timlin: It’s in our line of work, very easy to be dazzled by the glamour of the performance world, the charismatic people we meet, like you.
Saul Tenser: I see.
Timlin: Do you?
Saul Tenser: Maybe not.

Timlin: [to Tenser] Well, this is our world. This office, this building. From the centre of it, deep, deep within it, this beautiful white light emanates outward. That light is you, what you create, and those like you. It’s hard for us, drab little bureaucratic insects that we are, not to be drawn into your powerful gravitational field, and hurtling towards you. Plunging into your black hole that pulls all light into it. We want to follow that light, fuse with that light.

Saul Tenser: Have you run across a neo-organ, or rather, a system of neo-organs, that had a digestive function? A system that can digest synthetics, plastics, that sort of thing?
Timlin: No. No, but that sounds interesting. We’ve only come across single organ growths here, like yours. Of course, nobody knows what would happen if those growths were allowed to accumulate. Do you think they could ev… I almost said evolve, but I didn’t.

Timlin: Do you think you would ever let me be a part of your show? Because I would love to find myself in that Sark module with you at the controls.
Saul Tenser: That would definitely fall into the category of New Vice.
Timlin: Well, that is where I live.

Saul Tenser: [after Timlin kisses him] I’m not very good at the old sex.

Caprice: [referring to doing a public autopsy of Brecken] I don’t think we should do this.
Lang Dotrice: Maybe you shouldn’t.
Saul Tenser: But you obviously really want us to. Why do you?
Lang Dotrice: I need to make a statement. A very public statement.
Saul Tenser: Wouldn’t a formal police autopsy make that statement?
Lang Dotrice: No. No, it would be covered up. You’d never hear a thing.

Lang Dotrice: [referring to the purple candy bar] Ever eaten one of these?
Saul Tenser: Never seen one of those before.
Lang Dotrice: Go ahead. Please. I think it’ll be a revelation.
Saul Tenser: [as he refuses to eat it] I’m very fussy about my food.
Lang Dotrice: Yeah, so am I.

Lang Dotrice: You’re a man who’s fighting what he really is. Don’t you see? You should let your body lead you to where it wants to go instead of hacking it to pieces and displaying it in some hidden museum like the bones of an extinct animal.
Caprice: Saul would be dead now if he listened to that advice. His body wants to kill him.

Caprice: What we’re doing is we’re making art out of anarchy. We are creating meaning out of emptiness.
Lang Dotrice: Are you? Has it ever occurred to you that you might simply be interfering in a fantastic natural process that you should surrender to?
Saul Tenser: Never has.

Cope: [referring to the purple candy bars] Ever try eating one of those? One of our agents did. And he’s as dead as Brecken now.
Saul Tenser: Poisoned him?
Cope: They’re synth bars. Synthetic, man-made stuff. Toxic. A normal human can’t eat that stuff. But those people, they just munch away, no problem. They’re evolving away from the human path, Saul. It can’t be allowed to continue.

Caprice: [referring to the surgery Lang did to his body] And you did it because?
Lang Dotrice: Because our bodies were telling us it was time to change, yes? Time for human evolution to sync up with human technology. We’ve got to start feeding on our own industrial waste. It’s our destiny.
Saul Tenser: The end result is you can’t eat food.
Lang Dotrice: Well, we eat modern food. We eat plastic. And that’s what we like to call it.

Lang Dotrice: Brecken was the first-born.
Saul Tenser: The first to be born with a plastic, processing digestive system. To be naturally unnatural.

Saul Tenser: Well, you’re saying your surgery, the surgery that made you plastic eaters, was somehow replicated genetically in your son? That surgically acquired characteristics became inheritable? You cut off your little finger, and your kids are born without little fingers?
Lang Dotrice: Brecken was our miracle child. He was everything we all wanted to be. That’s all I can say.

Caprice: [at the public autopsy of Brecken] We’ve all wanted to see an autopsy, haven’t we? We’ve all felt that the body was empty, empty of meaning. And we’ve wanted to confirm that, so that we could fill it with meaning.

Caprice: If you want to do an autopsy, you need a corpse. Corporeal, incorporate, corpulent. Body words. Fleshy words.

Caprice: [after the autopsy reveals Brecken’s natural organs had been removed] So, we see that the crudeness, and the desperation, and the ugliness of the world has seeped inside even our youngest and most beautiful. And we see that the world is killing our children from the inside out.

Caprice: We know that we’ll have to keep, diving back deep inside, hoping to find a different answer. But for tonight, let us not be afraid to map the chaos inside. Let us create a map that will guide us into the heart of darkness.

Saul Tenser: [after Lang is killed] New Vice is getting quite big, is it?
Cope: It is now. A lot of people running scared. So many plastic-eaters running around with scalpels. Makes people insecure.
Saul Tenser: They’re pretty good with the scalpels, those plastic-eaters. Better than whoever did that hack job on Brecken’s insides.

Cope: The kid was pretty weird inside anyway. You wouldn’t have recognized a thing. But the hell of it was that it was all natural. He was born that way.
Saul Tenser: You wouldn’t want everybody to know that.
Cope: I couldn’t. I couldn’t let that out. Once that got out of the box, you would never be able to put it back in.

Cope: [after revealing that Timlin was the one who replaced Brecken’s organs] She really wants to be Caprice for you, if you know what I mean. And I know that you do.

Saul Tenser: And Dotrice’s assassination?
Cope: Assassination? Fancy word for murder.
Saul Tenser: He was a leader. He had a cause.
Cope: Whatever it was, it was a surprise to me too.

Saul Tenser: [referring to Lang] Well, it doesn’t matter who killed him. It’s going to make him a martyr. Just what the cause needs.
Cope: The cause? Sounds like you are becoming a believer.
Saul Tenser: If you’re going to be good at living undercover, a part of you has to believe.

Caprice: What’s it like?
Saul Tenser: Physical pain?
Caprice: Yes.
Saul Tenser: It’s hard to be clear about it. It becomes part of the dreaming. Mixes with the emotional pain of the dreaming, so it’s confused.
Caprice: I almost thought I was feeling.

Caprice: [as Tenser struggles to eat] Well, Saul, what do you think?
Saul Tenser: Yes. I think yes. It’s time to try it.
[Caprice gives him the purple bar of plastic, and records him as he eats it]

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