Crimes of the Future Ending Explained [SPOILER!]

SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!

As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, 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.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Crimes of the Future Plot Summary and Synopsis

At an unspecified date in the future, the disastrous effects of pollution and climate change have compelled the creation of significant advances in biotechnology, including the invention of machines and (analog) computers that can directly interface with and control bodily functions.

At the same time, humankind itself has experienced a number of biological changes of indeterminate origin. Most significant among these changes is the disappearance of physical pain and infectious disease for an overwhelming majority (allowing for surgery to be safely performed on conscious people in ordinary settings), but other humans experience more radical alterations to their physiology.

One of them, an eight-year-old boy named Brecken, displays the innate ability to consume and digest plastics as food.

His disgusted mother smothers him with a pillow, leaving his corpse to be found by her ex-husband Lang.

Saul Tenser and Caprice are a world-renowned performance artist couple. They take advantage of Tenser’s “accelerated evolution syndrome,” a disorder that forces his body to constantly develop new vestigial organs, by surgically removing them before a live audience.

The syndrome leaves Tenser in constant pain and with severe respiratory and digestive discomfort; he is consequently reliant on a number of specialized biomechanical devices, including a bed, a machine through which Caprice performs surgery on him, and a chair that assists him with eating.

Tenser and Caprice meet with bureaucrats in charge of the National Organ Registry, a governmental office designed to uphold the state’s restrictions on human evolution by cataloguing and storing newly evolved organs. One of the bureaucrats, the nervy Timlin, becomes captivated by Tenser’s artistic goals.

At a successful show of Tenser’s, she tells him that “surgery is the new sex,” a sentiment that Tenser appears to embrace.

A governmental police unit seeks to use Tenser to infiltrate a group of radical evolutionists. Without telling Caprice, Tenser meets a series of contacts through other biological performance art shows (including one featuring a dancer with ears sewn all over his body) that lead him to the evolutionist cell.

One of them, former cosmetic surgeon Nasatir, creates a vaginal zippered cavern in Tenser’s stomach, which Caprice uses to access Tenser’s organs in an oral sex act. Caprice continues to network with other performance artists, eventually choosing to receive decorative cosmetic surgery on her forehead.

Tenser meets with Timlin, who reveals to him the agenda of the evolutionists: they have chosen to modify their digestive system to make them able to eat plastics and other synthetic chemicals. Their principal food is a purple processed “candy bar” of toxic waste, fatally inedible by others.

Lang is the leader of the cell; his son Brecken had been born with the ability to eat plastic, proving the inaccuracy of the government’s critical stance on human evolution. Timlin tries to initiate sex with Tenser, but he says he is unable to have “the old kind of sex.”

Tenser is eventually approached by Lang, who wants Tenser and Caprice to reveal the cell’s anti-government agenda through a public autopsy of Brecken that will highlight his evolved digestive system. After some deliberation, Tenser agrees.

With Timlin, Lang, and many others watching, Tenser performs the autopsy, but Caprice presents it as a performance art piece that proves the cruel meaninglessness of the body. Lang flees the show in tears. Outside, he is approached by two agents who work for the corporation that manufactures Tenser’s biomedical machines.

Mimicking their earlier killing of Nasatir, they assassinate Lang by driving power drills into his head. S

addened by the death of Brecken, the presentation of the autopsy, and Lang’s fate, Tenser informs the police that he will no longer serve them, approvingly referencing the cell’s beliefs on evolution.

Crimes of the Future Ending

Saul struggles to eat in his chair. He asks Caprice to give him a bar of plastic. As Caprice records him, he eats it, looks into Caprice’s camera, and sheds a tear.

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).