Crash

David Cronenburg's interesting but flawed film 'Crash', adapted from James Ballard's novel (Ballard also gives his name to the leading character), attracted huge amounts of controversy on its release and has one of the most striking voting profiles on IMDB that I have seen - also equal returns for every number from 1 to 10. In fact, there's a lot of admire in this sweaty, atmospheric adaptation that perfectly captures the sense of heightened alienation that charactersises much of Ballard's prose. While among the cast, Deborah Kara Unger is sexy as always, Elias Koteas is suitably creepy and even James Spader is kind-of OK, if you don't mind him doing that "lost little college boy grown up to be a pervert" thing that he first perfected as Graham in 'Sex, Lies, and Videotape', a role he basically reprises here.

But - and let's get real for a minute - this is a film about people who are turned on by car crashes! Now, what the hell is that all about? If you ask me, the film is trying to say something about the need for transgression in an age with no real taboos - so its characters push at an endlessly receding door, until in the end only death itself can offer a way out. The problem is that the film suffers from the same problems as the world it portrays - these people have no moral rules, so their actions carry no implications beyond themselves - which leaves us with an idea, with happenings, but no narrative "drive" as such. Without anything to set against their nihilistic desires, 'Crash' coveys no sense of tragedy; just driving around in cars, with sex.

A detailed, dark, wild sexual fantasy of Cronenberg. Fantasizing & getting turned on by car accidents is pretty darn dark.

I love this film. I have now viewed it three times and I still keep getting something new out of each viewing.

I think it's one of Cronenberg's best. It is not, however, for the uninitiated. By that, I mean those who are not familiar with Cronenberg's previous work, and those who have not read J.G. Ballard, whose novel was the basis for this film.

Cronenberg excels at bringing difficult pieces of fiction to film. This is one such example.

The written works of J.G.Ballard are generally, dark, dreary, and disturbing psychological fiction. The characters in them are often very disturbed and socially dysfunctional. These are people who, often due to unusual circumstances, are not in their right minds.

In Crash, we are observing a group of characters who are all survivors of horrific car crashes. Like many crash survivors, they are, during their period of recovery, in shock. They are badly shaken. They are recovering from severe physical injuries, and they are disoriented, fearful, and emotionally numb.

Instead of recovering in the normal fashion, (how sad that we've come to think of auto accidents as normal) these characters stumble into the car crash cult of Vaughan. Vaughan, who is brilliantly portrayed by Elias Koteas, is a scientist who believes that there is a strong connection between the violence of a car crash and the passion of the sexual act.

He easily indoctrinates the other characters into his mode of behavior and beliefs. By staging car crashes for entertainment, by initiating traffic altercations with his followers and ultimately finishing with some very warped sex, usually involving cars, there is a metaphor being created. Accidents, and the viewing of them becomes foreplay. It's the eroticism of the automobile taken to an extreme.

Our society has had, what is often referred to as a "love affair" with the automobile. This love affair has resulted in a worldwide addiction to a means of transportation that is, in reality, often very unhealthy and destructive. Aside from the aftermath of pollution and the sheer carnage of the ever rising highway accident rate, this addiction also increases people's isolation from each other. Hidden in their private shells, they move about, only interacting with one another as necessary. This interaction rarely becomes intimate until it is violent, as in aggressive driving and accidents .

In Crash, the characters are all portrayed as cold hearted, numb, and incapable of true intimacy with each other(they sure have a lot of sex though). They are only capable of intimacy through their cars.

This film is a bizarre metaphor for the human condition and how it is affected by our choice of technology. It is not meant to make car crashes look sexy. It is meant to draw attention to how our most familiar technology has changed us and made us less human.

I love this film. Brilliant cast. Great cinematography. An excellent soundtrack by Howard Shore (multiple layers of cleanly played, very dissonant electric guitar, sounding like a cross between Sonic Youth and Brian Ruryk). Only Cronenberg would have the guts to tackle a subject as difficult as this particular work of Ballard's. I think he did quite well.

Depending on your mood at the time of viewing, this film can range from being shocking, amusing, revolting, hilarious, to even just plain boring. It's a great piece of art, but you really do have to be in the right mood for it.

James Ballard, a TV director who is going through a complicated phase at a professional and personal level, suffers a car accident that transports him to an urban sub-culture, where victims of car accidents have sex in order to rejuvenate and give meaning to their lives.

It's a bizarre film, at least, dark, psychologically disturbing, and uncomfortable, for the vast majority of the audience.

This film explores certain psychological changes that a person may suffer after a trauma, instincts and ingrained desires, which needed the right moment to emerge.

The characters are cold, lacking a solid background, disconnected from emotions, which are linked only by carnal attraction and the primitive and violent sexual desire.

It's a metaphor about our relationship with technology and the progressive loss of connections with other individuals, but I don't think it had the best execution.

Crash caused a huge stir in the United Kingdom. Many conservatives were outraged by the combination of sex, already an issue of danger because of aids, and traffic accidents. Dangerous driving is like smoking, a subject that you just can't touch without many moral watchdogs chasing you through a hellish puritan junkyard.

I remember seeing this and a middle aged to elderly man in the theater began to quite obviously...ahem...trouser cough. This was one hell of a way to clear the cinema! That moment is pretty much like this film. Crash has weird sex and masterbation, stuff that you do not really want to see. But David Cronenberg with the help of James Ballard drags us into a world that just takes the whole 'I love cars' boy racer thing way too far! It is just not healthy...

Ballard writes in a bleak monotone. A monotone that Chuck Palahniuk seeks to imitate unsuccessfully. All of his characters are alien because of their lack of emotion. Cronenberg takes this aspect and runs with it. This makes the film good not because of the familiarity and sympathy that the viewer can build with the characters. It is actually quite the opposite, the film strikes the viewer because of the sheer UNREALITY of what is happening. The complete and utter icy way that everything is presented just leaves the viewer going 'what?' Am I watching a bunch of jellyfish here? The characters are so jaded. Trying desperately to experience emotion in an industrialized emotionless world. A world that has become nothing more than a production line. Good Ford! Sorry, Huxley joke. Nerdy but necessary.

Also, Cronenberg is presenting a discourse that the famous intellectual Donna Haraway puts forward. That basically the human race has become cyborgs. The the human form is constantly changing. That machines are changing our humanity and crash seems to say that our own sexuality can mingle with the mundane machines that we hold so dear. Oh no! I am getting flashbacks of the crazed artist Stellarc...no...no...no! Besides I bet in the future, terminators would make much more money as sexual partners, rather than as assassins. Imagine that, a beautiful spouse who always thinks your right and never argues with you. I LOVE THE FUTURE!

Sex is considered to be the ultimate joining of two people. The most intimate way that human beings can connect to one another. Wrong! This film suggests that sex means...well, nothing really. Procreation and a simple physical reaction. This is shown by James Spader and his wife's, Deborah Unger, relationship. These two are so jaded they tell each other their sexual adventures for attempted excitement but feel absolutely nothing. Certainly not some sought of emotional closeness to one another.

This film is just so incredibly empty. But it is also a comment on the human condition. How we make almost suicidal attempts to attain pleasure. If this was a film about heroin for instance, about junkies, this film would be much more understandable. Ballard has taken this addictive, self destructive behaviour and replaced it with an everyday object. The motor car. It is a brilliantly simple idea! But look at how many people it has horrified and offended! C'mon people, are we really this stupid? Sex and drugs, sex and violence. Sex, drugs and violence. These things are all o.k. Portrayed constantly in Hollywood movies. Van Diesel anybody? But sex and car accidents, how dare you? What kind of a sick freak are you??!! Consider how hypocritical this is when you watch something like Fast and the Furious.

This is also a film that features the psychological nature of fetish heavily. Instead of having the common fetish for breasts or bottoms, which again people might find more understandable. The fetish is actually for wounds and crash test dummy videos! That scene with Rosanna Arquette, ewww! Would that work? This is definitely something that no one should try at home.

David Cronenberg really deserves credit for making this film. He really has some big balls and respects the intelligence of the audience, which I however do not. All of the actors deserve much credit for taking on some truly difficult material. They must really trust the director. I'm surprised no one said 'no David, you are out to lunch on this one!' This film could have become a parody so easily. Never have I seen a film where everyone in the audience seemed so uncomfortable with the material. In fact, when I saw this film without the trouser coughing, people still walked out. It hasn't been since Salo that I have see a movie upset so many people. I give this 8 out of 10 for sheer weirdness. A great moment in a major auteur's career who is not afraid to take risks. Hollywood take note!