Thursday 28 May 2009

FILM REVIEW - Crash (1996)...


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David Cronenberg's Crash may be one of the finest films about sex in modern society. That statement may seem bold, but unlike the film I'm not going to understate or use any subtlety whatsoever.

The film has a real history; hugely controversial the world over, banned many times, and reviled by many who did see it. I first heard about the film in a movie magazine. There was the shot of James Spader in his car, stiff, eyes wide, Deborah Kara Unger next to him, a suspicious expression on her taught features. And some kind of mysterious orange glow in the background. Immediately that image struck me, and I wanted to see the film. That's happened before with me; it happened when I saw a picture of Jacob Reynolds eating spaghetti in a bathtub and it happened here. Somehow this image reminded me of the shot in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which a light looms over a stunned Richard Dreyfuss' face as he gawks over his dashboard. Indeed the films could have a lot in common. They're both about alienated individuals brought together by a mystery and a singular belief. Only Crash is quietly pessimistic and it's characters somewhat nihilistic.
People who haven't seen the film may be curious as to what in the film managed to cause such a stir back in the 90s, but I'll tell you right now - car crash sex. Just the idea was no doubt enough to get people up in arms, people who probably never saw the movie. And the concept is pretty disturbing, the idea of people achieving sexual gratification from potentially life-destroying events. But let me tell you now, the film is in no way sensationalist or attention-seeking. Rather it is modest, austere and subdued. And perhaps this is what makes the film truly disturbing, the naked voyeurism, the cold, icy look of the film, the distance of the performances and the idea that people now connect more with machines than each other...


But isn't machinery being fetishized, in car shows with hot women sliding their butts over bonnets, in adverts with sexy girls driving cars?

The film opens inconspicuously in an aircraft hanger, Howard Shore's eerie, mechanical theme echoeing of the aircraft hulls. We see a beautiful blonde ice-queen making out with her flying instructor against an aircraft. He proceeds to kiss her buttocks while she, pressed firmly against the plane, starts licking the metallic surface. Right away the main idea of the film is expressed effortlessly. Then we are in a film set, where the crew are waiting for the producer's stamp of approval on a steadicam shot, and eventually start hammering on his door at the most innappropriate time, right when he's riding the camera-girl. All of the characters in this film have meaningless, unsatisfying sex; they are basically sexual car wrecks, alienated and disconnected by their soulless, emotionless sexual adventures, condemned to a world where sex is and life is cheap. The movie producer, James Ballard, is the husband of Catherine, the ice-queen we saw earlier in the aircraft hanger, and they share their sexual "experiences" of the day with each other as if they were talking about work. They stand on a balcony overlooking a vast freeway, abundant with cars, perhaps symbolic of their lives; infinite, meaningless, mechanical, detached and constantly set on cruise control. The dialogue is anti-naturalistic, instead kept strange and constantly tying in with the theme. But it is far from a preachy, message-movie, and is instead a surgical exploration of mutated sexual desires.


Not long into the film Ballard is involved in a car crash and made aware of his own vulnerability; endangered. He is sexually awakened in the strangest way when the woman in the car opposite (Holly Hunter) reveals a breast. In the scenes preceding this we meet the mysterious Vaughan (Elias Koteas; brilliant), a full-bred mutant of sexual car wreckage, a sexual machine, both captivating and frightening. Right away he starts scanning Ballard with his large protruding eyes, going over every detail of his injuries with a morbid desire. Helen Remington, the equally icy and detached doctor played by a highly watchable Holly Hunter, comes into contact with Ballard, and he drives her, in exactly the same type of car as the one he crashed, along the freeway. But things go awry as he suddenly whips off his seatbelt and then swerves dangerously out of control. It reminds me of the scene in Bunuel's Belle de Jour in which Catherine Deneuve keeps dropping and spilling things in the bathroom uncontrollably. They keep going however, and end up having spontaneous sex in a car park. Later she tells of all the men she's had sex with in cars. They both become aware of their newfound fetish and go to see Vaughan perform a mesmerizing re-enactment of the crash that killed James Dean. Vaughan is friendly, and a natural, charismatic showman. Also a homosexual, evidenced later in the film but hinted at here, as he strokes his stuntman and proceeds get off with him in a car crash. After the police arrive, everyone scarpers, Ballard and Remington following Vaughan and his stuntman. At his place we meet Gabrielle, played by Rosanna Arquette, a woman turned into something of a cyborg due to a terrible accident. Here Ballard strikes up a friendship with Vaughan and he shows Ballard his "project," concerning the "reshaping of the human body." Like a lot of crazy people, he does make sense on one level or another, but really his aim is to have sex with Ballard in his beastly automobile. First he chases off his wife in a predatory manner, in something akin to a threat of car rape. She recognizes Vaughan's intent and also Ballard's desires, and when she brings Vaughan up during sex, Ballard suddenly gets wild. The wild sexual game of this film is far from subtle, but it's not in-your-face either. In one scene earlier Catherine masturbates Ballard while talking about the car wreckage. In another Ballard sticks his penis in Gabrielle's car crash wound, and they have sex in the wreckage of their lives. Not exactly subtle, but illustrative and blackly comic. The film itself could be seen as a black comedy about sexual power play, with Vaughan molesting Catherine in the back of his beast as Ballard stares in the rear-view mirror. In one stand-out, tour-de-force scene they find a pile-up on the freeway, and wander around, detached completely from the chaos around them, taking pictures and posing on the car wrecks. Cronenberg makes masterful use of sounds and image, a red glow permeating the wide expression of the protagonist, fire and blood consuming the people they snap and sit with. The performances are all round excellent; comic, understated and giving the film a subtlety somewhat lacking elsewhere. It reaches it's disturbing climax when Vaughan and Ballard make car crash love, and then Vaughan is killed. Ballard is left with the wreckage, and to the wreckage he clambers, oblivious to his wife lying electrified next to it. Then he notices her through the steam and metal and they have sex, Ballard uttering the line, "Maybe next time," as if they were trying for a baby. It's a disturbing and ambiguous ending, much like the ending to Belle de Jour; surreal and fantastical and hard to figure out. I'm not sure even Cronenberg knows, but how would he? The film poses many questions but leaves them for us to answer. But there's the vital flaw with this film, it doesn't really reach a discernible point, instead ultimately receding into the traffic. But it still stands as the film that dared to fetishize fatal car accidents and wounds, and as the film that truly explored society's mechanical, soulless, masochistic, detached sexuality...

2 comments:

Groggy Dundee said...

I'm not afraid to say that I despised this film. You do a good job of arguing the film's significance and subtext, but to be honest I have to wonder if it's a point worth making.

The_Wizard_Of_Xenia said...

Well, we all have those films that we just can't stand. Care to give any reasons?