CRASH
A film review by louis@travel-net.com
Copyright 1996 louis@travel-net.com
David Cronenberg's "Crash" is about sex and crashing cars. There are the "horror" elements to this movie: Cronenberg sometimes uses more of a psycho-fright rather than exploiting techno-monsters from outer-space. When this kind of horror is done well, the results can be truly frightening. Take, for example, "Dead Ringers": twin gynecologists who have a mental breakdown that takes the form of a regression through the past of medical practices performed on women. The effectiveness of that film relies in part on the premise being within the realm of possibility. "Crash" also takes on the same ontological attitude toward presenting horror.
Crash wants to talk about technology and the transformation of the human body. Of course, that's a pretty big subject. "Crash" tries to narrow it down to changes created by car crashes. Cronenberg emphasizes crashing. There are no car chases, no races, no quarter mile drags, and no stunts worth speaking of. Mind you, the few stunts in the film are well done, but fundamentally, this is not a car movie. The characters in the movies really love car crashes, but nothing else about car. As someone who appreciates a good car, I like a crash as much as the next guy, but only in a contest situation where both the drivers' skills and lives are on the line. But to like only the crash part? Metal meets metal meets meat. There in lies the sex connection: the big bad male Continental bumps the female Miata of the road and lo, an accident. Crash, so let's fuck. Now, there's a premise for a movie. It may seem strange, but it's certainly original.
Crash gives us a few techno-deviated characters in the form of metal-mutilated bodies: a heavily scared maniac who replicates James Dean's death-crash as form of art, a machine-twisted female body that has acquired a new object of eroticism via a fender- bender. And so Rosanna Arquette wears leather sleeze-wear under chrome leg braces. I guess the body takes a licking, but evolution keeps on ticking. It's the kind of deviation one would expect after millions of years of making love in the back seat of a car. A crash simply accelerates the process. A face or a leg gets mangled; the car's stick shift ends up in the passenger seat.
All this good stuff is explained in the movie by Cronenberg. It's just as well that he did, for otherwise one might take his movie to be just another (well-done) soft core porno film. If you want to see well-filmed erotica, this is the movie for you. Cronenberg does not insist on an understanding of his bodies-meets-technology thesis for someone to enjoy the film. For the viewer, what the characters mumble during the sex scenes could take on the same importance as over-dubbed moans, groans, and exclamations. I can well imagine a young couple renting this movie on a Saturday night in order to get the romantic blood flowing. That very same couple could ignore the "deeper" content of the images. And why wouldn't they? Empty lives crash for the sake of crashing, and sex without romance is empty. Who wants to be told that their lives are empty? Cronenberg has something important to say about our way of being, but he makes it far too easy to ignore it. It's not easy to understand a car as a media extension when the steering wheel is in the way of your taking off your pants.
Comments?: louis@travel-net.com
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