Crash
Released in 1996
Directed by David Cronenberg
An erotic drama for and about the postmodern age, David Cronenberg’s “Crash” is based on a novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, and is set in Ontario, Canada. James Spader plays the lead character, James Ballard, while Deborah Kara Unger plays his wife, Catherine. The supporting cast includes Holly Hunter as Helen Remington, Elias Koteas as Vaughan, and Rosanna Arquette as Gabrielle.
The film dismantles the concept of courtship in a modern age. Catherine and James aren’t monogamous. They cheat on each other constantly, but openly talk about it when they are together. A scene in particular, where Ballard drives his car in a car wash and sits passively as he sees his friend Vaughan perform a bizarre sexual act with Catherine, challenges the viewer to look past the infidelity and more towards what the scene itself is trying to say regarding humanity and technology. A scene like this illustrates the nightmare Cronenberg puts on the screen, a world where technology assimilates with the average human being.
The reality Cronenberg presents seems intentionally rehearsed, as if mechanized. These are human beings only in appearance. The wounds we see on their bodies and the sex each character engages in are the only reminders of their humanity. The film is known for being openly sexual, as its NC-17 rating can attest. However, the film’s sex scenes are all but erotic. They seem clinical, as if one were watching the Discovery Channel profile humans in the near-future. We see the act of coitus, but the feeling, the passion, is stripped away. What we are given is the act itself. I have never seen anything like this before, sexual situations where the viewer is not given any emotion, any underlying subtext, when the act is occurring.
Dark colors and clothing are dominant in this film. Ballard tends to wear blacks, blues, and greys, matching perfectly with the many images the viewer is given of metallic braces, clinical facilities, parking lots, and the interior and exteriors of cars in general. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky’s lighting gives off a metallic sheen. The characters, especially Spader and Unger, tend to carry sickly complexions augmented by the many close-ups Cronenberg provides the viewer, especially in the film’s sexual encounters. The characters wear dead expressions on their faces and utter their lines in either a whisper or monotone. It’s as if Cronenberg is trying to suggest that the world presented in this film is devoid of emotion, life, or passion. All these traits help give the movie a moody sickliness that lingers with the viewer well after watching.
Posted by Jose Saca.
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2 comments:
You do a great job of assessing the film and recommending it to another viewer. I'm particularly drawn in by the use of descriptive language in terms of color, facial expressions and mechanized sexual interactions. I wonder if you could elaborate on the idea of "post-modern courtship." do you mean that the courtship takes place in a contemporary and mechanical context, or that there is something post-modern about way that relationships are depicted in the film?
The latter. Courtship in most films I've seen feels ready-made. The idea of courtship, and the physical interaction depicted in this film feel alien and chilly, the type of disconnect from humanity and consumer culture made popular by Don DeLillo and, not surprisingly, J.G. Ballard.
Posted by Jose Saca
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