Crash . Memphis Flyer . 10-06-97

Crash

DIRECTED BY: Rolf Clemens

REVIEWED: 10-06-97

In the preface to Crash, his 1973 novel on which this movie is based, J.G. Ballard writes, "Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our dreams and longings -- these diseases of the psyche have now culminated in the most terrifying casualty of the century: the death of affect." Which just goes to show that while it might seem that director David Cronenberg is on a quest to film the unfilmable -- his 1991 adaptation of Naked Lunch is another example -- he knows exactly what he's doing. The controversy that has surrounded Crash since it was shown at Cannes last year has been in part due to its slow, near-plotless pace, and part to do with its perceived gratuitousness. Ballard's observation about the "death of affect" goes a long way toward explaining the necessity of the former. If the characters in Crash seem flat, it's because they are, in a sense, dead; in particular, their senses have been deadened by modernity such that only technological horror -- the car crash -- can break through their boredom. When James Ballard (James Spader) collides into Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), the two -- along with Ballard's wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) -- find themselves caught up in a sort of cult-of-the-crash that includes the grossly scarred Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) and is led by Vaughan (Elias Koreas). The cult watches crash-test films as pornography and goes to great lengths to recreate infamous celebrity car crashes. The scenario is not without humor -- dark as it might be (Vaughan drives a 1963 Lincoln convertible like the one JFK was assassinated in) -- but the bulk of the film is dedicated to minute exploration of the fetishism of death and destruction. The characters indifferently couple in and near ruined automobiles against a background of an imminent future that is as bland and pale as it is unfulfilling.

It's the sexual content that earned the film an NC-17 rating and charges of gratuitousness. If the movie's conceptual premise -- namely, that the car crash is, in modern times, an object of morbid and primal fascination -- was implausible, the latter charge might hold up. However, that fact that pilgrims are turning out in droves to the site of Princess Diana's crash suggests that the premise of Crash is much more than plausible. If anything, the imminent future of Ballard's 1973 novel has arrived.

--Jim Hanas

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