Tuesday 13 December 2011

Riding In Cars With Boys: emotional detachment in David Cronenberg's Crash


Crash, released in 1996, is a film that you will either love or hate. It stars James Spader as a TV director who after being a victim in a car crash, discovers an underworld of car crash victims who find pleasure in recreating famous car crashes which in turn gives them sexual satisfaction. The film consists of really no other scenes other than car crashes and the sex that follows. However this is not an erotic or emotional film.

The victims are all detached from life, indifferent and their encounters with one another seem unemotional and slightly violent. Their love is more for the cars than each other. I think the emptiness the characters feel is what Cronenberg wants the viewer to feel while watching this. We are meant to feel nothing for these characters because they feel nothing for themselves.

I am still unsure if I enjoyed this or not, but did powerfully invoke ideas of the human condition, something which I look forward to seeing more of in next year's A Dangerous Method.

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