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Arnth van Tuinen
D A V I D C R O N E N B E R G
Crash |
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After the commotion at the Cannes festival, Crash became the main hype of the last film season. Cronenberg made a film of what has been called the first pornographic sci-fi novel, J.G. Ballard's Crash (1973), and presents the subject, the eroticism of a car accident, in a rather explicit manner. Consequently, there were problems with the financing, the film got an NC17 rating from the American censors and was banned in England. This controversy makes it difficult to review the film: it has acquired a public dimension which, although as usual scarcely based on the viewing of the film itself, is impossible to disassociate from it. Crash has become a film to pass judgment on, and this has in fact more to do with your own position with regard to prevailing moral standards than with your experience at the cinema. And I had better tell you straight away that Crash is by no means the shocking film you would expect it to be. Rather, it is disconcerting and confusing, categorizations which are less easy to capture in moralistic terms. It is true that Crash includes plenty of, rather explicit, sex. For example, the introduction of the main characters, James Spader (in one of his most phlegmatic roles) and his wife, happens via three sex scenes. The film then sketches how, after his car crash, Spader and a group of fellow-victims embark on an ongoing sexual exploration of the pain threshold of the body, that of their own and of others. The key figure in the developments is the enigmatic character Vaughan, whom Spader meets in hospital, and who is obsessed with injuries to the human body inflicted by the car. It is Vaughan who exerts a kind of magnetic force on Spader, and, through Spader, on his wife as well. Vaughan is the secret centre of the world of Crash, and before the end of the film, he has reached his goal: the ultimate physical pleasure in a self-staged fatal crash (which we do not get to see, however). Is this in fact perverse and shocking? Of course, adultery, anal sex, sex between two men, and sadomasochism are all forms of eroticism which clash with the predominant heterosexual morality. In my opinion, what is subversive to this public morality is that Cronenberg never places the 'perversity' of his characters in a social context. There is no underlying cause which could explain their 'moral downfall', in contrast to, for example, Egoyan's Exotica, which, style-wise, has much in common with Crash (Spader was 'deranged' even before his accident, and the film in fact gives you the impression that a collision must inevitably take place, that the crash is a logical consequence). The film really offers no 'normal' sexuality at all, against which we can measure the characters. Therefore, they operate in a kind of no man's land beyond the basic domain of norm transgression (here I am referring to the shock effect of 'perversion for the sake of perversity', which, in the final analysis, would not be possible were it not for norms; just think of some of Ian Kerkhof's films). In so far as that is ever possible, the film is a-moral. However, this also means that it generally concerns us all, and cannot simply be discarded as an expression of some kind of marginal subgroup. Perhaps it is precisely due to this 'difference', which inevitably confronts the familiar categories with their own fragility, that Crash is so unsettling to public morality. Critics of Crash, who emphasize the perverse sexuality, often use simple identification models. This is reminiscent of how violence is often criticized in films. The mere fact of the representation of perverse characters, with whom the audience naively identifies itself, would supposedly lead to imitation behaviour in the real world. Of course, this reasoning does not really hold water, but quite apart from that, Crash is a film that barely allows for identification. It creates distance instead. Cronenberg accomplishes this in various ways. Firstly, Crash is filmed with great restraint, at an almost serene pace, which has to do with the lack of a clear linear story line (building up of tension). The actors play their part unemotionally, almost in undertones. The clear framing and the scenes, mainly filmed mid-shot, are somehow very tangible, very visible, but at the same time, very detached. For example, the frontally staged sex scenes are indeed explicit, but, because they remain static, the viewer does not become involved. Not even voyeuristically. Even when you look at the car crashes themselves, which are after all the theme of the film, it strikes you that Cronenberg does not really show the actual moment of the crash, but is much more interested in the passengers' behaviour before and after, in the inner impact. Of course, in this case, 'inner' is not really the right word. As always with Cronenberg, the subject is firstly physical, and the character development takes place on the surface, by means of sexuality ('the body thinks'). Crash in fact shows relationships mutually between bodies, and between bodies and objects of metal, whether these are car components or a leg prosthesis. In particular through the sounds on the soundtrack, this world of objects begins to lead a highly tangible life of its own (wheels on the tarmac, the car chrome being scratched, the seductive sighs from the leather upholstery of Vaughan's car). The film revolves around these collisions, the most extreme of course being the fatal crash itself. A crucial scene, for example, is the one in which James Dean's notorious car accident is reenacted before the eyes of the fascinated Spader. As so often with Cronenberg, this simulation is real at the same time: the Dean impersonator is also killed. What all the characters ultimately seem to be pursuing is the fundamental destruction of their own bodies by the derangement of technology. The paradox lies in this combination of conscious control (the staging of a historic car accident) and total self-loss (the crash as an extra-human intervention). This is what, to me, makes it so unlikely that the film could lead to naive identification, because this rational death wish, if you can call it that, remains totally incomprehensible, alienating and strange. The greater part of Crash takes place on the highway (filmed on location around Toronto, where Cronenberg lives), but of course, we are not shown any car chases, but rather, emptiness and tailbacks. Especially the nocturnal scenes on the highway evoke a world in which man has turned his car into an abode. An abode which is both very recognizable and completely unreal, a kind of magical realism for our car culture. For Ballard, in 1973, this may still have been a dystopian vision of the future. In 1997, this highlighting of the car is almost like a retrospective. But the 'old-fashioned' and not very spectacular technology of the car is perhaps even better than digital gadgets for Cronenberg to show us some of the consequences of the man-technology symbiosis. As Vaughan himself remarks somewhere, the label 'man-technology interface' itself still does not explain precisely what drives him. Since Videodrome, we have more or less known that technology is part of our inner selves; Crash deals with how, consequently, the inner structure of desire itself also changes. And so, via a detour, we come back to morality. The consequences of technology are usually rationally 'resolved' in either a negative assessment (loss of the authentic self) or a positive one (a flexible prosthesis into an unchanging human nature). Crash, however, shows technology to be an impact on the human body, with unpredictable consequences. The film takes place in an amoral no-man's-land (somewhere between the future and the past) where all stable, safe, identities have been forgotten. This is confusing and disconcerting, precisely because the viewer does not appear to have any rational 'judgments', based on those stable, safe, identities, to rely on. The experience of watching Crash is therefore a small-scale 'crash' in itself, a paradoxical mixture of self loss and control (because the public controversy has by now made certain that you know what to expect). For me, this is the reason why Crash is one of the few films about which I scarcely know whether to say I liked it or not. And that is a recommendation! translation OLIVIER / WYLIE |
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