THE AISLE SEAT - "CRASH"

by Mike McGranaghan

There are bad movies and then there are bad movies. What's the difference? A bad movie is incompetently made, with a distinct lack of entertainment value. A bad movie is also poorly made and not entertaining, but achieves awfulness on a level far below that of your normal bad movie. These are movies which are utterly without value, movies that may even offend your sensibilities. For me, Crash was just this kind of film. It's bad all right, but it's not just bad as in boring - it's bad as in offensive.

In case you don't remember the long, twisted history of Crash, let's have a quick recap. The film (written and directed by David Cronenberg) premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival where it was resoundly booed by the opening-night audience. The jury was violently mixed about the film, yet they awarded it a special prize for "audacity" and "daring." This prompted an even louder chorus of boos. Crash was supposed to be released in America last fall, but Ted Turner (whose company was distributing the film) labeled it "weird" and stuck it on a shelf, where it remained until this past spring. Despite all the pre-release controversy, Crash was a colossal flop. Now, however, it is on home video, which allows curious renters to see the NC-17 movie in the privacy of their own homes (except, of course, for those of you who rent at Blockbuster, which has a dunderheaded policy against NC-17 films, not that this film makes a case against it).

Based on a book by J.G. Ballard (who also wrote Empire of the Sun), Crash tells the story of an adulterous filmmaker named - ha, ha - James Ballard (James Spader) who gets in a head-on car accident driving home from work one night. The driver of the other car is killed, but the passenger, Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) survives. She and Ballard cross paths again, once in the hospital, the other time in the wrecking yard where they both stare longingly at their wrecked cars. Soon they are having sex, and it turns out that she is turned on by auto accidents.

Remington takes Ballard to see a guy named Vaughan (Elias Koteas) who re-stages celebrity car accidents for other kinky crash fetishists. Yes, it turns out that in this film, there is a whole cult of people who get aroused by crushed steel and bodily harm. Vaughan kicks off a series of affairs/traffic accidents among the story's characters. Soon, everyone is having sex with everyone else and ramming their cars into one another. Vaughan keeps taunting Ballard's wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) by tailgating her car. Of course, she finds this kind of behavior oddly stimulating! Then there's Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) who wears leg braces from a nasty wreck she was in. Ballard instantly becomes attracted to her, or at least to the enormous scars she has running up the backs of her legs.

Crash is a movie obsessed not only with car accidents but with mangled bodies. Cronenberg's camera lingers over people's wounds. I couldn't begin to count the number of times he shoots cuts, bruises, bloody stumps, and pus-filled abrasions. And it's all shot in loving close-ups. For the audience, this is a turn-off, but for the kinky characters, it's a major turn-on. At one point, Ballard passionately kisses an injured woman's scar.

The idea of people getting a sexual charge from fatal and near-fatal car wrecks is disturbing enough. But watching people become stimulated by physical injury is downright sick. For the people who inhabit this fictional world, the more seriously wounded you are, the hotter the sex is. Worst of all is that Crash takes itself so seriously. There are a lot of unintentional laughs in what is a completely humorless film. It's absurd to watch such high-calibre actors as Spader and Hunter becoming orgasmic at the sight of a bent fender or a deep flesh wound. And the whole subplot involving Vaughan's attempt to re-create the Jane Mansfield crash is demented (his partner has to figure out a way to insure that he is beheaded in order to capture the authenticity).

Actually - aside from being a grade-A piece of sicko cinema - Crash is just bad moviemaking. I never believed so many people would share such a bizarre fetish. I know certain people are turned on by some foul things in this world, but to suggest a whole subculture built around car wrecks is preposterous. I also objected to the way Cronenberg handles the sexual matters. I'm no prude when it comes to intelligent depictions of on-screen sex; Crash, however, is just pornographic.

Perhaps what bothers me the most is that my hatred for this movie would probably please David Cronenberg, who has made a career delving into the darkest nether regions of the human psyche. Crash bothered me. I was disturbed by this story, and I couldn't get the repulsion out of my mind for a day after seeing it. It's all too clear that the film was intended to provoke. The final line of dialogue in the film is so twisted and sick that its implications will haunt me for as long as I am a film critic. But there's no point to it all. The director isn't provoking the audience because he has a point to make; he's provoking us simply because he can. Ultimately, that is what makes Crash so troublesome. It puts you through 100 minutes of sheer tastelessness, then leaves you with nothing substantive on the other side.

Having been a film critic for 12 years, I have learned one thing: when I really, truly pan a movie, there will be some people who run right out to see it, just to see how bad it is. Well, if you want to waste 100 minutes of your life on this kind of morally and artistically bankrupt trash, be my guest (if you rent Blockbuster's R-rated cut, you will only waste 90 minutes of your life - but still). Don't say you haven't been warned. I hope that you will devote your precious time and money to a quality film that you may have missed instead. Check out Sling Blade, or Gridlock'd, both of which are recently available on video. When I think of those pictures, I think of excellence. When I think of Crash, one word comes to mind: depraved.

(no stars)