Crash (1996)
For this icily erotic fusion of flesh and machine, David Cronenberg adapted J. G. Ballard’s future-shock novel of the 1970s into one of the most singular and provocative films of the 1990s.
A traffic collision involving a disaffected commercial producer, James (James Spader), and an enigmatic doctor, Helen (Holly Hunter), brings them, along with James’s wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger, in a sublimely detached performance), together in a crucible of blood and broken glass—and it’s not long before they are all initiated into a kinky, death-obsessed underworld of sadomasochistic car-crash fetishists for whom twisted metal and scar tissue are the ultimate turn-ons. Controversial from the moment it premiered at Cannes—where it won a Special Jury Prize “for originality, for daring, and for audacity”—Crash has since taken its place as a key text of late-twentieth-century cinema, a disturbingly seductive treatise on the relationships between humanity and technology, sex and violence, that is as unsettling as it is mesmerizing. - Criterion Collection
Cronenberg: In the Flesh
In eager anticipation of David Cronenberg's return to his body horror roots with Crimes of the Future, we've programmed three weekends of the master filmmaker's work. Dead Ringers and Crash open, followed by Cronenberg's visceral collaborations with actor Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Finally, we'll have our minds blown by Scanners and chant "long live the new flesh" at Videodrome!
