Crash

After experiencing a car accident, a director (James Spader) finds himself erotically drawn to a group who stage famous wrecks.

Crash is director David Cronenberg’s scathing look at obsession and compulsion in their basest form. As such, it will likely turn a lot of people off, but for those that can stomach the insight, his adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel proves to be a powerful, though-provoking experience.

The important thing to realize is that the car crash angle exists solely to abstract the fetishes that drive us. By giving his characters an artificial fetish, Ballard can highlight the ridiculous, and dangerous, lengths people will go to in order to satisfy them. If the central theme of the film were gambling, or voyeurism, the viewer’s reaction to the character’s obsessions wouldn’t be as strong, because, to some extent, those are accepted taboos. But car crashes? That’s disturbing in anyone’s book.

And that’s the point. Ballard and Cronenberg are out to make us all look inside at the dark things that drive or excite us, forcing us to acknowledge our baser instincts, reminding us that despite all our technology and progress, we’re still animals.

Granted, parts of the film work better than others, and you could argue that Cronenberg makes his point too early, and runs out of things to say long before the film’s complete, but the sheer power of the subject matter, and the unflinching, uncompromising way Cronenberg presents it make Crash a must-see.