On a hot, glistening day in May 1996 on the Côte d’Azur, a furore was unleashed in a torrent of engine coolant and raw sexual energy. Prompting boos, walkouts, and the alleged ire of no less than jury president Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg’s Crash went on to receive a rare Special Jury Prize at Cannes “for originality, for daring and for audacity”. The jury’s decision seems prescient; 25 years on, Crash feels as original, daring and audacious as it must have done to those Cannes jury members, who were among the first in the world to view a new masterwork.
Where does Crash’s (horse)power come from? The obvious answer would be the source material, the 1973 novel by J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), about a man (also called James Ballard) who becomes mired in an underground world of symphorophilia i.e. car crash sexual fetishism. Up until Cronenberg’s adaptation, Ballard was best known for his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, which Steven Spielberg ushered to the screen in 1987. Empire of the Sun is an outlier in Ballard’s oeuvre, as he usually dealt in dystopian sci-fi, defined by their probing of modern society through merciless examinations of human behaviour. This harshness in Ballard’s work has rendered it unadaptable in the eyes of many writers and producers (Exceptions prove this rule. To wit, a toothless adaptation of Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise was brought to the screen in 2015, by director Ben Wheatley and Crash producer Jeremy Thomas).
On the surface level, David Cronenberg would appear an ideal fit for Ballard’s ‘unfilmable’ tome. Even leaving aside the similarities between High-Rise and his debut film Shivers, Cronenberg’s filmography up to this point was largely defined by a thoughtful-but-sharp approach to sex and violence, the two subjects that collide head-on in Crash. From the quasi-porno setups gone wrong in Rabid, to the disintegration of a particularly unhealthy familial bond in Dead Ringers, Cronenberg proved he could bring unconventional subject matter to audiences without sacrificing either its grotesquerie or its power. He wrangled cerebral literary ick onscreen before by adapting William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch in 1991, with its profuse drug use and talking bug anuses. However, the cartoonish hedonism that infused that film’s trippier elements is absent in Cronenberg’s approach to Ballard. With his previous film, the dry but undervalued M. Butterfly, the director made a conscious attempt to step away from visual grue while maintaining the story’s inherent intelligence. This change in gear is key to understanding Crash. A younger Cronenberg could have made something more horrifying out of Ballard, but Crash’s horrors don’t require that level of nastiness. The clever creepiness of Crash lies in its understanding of the most basic instincts.
To the surprise of some, and the relief of very few, Cronenberg’s adaptation is very matter-of-fact. Transposed from London to Toronto, its upfrontness is bracing, not least in how it actually presents its sex scenes. The camera is strategically placed to position the audience as voyeur throughout the film. The film opens with three sex scenes, one after another. The first sees Catherine Ballard (Deborah Kara Unger, a Hitchcock blonde in a post-Hitchcock world) in an aircraft hangar, caressing the front tip of an airplane with her breast before being taken from behind by her flying instructor. Shortly after, we see Catherine’s film producer husband James (James Spader) in a similar tryst with a co-worker on set. Following this, the two meet back at their well-appointed apartment to report on their dalliances. This open relationship seems to be an effort to retain the chemistry. These are attractive people engaging in risky public sex, but there’s little thrill. There are no exciting cuts or sultry sax cues to put us in a mood, only this couple going at it as best as they can imagine. Their balcony overlooks the 401, officially the busiest highway in the world, and the camera tilts up to show that the answer to their frustrations may be right in front of them.
For all the notoriety of its first Cannes screening, with boos and jeers that should be above the critics that attend such things, it was the review from revered Evening Standard critic Alexander Walker that seemed to encapsulate the feelings of Crash’s most vehement detractors. He lamented the presence of “some of the most perverted acts and theories of sexual deviance I have ever seen propagated in main-line cinema.” Perhaps if Cronenberg had waited a little longer for the likes of Bruno Dumont and Gaspar Noé to get the ball rolling on the cinéma du corps, he might have escaped unscathed. Walker’s Cannes review, and the subsequent campaign waged against the film by the British press, particularly the Daily Mail, took Cronenberg and producer Jeremy Thomas by surprise. Any publicity is usually good publicity, but the venom that was out for Crash at the time was unlikely to turn it into a hit.
Perhaps it was that grounded, voyeuristic approach of Cronenberg’s that made Walker so uncomfortable. Look at the inciting incident, at once dispassionate and intimate. James accidentally swerves off a road into oncoming traffic, hitting a car head-on. Dazed and badly hurt, James finds the other driver dead and launched from his own driver’s seat into James’ passenger seat. The dead man’s wife, Helen (Holly Hunter), is also hurt in her seat. However, before James can call to her, she exposes her breast whilst lost in a daze of her own. This combination of sexuality and violence is usually strictly forbidden by censorship boards. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) were certainly seen as conservative enough to consider Crash a problematic case. The after-effects of the Video Nasties era were still being felt, with many high-profile titles still going without certification (The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, to name but two). The intense scrutiny being piled on the BBFC by the tabloid media forced it to take appropriate measures to ensure the film was judged fairly. When Crash was submitted to the board in September 1996, it ended up being seen by four boards of examiners, plus the acting board president and vice-president, a forensic psychologist and a QC. All concerned acknowledged the film’s power, but found nothing that transgressed the standard conditions for passing the film to be viewed uncut by viewers over the age of 18. The following quote from one examiner’s report sums up the situation:
“[T]he current controversy over Crash is, in my view, based on the political opportunism of a few journalists and politicians and is unrelated to the film itself which is well within the broad standards of film currently being passed by the Board at ‘18’ ” (cited in Petley, 2012)
The British press and political reaction to Crash proved to be an exception to the rule. The French press seemed more concerned with the film’s philosophical implications, while American critics pondered over its blurring of mainstream and arthouse concerns (For more on this, see Barker et al, 2001). At the box office, Crash did less well in Britain compared to other European markets, but it would prove to reap the benefits of its controversies in the end, making over $23 million worldwide on a $9 million budget. It caused a stir, and the ripples are still reverberating.
At 25 years old, Crash has overcome its controversies, and contemporary critical hesitance, to be regarded as one of the best films on Cronenberg’s CV. It has received two high-profile Blu-ray re-releases recently, ensuring it cannot be suppressed or ignored. But the question is: how does it still have an impact 25 years on? The impact comes from a very simple matter of perspective. Despite their open relationship and risky public encounters, we are put in the mindset of the Ballards from the start. Crash is aimed at a mature and (ostensibly) sophisticated audience, one that may feel it can handle what the film is trying to say. On the surface, it can be interpreted as a reflection of loosening societal mores to accommodate sexual practices and preferences other than the heteronormative. Over the course of the film, our main straight couple become involved in risker public sex, experiment with their heterosexuality, and even engage in abasiophilia, not to mention scenes involving mutual masturbation and transvestism. To some audiences, such experiences would be shocking on their own terms, but when Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard present them in the context of life-risking carnage, the perceived perversion of the individual act is lessened. Not many films involve the sexual proclivities of the disabled, but when the braced and hobbling Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette, pairing crutches and ruby red lipstick) has James violate her thigh wound in the front seat of his car, the idea that such a person would have a sex life becomes less of a novelty, compared to this one act. In a supremely subversive way, Crash levels the playing field. All tastes and desires become valid when taking place behind the wheel.
The man driving the Ballards to these new extremes is Vaughan (Elias Koteas, blessed with an ASMR-friendly whispery slither of a voice). This thrill-seeking stuntman arranges recreations of celebrity car crashes (We watch him replicate James Dean’s fatal crash) while desiring to drive a previously-crashed car, “a car with history”. He is responsible for some of Crash’s most outlandish theories, some of which explain the hold it continues to have on audiences to this day. At one point, he describes his fascination with “the reshaping of the human body by modern technology.” While the film itself is largely dismissive of Vaughan’s most literal hypotheses, the use of the phrase ‘modern technology’ lends Crash a metaphorical richness. If cars are a substitute for technology as a whole, then it isn’t difficult to extrapolate a message on how technological advances can change (for better or worse) sexual experience. In an age when apps promise hookups with a few taps on a screen, or when amateur pornographers become the stars of their own shows online, Crash (both novel and film) is blessed with foresight. The characters indulge their desires and need for self-expression using their technology of choice, and so do we. The fates of some characters (notably Seagrave (Peter MacNeill), the stunt driver who dresses as Jayne Mansfield to recreate her death) are tied to their particular proclivities being expressed through the force of a car wreck. Whether you approach Crash as a horny PSA or the least erotic of erotic thrillers is moot; in one way or another, great pleasure and immense pain are often intertwined.
The pleasure/pain dichotomy in Crash also goes beyond the basic ‘death wish’ (Todestrieb, literally a ‘death drive’) theories of Freud. None of the characters appear suicidal, merely in need of greater, riskier thrills. Crash knows that audiences desire new thrills too, and its casting nods to that. An unknowing viewer could see this as another in Spader’s repertoire of erotic thrillers (sex, lies and videotape, Bad Influence, White Palace, Dream Lover, etc., etc.,), and he and Unger are frequently in states of undress. However, it is rarely intended to present the sex as ‘sexy’ per se. There is always some element about the sex scenes that is off-kilter, as if to remind you that what you’re seeing is not intended to arouse (at least, not intentionally). In their first scene together on the balcony, James approaches Catherine and enters her from behind. Cronenberg stages all this couple’s lovemaking this way, reflecting their disconnect in their inability to even face each other. A later scene in which they make love in bed sees them make the most literal and unappealing dirty talk. There are no colloquial terms used; for a film about reshaped bodies, Crash is anatomically correct. For most viewers, discussions on the saltiness of semen or the qualities of a scarred penis are unlikely to arouse, but therein lies the point. In a later scene, when Vaughan has sex with Catherine in his car whilst in a car wash and James watches, the thrill of the public and voyeuristic overtakes the risk of being caught or the scarred warping of Vaughan’s body. We are put in the car with James to watch this happen. When we’re all voyeurs, we are unable to judge too harshly.
Crash remains subversive, but not in a way that’s crass or unearned. It considers what it presents to the audience, and ladles it with meaning. Every directorial choice, from the lack of slow motion in the crashes to the restrained use of score (Howard Shore’s contributions staying muted until climaxes, emotional and otherwise, are achieved), is deliberate. When the characters watch footage of cars crashing in safety tests, the windshields don’t seem to shatter so much as burst forth to ejaculate glass everywhere. Cronenberg knows exactly what he’s showing and saying, and he’s forever nudging and winking at his audience’s fears and desires. The Cannes jury knew it, the BBFC knew it, and we all know it. We just don’t say it in polite company.
FURTHER READING
Barker, Martin, Arthurs, Jane and Harindranath, Ramaswami, (2001), The Crash Controversy: Censorship Campaigns and Film Reception, London, Wallflower Press
Petley, Julian, ‘Head-On Collisions: The BBFC in the 1990s’ in Lamberti, Edward (ed.), (2012) Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age, Basingstoke, Palgrave McMillan
The Film Cynic 