Crash
Directed by David Cronenberg
- thriller
- drama
The story
A car crash victim inexplicably finds himself aroused by car accidents and becomes involved with an underground subculture of like-minded souls.
What it’s like
Cool, clinical light falls over sun-bleached Toronto freeways, parking structures and hotel rooms, the palette a muted run of greys, steel blues and flat beige interiors broken by the occasional hard flash of red or chrome. Cronenberg frames his people with symmetry and held, deliberate compositions, favouring slow tracking shots along highways and long, unhurried pauses in rooms where nothing happens except looks being exchanged. The score is sparse and cool, a few tones and an undercurrent of electronic hum, with long stretches of ambient road noise and clinical silence doing much of the work. Vibe: detached, glassy, quietly unnerving, a cold sheen over heat underneath. It suits a late night alone when you want something unsettling and austere rather than cosy. Intensity is high and explicit: frank, unflinching sexual content, fetishistic and transgressive imagery, graphic depictions of injury and wreckage, and a persistent sense of cruelty and sadism that lands as clinical rather than thrilling. Pacing is slow and deliberate, with the emotional arc following a numbed, unhappy husband drawn into an obsessive new appetite and the strain it puts on his marriage. For viewers who want provocative, uncomfortable art-house cinema and can take sustained erotic and violent discomfort.
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