Crash

I was supposed to watch No Other Choice in IMAX yesterday but due to inclement weather it was impossible to get to the theater. I watched Fallen Angels instead and today I watched my favorite Cronenberg movie, Crash, since my birthday is soon and I always watch some of my favorites around this time of year. Anyway, I love Crash. It’s a very surreal experience to say the least and is quite effective in getting its message across. How can you know you don’t like something without trying it out first? Experimentation is the name of the game. The characters in this film have become so desensitized to sex and destruction that they have reached unthinkable levels of fetishizing niche/odd things, such as car crashes, in order to be able to reach new orgasmic planes of pleasure that most likely haven’t been experienced ever before. The individuals in this movie have sex a lot, I mean it seems like they are always fucking. It gets to a point where the sex they are having becomes repetitive, almost boring to them. Most of the time the characters seem emotionless when having sex. It’s only when new things are introduced do they begin to appear more satisfied. When crashes, death, the possibility of serious injury, the diversity of who you’re fucking, and so on, were thrown into the mix, it added to the overall experience as well as the subsequent pleasure that derives from these new things. And then you also get some of Cronenberg’s favorite themes included within this movie too such as the transformation of flesh, death, sex, the invasion of one’s body, etc. Cars are almost utilized as a metaphor for humans in this, when they crash it is comparable to sex, the climax of hitting another vehicle at high speeds, it all makes sense and yet it’s so fucking nuts!!! That’s Cronenberg for ya!! This is just a silly little movie all about freaks who take their weird obsessions to the next level. I love how slow and intimate this is. Life is such a fragile thing and yet due to the dullness and mundanity of what society has become, risking that fragile life in order to hold onto what makes life worth living doesn’t seem so crazy. But then again, these people are obviously addicted and are essentially chasing after a high that might only be fulfilled by death. It will get to a point where they can’t get a reaction from anything anymore and so the only thing that will fulfill their dying need for pleasure is death itself. What a masterwork from Cronenberg man.