So after a decade of hype, I finally watched Crash. holy shit that movie.
I've already talked about the treachery of images a lot in regards to this Cronenberg project So I won't waste any time. This is maybe the most inspired adaptation choice I've ever seen in a movie. Just by elevating the novel into a physical visual medium, David Cronenberg has materialized the themes of the story and I hope I can adequately explain that idea here. I'm going to try and keep my scope limited by narrowing in on just four figures:
James G Ballard, the author of the novel (from here on referred to as J.G.)
David Cronenberg, who I will unprofessionally refer to as David a lot
James Ballard, the primary POV character of the story
Vaughan, the primary driver of the events of the story
You have a novel where Vaughan stages non-fatal crashes that are recreations of real life fatal crashes. David Cronenberg adapted this into a movie which means he had to stage non-fatal crashes that are recreations of fictional non-fatal crashes that are themselves recreations of Real Life Fatal Crashes. Cronenberg took the concept that J.G. -- through Vaughan -- was developing in the novel and made it real. He literally, physically embodied the fiction of the novel and put it to film and showed it to us. And it's still fiction but simultaneously real. These characters are putting their lives on the line and experiencing that rush as they dance with death the same way the stunt drivers in real life had to do for this film and literally every other project involving filmed car crashes. That's meat I could (and will) chew on for days. Because after the character Vaughan dies, James Ballard the character embodies him. He fulfills the dream, "The Project". Take a Fatal Crash Car and fix it up just enough to roll and do a crash in it. Ballard allows Vaughan's vision to live through his body. Cronenberg allowed J.G.'s vision to live through his movie, his actors and stunt drivers. The work in making this movie carry the themes of the novel, the way Cronenberg carries the themes of J.G., the way all of these layers meld and mingle and somehow, despite the layers being so densely stacked, the separation of the artist and the viewer is made THINNER. We are being spoken to directly.
whenever we look at individually, it becomes such a well woven fabric. David Cronenberg, a film producer working to create a movie about a film producer. Vaughan is a character has to carefully direct and frame his drivers for these performances to recreate these celebrity crashes the same way David has to carefully direct and frame the stunt crashes in this movie. David is viewing the art of J.G. and learning very carefully from him to make a movie where the film producer is carefully learning from an artist through observation and expanding upon his work. James Ballard adapts Vaughan's fatal crash the same way Cronenberg adapts J.G.'s Crash. The two real world artists work in different mediums the same way that Vaughan and Ballard work in different mediums yet express the same concepts and explore other avenues.
All of these interconnected concepts emerge purely from the fact that this purely fictional novel about car crashes, all of which is just ink on paper, was brought into the real world David physicalized all of these car crashes. He made these imaginary concepts into real ones because you cannot have a car crash on film without literally crashing cars into each other with drivers in the seats in real life. (I mean there are techniques to account for all this kind of stuff, there are obviously crashes that you cannot do with drivers in the car without them dying but you get the idea.) There is a character in this film Who is a stunt driver, he is played by an actor and during the crash scenes, he is portrayed by a stunt driver. maybe the best novel to ever be adapted because every element of it works with the medium of films to carry forward and expand on the themes. staging car crashes with the eye of a director in this novel and then having a director in real life stage these car crashes with the eyes of the novelist. The characters in the movie doing those very same things as the artists who created them.
A big incredible scene in this movie is one where the characters are walking around the scene of an accident that is under active processing by emergency services but the tone is basically indistinguishable from a film set. I just fucking love this shit. There's this crazy moment where we get to see wild car sex that basically hard cuts to James Ballard on his movie set watching his own production unfold, like he was staging his production as David Cronenberg was also staging the Crash production. Like, David, I feel like you're talking directly to me. And that's just like one aspect of the movie that I'm talking about right now. There are so many facets to this film and I didn't even do a good job adequately expressing one of them.
It's also absolutely fascinating thinking about the movie Fast Company in relation to this one. You absolutely get those feelings of cars as our bodies, just much smaller in that one. You have a character lubricating a woman as you would a car, you have these shots of the internals of cars revving and whirring And there are crashes, there's fire and explosion, I was losing my mind because one of the characters in Crash is taking flying lessons and I could have sworn there would have been an airplane crash at the end of crash just like there was at the end of fast company. That did not manifest but it would have been extremely funny if it did. Fast company is not a great film, but it's solid, it's good. It's enjoyable but the body philosophy is not nearly as developed so it's very exciting to see a movie where he has taken it to that utmost extreme and reckoned with it and filmed what is a damn near perfect distillation of it.
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