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David Cronenberg’s CRASH (1996)
When it was first unleashed on unsuspecting audiences at Cannes some 30 years ago, Crash caused controversy. Why, you ask? Who, after all, could possibly have a problem with an erotically-charged thriller about kinky, death-obsessed car-crash fetishists who get their rocks off on twisted metal and scar tissue? Well, the prudish authorities were scandalized, and David Cronenberg’s icy adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s future-shock novel of the 1970s was banned from some UK cinemas, leading it to become one of the most controversial films of the 1990s. While the scandal may have abated, Crash retains it ability to shock and disturb, taking audiences deep into a bizarre subculture of sadomasochism and tech fetishism. A traffic collision between a disaffected commercial producer (James Spader) and an enigmatic doctor (Holly Hunter) serves as accidental initiation into a bizarre sadomasochistic subculture in which the flesh-mangling destruction of the car crash is the ultimate turn-on. Crash remains a key piece of late-twentieth-century cinema, a disturbingly seductive treatise on the relationships between humanity and technology, sex and violence, that is as unsettling as it is mesmerizing.
“At the beginning of the film the sex is rather anodyne, it’s lost its power. It only regains some of its power when it’s connected to other forces that give it meaning and life and dynamism. IT’S SEX AGAINST DEATH.” -David Cronenberg
“You should be prepared before you watch a movie like Crash. You have to be adventurous, and ready to accept that movies can still break new ground. Crash is a great film.” -Combustible Celluloid
“[A] necessarily disturbing and equally profound inquiry into human desire, however self-destructive” -Slant Magazine
This film is screening as part of Arkadin’s September-long series ENVELOPE PUSHERS, spotlighting extreme cinema, convention-flouting surrealism and radical comedies that push the boundaries of content, narrative and sometimes good taste.
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2624162-0
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2624162-2
