Crash

Crash, a 1996 filmⁱ which notably is rated as fit for 17 year olds debuts in the middle of a sex scene, continues with a sex scene and culminates in a sex scene. It's not exactly the result of taking the average Porn Valley production and throwing out all the footage depicting genitals, leaving behind a disjonted mess of twenty second clips of pizza deliverers, forlorn directors and people in cars or hospitals. It's not really all that far off, either.

The chief difference is the narrative generously, unctuously provided by Deborah Kara Unger. Her dialogue is very enjoyable in that - rare for a woman, and especially so for a Western woman - she's motherfucking precise. This can not be underscored enough, you probably have no idea what a blessing it is to hear a woman speak when actually having something definite to say, what a delight it is to hear a woman answering questions with actual answers. You probably have no idea, on account of never having heard such miraculous wonders, and if that is the case you should certainly watch this film. She jacks her guy off over a five minute description of a crumpled up car, and she could have kept going. If asked about the other driver she has a name ready, and a job title, and a spouse by name and job, and probably their shoe size too.

All that aside, the film has a tremendous cultural importance for its clear and uncompromising depiction of normalcy outside of the system of the police state. This is perhaps aided by the production predating The Final Septemberⁱⁱ by five years, but nevertheless it shines and is pretty much guaranteed to bestow upon the film cult status - if not this century then certainly the next.

Just think about it, people smoking in cars, using the very car lighters to light their cigarettes ? Do you have a cigarette lighter in your car ? Why not ? People gathering together to crash cars, because they want to. A bunch of people gathered to watch it, because they want to, some performers wearing no helmets, no cages, no safety belts, because they don't want to - when's the last time you didn't wear one of those ? A crash, a guy's hurt, does he run for an ambulance ? No, he does not. He runs away from the ambulance, away from the sirens, away from "help". He just wants to be left alone, because any fate's better than being helped by the fucking zombies. Any fate, and this includes bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere, among people. The dark, evil, unbearable Statal Intervention Forces show up with their lightshow of nonsense and everyone splits because there ain't no one got time for that.

This film is the definition of subversive, and I suppose the only reason Cronenberg isn't celebrated as the new Messiah of celluloid is the infection of film by stateⁱⁱⁱ. Which... you know... can't possibly last, we've got digital, we've got peer to peer, we've got Bitcoin, we've got the laughs and we've got anything and everything else. The one thing we ain't got is no time. For that.

1. by David Cronenberg, with James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger [↩]
2. The Internet ended sometime in September 1993. The United States ended quite precisely on September 11, 2001, a date certain to be recognised by future historians exactly in the way September 4, 476 has been recognised in the years hence. Quite a month this September, isn't he. [↩]
3. A point easily confirmed by the constant slide in market share of the state-run film corps over the years, accounting for quite the drop since the 90s. Nobody likes you, yo! [↩]