David Cronenberg's 1990s film adaptation of Crash is a movie that, for me, succeeds and fails on two different levels. Like most film adaptations, there are several superficial changes to the landscape of the story in comparison with the JG Ballard book, the biggest change being that the book takes place in and around London, while the movie takes place in Toronto. That's fine. The characters being British or Canadian or American is really irrelevant, because just as in the book we have the same labyrinthine highways and car parks,the same detached, almost surreal atmosphere.
The casting makes sense. Perhaps with the slight exception of Holly Hunter as Helen Remington (who just really annoys me), all the characters felt and looked very much as I'd imagined in my mind. In fact, Elias Koteas was almost exactly like the Vaughn I had pictured in my mind, both physically and in his mannerisms. His performance was my favorite of the film.The overall tone of the film, too, mirrored for me in many ways the tone of the book. Everything was very stark, very gray, very detached. Even presented with the mundane images of an overpass or an airport or a hospital corridor, there was something still very strange and alien about this world.
I think Cronenberg did a very good job of staying true to the book dialogue-wise, there are scenes that lift whole passages from the novel, which you rarely find it book to film adaptations which tend to truncate a lot of important speech. But then, for me, Crash is a book that does not rely heavily on actual dialogue to begin with - it is rather what happens in between and especially what happens in Ballard's mind that is the driving force of the narrative.
And in that way, the film failed as a successful adaptation. It's interesting that throughout the past several weeks everyone has been talking about how "cinematic" the book is. And here we are with the visual representation of the visual manifestation of that cinematic quality and it's like: "Oh, yeah. Traffic. This looks cool." The movie is visually striking (the last shot of Ballard and Catherine is pretty amazing), but it is missing some of the pathos that makes the novel not just a never ending series of violent sexual escapades in cars.
The movie, to me, comes to nothing. It makes a strong effort of capturing and distilling the meaning of these characters' actions, but somehow it all rings even more hollow than the book. It's disturbing, but not in a thought provoking way. It even, at time, got to be a little dull. I think the story also suffered a great deal from the absence of an "Elizabeth Taylor" like figure for Vaughn to be obsessed with. I think it's important that while the Ballard/Vaughn/Catherine dynamic is important, Vaughn's quest for immortality should be embodied in a movie star and not in the couple.
I think Cronenberg made a bold attempt at adapting the novel. Crash is most certainly unlike any film I've ever seen, and I'd very much like a second viewing to try and wrap my head around how I feel about it definitively.
In any case, I've found the last ten minutes of the movie with commentary from David Cronenberg himself. It's interesting to hear him discuss the impetus behind the choices he made - for instance, in the sequence in which Ballard is chasing Catherine, James Spader had originally played it as more predatory and ruthless. But Cronenberg decided that wasn't the right tone, that he should be "playful and exuberant," and so the whole sequence was reshot. Anyway, enjoy:
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