#57
Post
by domino harvey » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:29 am
The original New Line release has finally become reasonable in price thanks to the Warner Archives version diluting the market, so there was a little silver lining in that I could pick the original disc up in mint condition for a reasonable sum. This film's unavailability had kept it at arm's length for a while, and though I'm not nearly as enamored of Cronenberg as most of this forum, I was intrigued by the film's controversy and premise (and I either read or started reading the book back in college, though I remember so little about it that I cannot be certain I finished it).
Reading through this thread, I am utterly baffled at anyone defending it on the grounds that it either is erotic or someone else would find it erotic, as the whole point of the film is to present something inherently non-erotic using erotic markers. It's an intriguing methodology, and like any fetish film for a kink you don't have, it teeters on the edge of dullness quite often as strikingly unsexy behaviors and sequences get objectified and glorified and pored over. This distancing lends a detached air to the film that doubles as "dreaminess" in effect, but it also underlines how the film, not unlike a porno movie, is unconcerned with narrative or satisfaction beyond a given self-contained scene-- this is particularly highlighted by Holly Hunter's virtual absence from the second half of the film. Crash is a hard film to assess on a subjective level of whether or not I find it a good movie, as I respect its aims and can honestly say it appears to have done what it set out to do, and did it with competence and skill (though by no extraordinary or exceptional means or methods). Does that make it a good movie? I guess. Did I like it? Not really.
Also, I can only laugh and shake my head at the accusations earlier in the thread that Ebert was somehow erotically conservative or against sex even though he liked this film. Though he's becoming sainted in memory, it's a good reminder that so many cinema "fans" went out of their way to distance themselves from Ebert at his heights, even though his tastes, outside of a few idiosyncrasies, were pretty in line with most movie lovers. And Ebert (and, actually, especially Siskel) loved "sexy" movies when they met their metric of also being good films. There's one Siskel and Ebert special where they recommend "Guilty Pleasures" and Siskel chose Emmanuel and Summer Lovers on the grounds that he found them sexy and both were filled with beautiful women, and he went on to argue that more critics should be honest instead of dancing around praising something they found arousing. Yeah, what a prude!!!!!