With ‘Crash’, Cronenberg further proved himself to be a filmmaker ahead of his time
While the 1996 adaption of J.G. Ballard’s novel of the same name isn’t entirely Cronenberg’s deformed brainchild, his chilly, detached direction lends itself perfectly to the atmosphere and mood of the film that portrays the streets of Toronto as a sea of machinery and metallic debauchery. This doesn’t, however, undermine the layer of humanism that’s trying to budge above the surface. The film ultimately chronicles characters trying to do something they don’t know how to achieve, and the inherent sadness and contradiction of trying to connect on a humanistic level through the passionless, cut off nature of machinery.
