1,2,3 Ford Focus Crash test
HE WAS A SET CLOSED What seemed strange considering that all was, more often than not, the road system open tarmac Toronto crash was mostly filmed in the middle of the night, especially on generous portions of highway that David Cronenberg had somehow persuaded the city to stop the nights last fall so he could make a film about people who are sexually aroused by car wrecks.
A driver picked me up at midnight under the Gardiner Expressway Cop opened a barrier blocking an entrance, waved us through, and we drove up a ramp on a dark, completely deserted stretch of road The crew accident was set up near the overpass of the Don river, preparing to shoot culminating post-accident scene Four crashed cars were artfully strewn film along the floor, curly door, smashed windshields, the engines crumpled pavement glass glittered pounded and metal twisted the centerpiece of the stage was a bus with a black Lincoln Continental stuck right on his side, the tire comes out like a giant beetle pinned back it was as if the two vehicles were dead coupling above us on the high road guard rail linked to is shredded, making it look like Lincoln had torn and dipped down into the bus.
Welcome to my playground, says Cronenberg, who seemed delighted to be there, it's beautiful, is not good, so the game amounted to a huge art installation, a painting of the wreck picky laid at the feet of the city the scene has a strange post-apocalyptic glamor - lights orange expressway reflected in the darkness of the Don river; the constant screeching of starlings, thousands of them nesting in tatters Stonehenge pylons Expressway; the skyline of downtown standing as bright line as an open refrigerator in the background a scene, you might say, of a Cronenberg movie.
The moment I saw crash unveiled at Cannes last May, I certainly primed for what I had read the book the cult novel coolly provocative writing JG Ballard in 1973 da I also spent two hours interviewing Cronenberg Toronto Even then, the film is a shock It was like watching a foreign film in my own country, a brilliant but banning the film about characters whose emotions are frozen in a hind narcotic code, and trying to overcome a sense pathological exit by literally threshing another.
In Cannes, many who marched in the cold crash felt blinded It was an accident waiting to happen, a collision between a public that has no idea what to expect and a manager who laid the rules the road on the window is still difficult to say what happened at the impact point Premiering last Friday at Cannes, accident was the most highly anticipated film of the competition here was a highly respected author, made his first official appearance with a controversial film containing sex scenes than any mainstream film in recent memory the reaction was wildly mixed Boos, Bravos scattered silence stunned Some people were alarmed to find themselves through sex tour without passion ; others were dismayed at being put off by it, but two days later, people still talk about it and in the end, a Cannes jury headed by bitterly divided Francis Coppola and Atom Egoyan which recognized the impact of Crash inventing a price for it- which praised its -one audacity, boldness and innovation the French critics, meanwhile, defended the movie, and in July it opened in France as the number one box office hit.
Accident has some obvious commercial allure It is, after all, on cars and sex, but not in the usual combination And while the car accident can be one of the most rudimentary of Hollywood cliches, collisions in an accident are not typical They were shot without slow movement whatsoever Cronenberg notes They're shot in real time, very short and very brutal Because it really is the aftermath that interest me in the book, it is a big, cold sensuality accident, details of vinyl and blood and shattered glass and instruments that is quite different from what you see in a movie car chase.
The story focuses on a couple of insane - a publicity named James Ballard James Spader and his wife, Catherine Deborah Kara Unger Who openly practice promiscuity bored Having barely survived a car crash that killed the other driver James meets the man's widow, a doctor named Helen Remington Holly Hunter seems strangely unaffected by his death through it, Jacques and Catherine are drawn to a fetishistic cult of self-motivated that take strong erotic sensations accidents car - to be around them, being in them and revive their spiritual leader is a name of photographer and scientist vulturish Vaughan, played with the complex obsession by Montreal actor Elias Koteas Exotica Vaughan is a connoisseur of accident likes to rest his legendary road accidents, such as those who killed James Dean, Grace Kelly and Jane Mansfield James Vaughan developed a craze, an attraction that drift across the white line dividing the autoerotic of homoerotic He also tangled with kinky s Gabrielle Rosanna Arquette, who suffered a crash crippled in bondage leg brace as sexual games are moving into high gear with the nostalgia of the sacramental characters amalgamation of semen and engine coolant, the question I can give you a lift becomes a loaded question.
This is the ultimate film unprotected sex Finally fucks everyone everyone, although not seem to be down Staging a frontal collision between Eros and Civilization produces its own brand of performance anxiety The uncertainty of the human condition, the existential roadblock at the intersection of sex and death, continues to take the path Under the rules that drive this particular fetish, anything short of self-destruction is simply passing by movement and in the end, the characters are slaves of metaphor - that is, after all fetishism paradox.
Accident is the kind of film that requires explanation and no one explains better than Cronenberg Cronenberg, who unlike many artists seem to delight in deconstructing his own work, he said he understands why some people find his film difficult to watch when he first picked up the novel Ballard found it difficult to read, it was cold, very obsessive and had zero sense of humor, he recalled that I read half and put it away for six months, I said, there's no way I'd do that, then I took over and over, but never came to me to make a movie later, I found myself talking to the producer Jeremy Thomas while we were Naked Lunch, and I said, I think the next thing we should do is crash I'm really surprised me when I said and he said it is amazing that you should say that because I l 'purchase option Crash when it first came out.
Cronenberg said his script to crash, unlike his free adaptation of Naked Lunch, became a distillation of the book, while remaining faithful to the novel, the film also improves, as Ballard himself acknowledges Cronenberg personalized thin, severe and relentlessly dark novel with a sly mind the jokes are not in place, and barely break the surface of the film, which is controlled impeccably; they just slide There is a scene sublimely deadpan Hunter and Arquette sitting around watching dummy videos of crash test A pageant of James Dean death by Porsche plays like a clever parody of the drag race in Rebel without a cause and playful stage in a showroom Mercedes-Benz has Arquette character trying to maneuver her disabled body in a car seat and a metal hook snags his brace on the upholstery leather corset is a machine positively medieval, reminiscent of the Gothic gynecological instruments that Cronenberg has designed for Dead Ringers.
One of the most disturbing aspects of Crash is its resemblance to the surface to pornography - as a full sex film that is both calculated and alienating Unlike pornography, however, it was not designed to titillate the film begins with three sex scenes in a row, Cronenberg notes, and a preview screening someone wrote on a map, a series of sex scenes is not a parcel My answer is, why not that said that in most movies, sex scenes are lyrical opportunity for editing and music show that these people really be another chance, and we get the real movie, but with a crash, it is more like woman sex Dunes This is the movie he's all you say.
Crash redefines the discretion of the viewer When I spoke with Cronenberg before heading to Cannes, he correctly predicted response to my film, I'm not sure you'll love everyone in a collision in the sense you'll empathize with them, he told me that the characters are, as in the book, difficult to access - which is the term I heard, but is it not possible to observe something far and still be fascinated by it all identification thing is in the formula linking the Hollywood movies, he says, you know what buttons you're supposed to grow, and if you are professional enough to grow well, you get the response required here, I'm not pushing buttons that nobody knew they had before and I m groping in the dark for buttons, I'm not sure as I'm pushing what interests me is that even People who do not like accident said, I've never seen anything like that before might have people say, I liked your film is not what I want s something more complex, ambiguous.
In Cannes, Cronenberg certainly got his wish and after the crash has been a bumpy ride for two press screenings, he and his cast appeared to face the music during the mandatory press conference they were willing to be attacked we was pumped, the director reminds us as he was smeared with black grease paint on our faces hostile critics were silent But I asked the only remotely provocative question, and I liked the film I asked why, in such unconventional film, there is such a classic report nudity - Why women get more naked than men Cronenberg explained in detail that this was never a problem then Spader, seizing the opportunity, I would say butted something, he offered a little too eagerly it is a matter of geography when you're fucking, you do not see the penis that brought down the house I joined in the laughter, decid er it was not the time to ask, What about hand jobs.
During the press conference, Cronenberg made an interesting observation It is no coincidence, he said, as the automobile and film are exactly the same age They both tablets our understanding of time and space in actually, the car and the camera are the achievements of technology pre consumed digital with both devices, the world comes to us as a motion picture, framed by the big screen and the windscreen camera and the car also well we carry mass - in a public or a traffic flow: -yet both are extremely private experiences as passengers, we look at the road through the lens of the driver conductor directs; the director of readers and the camera, like the car, allows us to enter the world with an obsessive focus Yet as it compresses the distance it puts distance between us and the world.
Of all our machines, the car is the most sexualized It is the machine we wear, a steel cocoon that serves as a shield, and a second skin voluptuous in a collision, it is not only a place to bathe sex , vinyl boudoir, but a sex toy on wheels - the strap on the ultimate opening scene, which shows Unger touching her chest exposed to the cold fuselage of an airplane in a hangar, the film explores the idea of sex between man and machine, between flesh and metal, the strong desire to penetrate and penetrated through the enamel hardness technology the car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event, says Vaughan, scientific photographer scarred which states the credo of a film may be too literally, as something that we are all intimately involved in - the reorganization of the human body by modern technology.
Cronenberg's films have always been devoted to technological changes of the flesh in Videodrome a television screen has become a carnal predator; on the fly, Seth Brundle turned his body in a laboratory construction; Lunch at a typewriter naked secreted orgasmic treatment of human sexuality as an invention juices going, Cronenberg was turning the human body long before computers entered the carnal act Warped was the original metaphor for the unbridled libido the other fantastic plastic Shivers, Rabid and the Brood - horror stories of scientists accident - id exploded body grotesque creature - the form and Dead Ringers and M butterfly, tragedies of sexual identity, he imploded with suicidal consequences.
With Crash Cronenberg view of human sexuality as a scientific accident comes full circle, it depicts the automobile as a foreign body with vital juices, an insectoid shell that can surround and invade the human body - a shell THE insect imagery is a subtle joke, a reminder that we are in a world that seems familiar, because it is so strange, so Cronenbergian we see the bug in the frame of a convertible roof looming insidiously to lock the characters, like a praying mantis, as they prepare to have sex in a car wash and we see in the final crane shot, we are on a human form trying to emerge from a car accident inch by inch as a larva jackknifing of a chrysalis.
It is a haunting image and Cannes, as I watched Cronenberg and his essay sank to explain the special bond they formed during the shooting accident, it occurred to me that the manager closed its plaster in a protective cocoon, a shells all actors like to work with Cronenberg - which is strange, considering the film seems more focused on images and ideas about the character and performance, but each crash stars were thrilled to experience work with Cronenberg, expressing his loyalty and dedication that would worship - as if she did not have the consensus that either is a nice guy with a great sense of humor which is open to suggestion and not a tyrannical na bones in his body, he is very relaxed on set, Spader said he's light and funny and smart and he has the confidence to say that I do not know this is not only uncommon s inex istante in my experience of making movies.
Holly Hunter agrees that I like his loyalty to his own beliefs and his own doubts, she said Doubt is one of the factors that motivated his work - I still feel his films are a little whimsical, it has things to say that are personal His ideas are incubating They grow David and no other actor Vancouver Kara Unger Deborah, who plays in the most exposed sexually scenes in the film, said that the script was like a rape of mind when I read it; I'm predisposed to this, but she grew to appreciate and Cronenberg called one of the most elegant and confidence - inspiring people I've ever met, it is soft, it is specific, you can always get afraid you'll hit the specific note that s for a driver But calm and spirit of SA on him, he is not violent.
Winning the confidence of its stakeholders is a high priority for Cronenberg It starts with the budget and schedule, he said They know I have Final Cut They know that this is my film They know I have the time to do properly because I budgeted and planned, I know it sounds like a very dry strange talking to act in this way but it comes down to what I can give to the actors on the set, and I can do is give them a very protected environment When you do sex scenes, it's crucial actors must feel with each secure other and with you how he put the actors in comfortable was to allow them to review their decision on video I made sure I had the best possible color monitor, and all the time they wanted to see what everyone was like, I said, take a eye There were no surprises.
Was sexuality across anything other than simulated Spader says he's never excited on the set, never, says the director Then there are other players - I know Jimmy Woods is always excited on the set even when he's not doing a sex scene I remember Videodrome Debbie Harry saying strap just do it and what is proper response to film sex scenes in one direction of Cronenberg, a director is a voyeur, he said, and its deliciousness to ignore it, to have that professional, technical remotely But even when there are no open sex on camera, a film set is a very sexualised place my opinion, art and sex and movies and sex are inextricably you are not surprised that people have strange business on your game because you're constantly pushing yourself emotionally, aesthetically and visually in every way possible on a good d cor movie everyone is interesting that you are just as likely to want to have sex with accessories person with the great lady and we did and later, you realize that th ese are not things that must necessarily be acted on.
What is controversial about Crash no explicit sex, which often seems more cerebral than physical, but the idea of being in a car accident is erotic We had a screening in Los Angeles, said Cronenberg, and apparently a guy came out shouting and waving his arm was in a cast, and he said, I like Cronenberg's film, but I think it is part psychopath with the one I have just been in a motorcycle accident and there was nothing sexy well, I think he totally missed the point, because I was in a motorcycle accident and think there was something sexy about it Cronenberg continues to speak scarification, tribal mutilation and pain nice body building-- another example of the man who disguise themselves as a conceptual thing.
But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and for all its permutations metaphorical, accident also taps into a universal form of voyeurism, one that makes people slow down to a scene of accident There is an aesthetic car accident, people include, but want to be too aware of, Cronenberg said that people are really fascinated by what they look like when they're dismantled by what happens when the body comes apart you could say it's horrible, but the world's ghoul if you turn away, that art a thing And if you look with greed, it's another but you can t be neutral.
The same can be said to look Crash It is interesting to note that Cronenberg, this director stubbornly in Canada, took the car accident, an action adventure ritual Hollywood, yet he turned and dissected in the conviction that the result is more convincing than the event Curiously, Atom Egoyan, another Canadian director who has a clinical fascination with the underside of human complicity, is preparing for a Exotica followed with a film based on the Sweet Hereafter, a novel Russell Banks is about following a fatal bus accident school If Canadian cinema continues like this, the road movie can never be the same.
Brian D Johnson is the senior editor of entertainment and film critic for Maclean He is the author of three nonfiction books railway across Canada by train 1985, the XV Olympic Winter Games The __gVirt_NP_NN_NNPS<__ livre commémoratif officiel 1988 et Brave Films, Wild Nights 25 des années de festival Fever 2000 En 1994, il a publié un roman acclamé par la critique, le Days Volcano Cet article est réimprimé de Take One No 13, automne 1996.
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Crash test 2 accident, Kara Unger Deborah.