Film Review: Crash

I'm in the midst of a decent dialog on Lynch's films at adamkotsko.com. In the meantime, I came across this review of David Cronenberg's film, Crash. I'm a fan of Cronenberg, finding Videodrome somewhat prophetic. His Fly was a bit overdone but a very good remake of a classic.

Crash is in a category by itself, however. It is not easy to watch at times and made me uncomforetable, which I think is a good sign since it enabled me to plumb some depths of eroticism and sexuality that I'd perhaps not want to look at.

Zembla here gives a decent review. I'd mention the aesthetic aspect about pornography. Like Lynch, it seems that Cronenberg finds something fascinating about the raw, grainy image of the porno picture. For me it's the sense of desolation and despair that come through those images meant to entice and allure.

Begun in the late 1800s, the cult of the grotesque and bizarre, is one that Cronenberg flirts with as does Lynch. I think the greatest 20th-21st c. master of this art form is Joel Peter Witkin. Witkin. His photos of carcasses, dead bodies, mutant and disfigured humans haunted me when I first saw them. In his highly stylized rendition of the fine line separating the passions--perhaps giving the truth to Freud's theory of thanatos and eros--he creates mesmerizing images that haunt you because you don't want to believe that that's really what you're seeing and when you can't deny that it is what you're seeing, you don't want to accept the fact that you're attracted to (seduced by) it.

Remind me to tell you the story of one of his models, whom I had the pleasure of meeting one time.

Update (Via Zembla) A review of Crash from a more academic standpoint.