Crash

Crash isn't a film you'll forget in a hurry.

I remember a few years ago watching the fevered, heroic (in their own minds), actions of bystanders to a car crash in Cairns. The mangled car was on it's side in the middle of the intersection, a woman trapped inside, petrol spilling onto the road, and four of five middle aged men rushed to her aid, tearing the bleeding, broken woman out of the car and away form the wreck.

What was particularly striking (other than the fact that it would have been much more sensible to leave that poor woman alone, rather than risk ripping up her spine), was the look on one of the men's face. That wide eyed, sweating, stunned and above all intensely alive face told the story.

For that man rescuing that woman was a stunning, satisfying action. He was enlivened, alerted, and spiced by the experience. No doubt he was horrified by the woman's pain and by the danger she was in, but saving that human being was the stuff of dreams; the embodiment of a deep, intense primeval instinct; amidst the horror was a thrill.

Human beings are engineered for such events. Physiologically, pharmaceutically and socially humans are engineered to make short term, active, fight and flight rescues such as these, much more so than burrowing through our modern day long term crises, such as raising children or going to work for years.

Give a man or woman a gun, a football or a car wreck and there's the sort of feverish contentment we seem to be made for. Find me one head that hasn't wanted to crane out of a car window like a Gary Larsen dog when a car is passing a car crash, and then I tell you, that head is abnormal.

But there's more! Because if we take that car wreck excitement one big step forward, then you have Crash.

What if the sort of excitement caused by car crashes was extended to a sexual fascination? Sex and blood become a toxic mix. What if car crash scars become sexually arousing? What if brutal sex, in a wreck of a car, with a fellow Crash devotee, becomes the stuff of real sexual satisfaction?

What if staging famous crashes, such as James Dean's famous, deadly prang becomes morbidly and sexually compelling? And what if these weird, unhealthy notions are glossed up by a classy, provocative and brave director using a committed cast including Holly Hunter, James Spader and Deborah Unger, aided by a haunting music score second to none?

Then you have Crash.

Don't miss it!