Event Details
The “reshaping of the human body by modern technology,” in the words of one character, takes center stage in David Cronenberg’s 1996 cult classic Crash, based on the J. G. Ballard novel of the same name. Film producer James Ballard (James Spader) is drawn into an underground community of car-crash fetishists after experiencing a near-fatal collision with one of its members. As Ballard and his wife, Catherine (Deborah Unger), grow more absorbed in this erotic hobby, they will stop at nothing, including death, to reach their next climax. Highly controversial upon release, this cold and clinical exploration of machinery as an extension of the human body, and how destruction begets creation, culminates in one of Cronenberg’s most polarizing films, and what writer-director Bernardo... Bertolucci has described as a “religious masterpiece.”
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
1996 | 100 min. | Canada | Color | English | NC-17 | 4K DCP
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: David Cronenberg
WITH: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Unger