(Drivebycuriosity) - A long time ago I discussed with friends the question: "What is better - the movie or the book on which the film is based?" I enjoyed David Cronenberg´s movie "Crash" (imdb ), based on the same named novel by J.G. Ballard, which I just finished reading ( amazon).
The very controversial novel - advertised as "The Definitive Cult, Postmodern Novel" - is written in first person. The lead character, who has also the name Ballard, is obsessed with cars, street traffic, car crashes and sex. He gets more and more influenced by a man named Vaughan, who made a profession of these obsessions. Ballard describes painstakingly car crashes, the horrible mutilations & deaths caused by them and sexual scenes related to cars & car crashes. It seems the protagonists, their wives & girl friends are sexually aroused by cars, traffic, crashes & mutilations.
The novel reminds me of some of Franz Kafka´s short stories, where the authors describes horrible scenarios (for instance "The Metamorphosis" & "In the Penalty Colony"). "Crash" could be seen a very horny variation of Kafka and a persiflage on sexual fetishism.
But Ballard is no Kafka. There is not much of a plot, instead over about 200 pages follows a sheer endless enumeration of crashes, mutilations, descriptions of body parts & body functions & bizarre sexual acts, which soon gets tedious. I looks like Ballard wrote just 20 pages, put them into a word processor and multiplied them with the factor 10.
Cronenberg´s movie displays perfectly message & intention of the book without Ballard`s gore & redundancies. And we also get superb acting by James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette as a bonus. The movie is fun, the book is not.
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