Crash: Film vs. Novel

It is very rare that I like a movie adaptation more, or even equal to, the original novel, so I may be a bit biased in my opinion of Cronenberg's Crash. While I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, I felt that the film fell short in conveying Ballard's message about technology. It's understandable that the movie would leave out certain details from the book, but one of the more noticeable absences is the reference to Elizabeth Taylor. Vaughan's dream was to die with her in a car crash, yet the movie did not explain this at all. It was important to note the connection between cultural figures and technology because Ballard was explicit in his mentioning of the era's culture. Also, I felt like the movie followed less of a story line than the novel. In Ballard's written version, we are able to get inside James' head and follow his progression of machine obsession and his feelings toward the other characters. Where in the book the relationship between Vaughan and James goes in depth and we see James' transformation from an admirer to a dominator, the movie fails to show this change. In Cronenberg's film, James' thoughts were less obvious and his actions were therefore unexplained and confusing. This is similar to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In Burgess' novel, the language that Alex and his "droogs" use is so prominent that you are transported into this world and begin to think like him. In the movie, this unique vocabulary is not used as much because a lot of the explanations can just rely on imagery as opposed to text. This makes it difficult to place yourself in the mind of Alex and somehow understand how he behaves. In the book version of Crash, we can visualize Ballard's descriptions and incorporate our own imagination to envision a warped scene of man and machine interacting. In the film, the images are laid out too literally, so it visually does not make any sense in the context of what message Cronenberg is trying to adapt.