The Love of a Car

For some people, the only peace they can find is by devoting themselves to projects, away from other people. That certainly seems to be the case for a young man in 1983's Christine. John Carpenter's adaptation of a Stephen King novel I haven't read is partly a nice, raw tale of teenage misery and partly an admirably balls out, violent car chase flick. It's the story of a living car who kills people--and I have to admit, I was rooting for her by the end.

Arnie (Keith Gordon) is a prototypical nerd. He even wears tape on the middle of his black rimmed glasses after a bully crushes them. Yet, the cruelty and insensitivity he suffers from in greater and lesser degrees from parents and classmates is credible. His parents going ballistic about the idea that Arnie would buy a car on his own makes sense, yet their anger also believably crosses the line to disastrously inconsiderate of Arnie's natural need to assert himself.

No, I don't think Arnie is justified in acting more and more like an asshole, but it's also completely understandable. When it comes to the car, I'm inclined to interpret her as something like a wild animal. I've heard in King's novel, the car is definitely possessed by the spirit of a man who killed himself in the car while in Carpenter's film its lifeforce is left totally unexplained. I like Carpenter's concept a lot better. It's far more interesting to study the car and try to discern the nature of its personality and limits of its intelligence than it is to just see some guy's personality in it.

It really is sweet the way she returns the--admittedly compulsive--affection Arnie lavishes on her. And then I also find myself rooting for her because, if you think about it, even if she has the ability to heal herself, it's kind of hard for a car to arrange just the right circumstances where she can kill people. She needs speed and tenacity. My favourite part is when she pulls out of a burning gas station, on fire, to go after the last bully.

That being said, I also really like Harry Dean Stanton as the police detective. I love how sure he seems to be that Arnie's lying about painting the car after it'd been vandalised. As though he's somehow intuited that the car is a demon with healing powers. Stanton completely sells it.

In addition to a lot of '50s classics on Christine's radio, the film also has a particularly groovy synthesiser score from Carpenter.

Christine is available on Netflix in Japan.