Amazing experimental film with music by Jim Thirwell (Foetus). J.G. Ballard once said that the Atrocity Exhibition had been considered his only ‘unfilmable’ novel. Until Jonathan Weiss' feature adaptation of this infamous work of experimental fiction, a film which Ballard calls, ‘a poetic masterpiece’. Of all the films made of Ballard's fiction, only The Atrocity Exhibition contains a full length DVD commentary by the author himself. Less a commentary than a philosophical discourse on the nature of present reality, Ballard fans should find this a treasure in itself.
The Atrocity Exhibition, Ballard's landmark 1968 work of non narrative fiction and the predecessor to Crash, follows a doctor in a mental research institution through the course of his own mental breakdown. What does it mean to be insane in a world itself insane? Ballard and Weiss explore this question in most disquieting ways, as the inner world of Doctor Travis morphs into the outer world of reality. The universal media landscape in which we all now reside becomes a dreamlike background for all the psychopathologies of modern life. Violence, sex, technology, pornography and death are the themes played out hypnotically in the film Doctor Travis has ‘made’-- The Atrocity Exhibition. The film weaves found footage from Hiroshima, Vietnam, Kennedy's assassination and other ‘real´ sources into itself, creating a work of film art unlike anything you have ever seen.

"The 20th Century in film begins with the Lumiere brothers and ends with The Atrocity Exhibition."
Glenn Kenny, critic, Premier Magazine