Crash (USA) (Lions Gate Films) (2005) ****Year: 2005iMDB
Director: Paul Haggis Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Esposito
Paul Haggis's collaboration with Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby was widely acclaimed and earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. At the same time though, Haggis was working on his own project which he also directed: Crash. And at first sight, as I was watching Crash I had the same feeling of dissatisfaction due to seemingly cliched characters in seemingly over the top situations. Furthermore, the storytelling technique using the randomly crossing lives of several characters is far from being new and innovative anymore (Short Cuts, Magnolia, Amores Perros, etc.).
However, Crash managed to shatter my reluctance and turned into a film that pounds onto the same main themes from beginning to end - racism, prejudice, bias - but manages to emphasize the very delicate and fluid lines between good and bad in these circumstances. The power of Crash comes from its characters complexity and credibility. There are rabid racists who manage to see the limitation of their views. There are good people, that almost cross the line in their moment of rage and weakness. There are others that simply do not understand how harmful their actions can be. There are open, good persons that, after doing everything right, they succumb to the overwhelming prejudiced views that surround them and, in a moment of fear, they become worse than the worst.
Fear is not emphasized in Crash but it is the feeling that drives most of the interactions at one point or another. Racism, prejudice, are all coming from various type of fears and they are only one form of reaction. White men, Hispanic, black, Arabs, men, women, they all try to make sense of a world where fear is the number one bi-product of all media, and none of them is immune to passing summary judgements on others.
Crash does not try to instill hope nor generate despair. It manages to stay surprisingly unbiased in a world full of bias and the conclusion is up to each of us.
Posted by TheCasualCritic on July 10, 2005 11:25 AM | TrackBack