"Crash" tells
interlocking stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans,
Iranians, cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the
powerful and powerless, all defined in one way or another
by racism. All are victims of it, and all are guilty it.
Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never
that simple. Their negative impulses may be instinctive,
their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows
what the other person is thinking?
The result is
a movie of intense fascination; we understand quickly
enough who the characters are and what their lives are
like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so
much depends on accident. Most movies enact rituals; we
know the form and watch for variations. "Crash" is a movie
with free will, and anything can happen. Because we care
about the characters, the movie is uncanny in its ability
to rope us in and get us involved.
"Crash" was
directed by Paul Haggis, whose screenplay for "Million
Dollar Baby" led to AcademyAwards. It connects stories
based on coincidence, serendipity, and luck, as the lives
of the characters crash against one another other like
pinballs. The movie presumes that most people feel
prejudice and resentment against members of other groups,
and observes the consequences of those feelings.
One thing that
happens, again and again, is that peoples' assumptions
prevent them from seeing the actual person standing before
them. An Iranian (Shaun
Toub) is thought to be an Arab, although Iranians are
Persian. Both the Iranian and the white wife of the
district attorney (Sandra
Bullock) believe a Mexican-American locksmith (Michael
Pena) is a gang member and a crook, but he is a family
man.
A black cop (Don
Cheadle) is having an affair with his Latina partner (Jennifer
Esposito), but never gets it straight which country
she's from. A cop (Matt
Dillon) thinks a light-skinned black woman (Thandie
Newton) is white. When a white producer tells a black
TV director (Terrence
Dashon Howard) that a black character "doesn't sound
black enough," it never occurs to him that the director
doesn't "sound black," either. For that matter, neither do
two young black men (Larenz
Tate and Ludacris), who dress and act like college
students, but have a surprise for us.
You see how it
goes. Along the way, these people say exactly what they
are thinking, without the filters of political
correctness. The district attorney's wife is so frightened
by a street encounter that she has the locks changed, then
assumes the locksmith will be back with his "homies" to
attack them. The white cop can't get medical care for his
dying father, and accuses a black woman at his HMO with
taking advantage of preferential racial treatment. The
Iranian can't understand what the locksmith is trying to
tell him, freaks out, and buys a gun to protect himself.
The gun dealer and the Iranian get into a shouting match.
I make this
sound almost like episodic TV, but Haggis writes with such
directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that
the characters seem real and plausible after only a few
words. His cast is uniformly strong; the actors sidestep
cliches and make their characters particular.
For me, the
strongest performance is by
Matt Dillon, as the racist cop in anguish over his
father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when he
thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned
wife doing something they really shouldn't be doing at the
same time they're driving. True enough, but he wouldn't
have stopped a black couple or a white couple. He
humiliates the woman with an invasive body search, while
her husband is forced to stand by powerless, because the
cops have the guns -- Dillon, and also a liberal young cop
(Ryan
Phillippe), who hates what he's seeing but has to back
up his partner.
That traffic
stop shows Dillon's cop as vile and hateful. But later we
see him trying to care for his sick father, and we
understand why he explodes at the HMO worker (whose race
is only an excuse for his anger). He victimizes others by
exercising his power, and is impotent when it comes to
helping his father. Then the plot turns ironically on
itself, and both of the cops find themselves, in very
different ways, saving the lives of the very same TV
director and his wife. Is this just manipulative
storytelling? It didn't feel that way to me, because it
serves a deeper purpose than mere irony: Haggis is telling
parables, in which the characters learn the lessons they
have earned by their behavior.
Other
cross-cutting Los Angeles stories come to mind, especially
Lawrence Kasden's more optimistic "Grand
Canyon" and
Robert Altman's more humanistic "Short
Cuts." But "Crash" finds a way of its own. It shows
the way we all leap to conclusions based on race -- yes,
all of us, of all races, and however fair-minded we may
try to be -- and we pay a price for that. If there is hope
in the story, it comes because as the characters crash
into one another, they learn things, mostly about
themselves. Almost all of them are still alive at the end,
and are better people because of what has happened to
them. Not happier, not calmer, not even wiser, but better.
Then there are those few who kill or get killed; racism
has tragedy built in.
Not many films
have the possibility of making their audiences better
people. I don't expect "Crash" to work any miracles, but I
believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a
little more sympathy for people not like themselves. The
movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it
without hope? Not at all. Stand back and consider. All of
these people, superficially so different, share the city
and learn that they share similar fears and hopes. Until
several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth
never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not
racist because, as far as they knew, there was only one
race. You may have to look hard to see it, but "Crash" is
a film about progress.
