Crash: MTV American Idealism.

Rating: 3/10 (4 May 2006)

Caution: Please note that I do marginally indicate to the film's plot in this commentary.
Like many Hollywood films imbued with seamless continuity, a swelling orchestral soundtrack, and a star power cast, "Crash" draws in a mainstream audience looking for a narrative of dramatic patriotism veiled in self-praising humanism. As director Paul Haggis contends, the multiculturalist issues in American democracy aren't simply black and white, and white isn't necessarily always right; it is something much greater. And yet, what I feel we're working with here is merely a 6-pack crayola spectrum: you might as well throw out the rest of the crayons because all that is being used is red, white (no crayon needed), and blue.
This film seems to aim at an American redemption of the past years leading back to 9/11: a day forever fixed in the American political axis of xenophobia. Rightly so, Americans do need to rectify past racial transgressions between each other and feel better about their nationalism since that fateful day. It was the day when the Western 'Graceland' was eternally tainted by fear and the abstract notion of terrorism that lay in everyone's bed beside them began to stir; people became ugly and cultural spaces would homogeneously cluster together for security. This is "Crash." The distanciation that came from fear, in time, hardened into hate and then died in to indifference This is where Haggis believes that America's melting pot has melted, cooled, and solidified in to country of segregation; no more is there a sense of patriotic 'unity', only a distopic decay of American idealism.
With such narrative strains as Matt Dillon's character, a police officer, the soldier of the people is carefully framed in his redemption scene, saving Thandie Newton, distinctly echoing the patriotic iconography found during the wake of September 11th. This film desperately tries to re-establish that American illusion of democracy that has made its citizens faithfully check their culture at the door and step in line to march for an estranged capitalist political agenda. All the while, Haggis serves it to them in a pop culture tagline "You think you know who you are, You have no idea," oddly resembling the MTV Diaries quip, "You think you know, but you have idea," a show that interestingly enough employs a 'reality effect' in trying to construct marketable humanists out of celebrity identities. I think the American audience is too smart for this and perhaps realize as others witness their awakening concern in politics, the film's cathected idea of freedom is simply not enough. They want actual freedom not something served to them by circumscription with the hollow promise of an abstract ideal. I think what is not shown in Haggis' film is that American democratic freedom is gradually being realized as not an ideal, but an idea.
"Crash" does start out to be more than just black and white and takes on multiculturism's demons head on, but by the end, it's difficult to see any colour from the constant white washing on the "Hollywood" hills sign.