A Bold Look at Racial Perceptions

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2005)

"Crash" could be considered as one more film trying to throw racial prejudice into our face. There have been many films out there that try to preach to an audience about racial intolerance in a bigoted America.
If you blow off this film because this is what you think it's about, you'll really miss out on a good film with good writing.
What makes "Crash" so good is it's the first film I've seen that really digs at racial "perceptions", not race "relations". After all, in life the perception comes before the relationship. The filmmakers recognize this point and go right at the heart of it.
We are shown an upper-class white woman see the Hispanic locksmith as a potential criminal. We see the Iranian shopkeepers treated as Arabs. We see the working woman accuse the Asian wife of not speaking English (to which the latter retorts "I am speaking English, you :expletive:." This whole film is like that: a myriad of differing viewpoints. The director changes viewpoints so frequently yet so flawlessly. He shows the world through black eyes, through white eyes, or through Hispanic eyes, all without confusing the viewer. But he doesn't stop there (that would stereotype far too much), he also manages to rotate through class structures, through religious beliefs, and through various degrees of morality.
If you allow it to happen, the effect is to alter your perceptions of race and humanity. There isn't only one view of the world (your own), there's billions of viewpoints, all as real as yours. This is real life (amplified for drama by the movie industry, to be sure, but real life nonetheless).
Continuing to mimic real life, there's no big story of racial tolerance in "Crash", no big "group hug" between the white man and the black man that redeems the characters in the end. Like a car accident, the participants fill out their paperwork and go their separate ways, never to meet again, never to learn anything from each other. Just continuing on as before. It's not the normal Hollywood ending, but it's by far a more honest one.
It may be far too much to ask of a film of this sort (it simply isn't a film for the masses), but hopefully a few people manage to change their own perceptions after seeing "Crash".
9 out of 10. There are one or two plot elements that are simply unoriginal ("I need to shake hands with a black man to get elected" -- oh brother), but other than that it's a very good film.
Barky