fabulous essay on race in America

Rating: 8/10 (14 April 2006)

Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) Having missed it when it came out, I saw this film recently on DVD and rated it highly. It's been deservedly nominated for an Oscar but in a year featuring gay cowpokes and authors, I doubt it has too much of a chance. It covers a two day period, unravelling the intertwined back stories of a number of people involved in an L.A. traffic accident. These comprise: a black police detective with druggy mother; two black car thieves constantly discussing racism; a District Attorney and his wife; a white cop with a sick father; a successful Hollywood black director and his wife; and a Persian shop-owner desperately concerned with the safety of his business and his family.
The theme is racism and a bleak vision of the US it provides. In the UK we are well aware of racism but our experience never begins to compare with that of our American cousins. We see in the film how race permeates every aspect of society, contaminating like a disease, spreading fear and paranoia; framing the lives of the poor and freighting the nightmares of the rich. The racist white cop, trying to help his father, becomes infuriated by the unresponsive health service bureaucracy, staffed by poor blacks. He takes it out on the director's beautiful wife whom he more or less molests after stopping their car and shamefully intimidating them. But there are no crude stereotypes; later on, at the scene of the accident, the cop acts heroically to save the life of the same woman.
Paranoia is freely on display; one of the car thieves suggests buses have big windows so that the poor blacks who use them can be clearly seen and humiliated. The shop-owner encounters extreme hostility on account of his Middle Eastern provenance; he changes the locks on his shop but does not trust the locksmith who says he needs a new door. Consequently his shop is burgled and trashed with racist comments scrawled on the wall. He takes a gun to seek reparation from the locksmith whom he holds responsible. Each story is dependent on the others in some complex fashion but the messages are subtle, oblique, not broadcast via the customary Hollywood megaphone. The acting is top notch throughout, but with only a few major stars- Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock and Don Cheadle who also produces the film. It's a bleak but intelligent and riveting vision of how, despite its success at being a multicultural melting pot, racism has entered into the very DNA of the USA and will continue to play havoc for as long as the country exists. Bill Jones 2/3/06