Crash - A Movement (Not Just a Movie)

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2005)

Modern movies are often criticized for allegedly depriving their audiences of the ability to think abstractly and providing shallow entertainment in the form of colorful moving pictures. Fortunately, writer and director Paul Haggis, has come a long way in redeeming the reputation of modern cinema, and perhaps even humanity as a whole, in his most recently released film, Crash.
To provide a most basic synopsis, Crash is a compilation of the stories of various individuals, whose lives, in one way or another, collide and become irreversibly intermingled. In all cases, the major distinguishing factor between these people is their race and ethnicity. From the very opening of the film, stereotypes and prejudices that are kept locked in our minds or else inserted into the kind of jokes that are only told in a dark whisper, are blatantly exposed.
It is one thing to simply reject certain stereotypes, but it is an altogether different, braver and more honest thing to admit their existence. Unlike many other films and forms of artwork that focus on pointing out the fallacies in common stereotypes, Crash accepts that many stereotypes are not groundless. The two dangerous looking black men whom we meet in the beginning of the movie really do pull out guns and rob a car, and the rich white couple that is instantly pegged as being snobby and racist, really does live up to our cynical expectations. Although many of the film's stories also attempt to show how misleading a stereotype can be, its most powerful and moving moments were those that explained the mind set of the people who fit so neatly into our society's clichÃ©s. The movie attempts to answer questions such as "How did we become this way?" and most importantly "What can we do to change?" Thought-provoking, heart-twisting messages aside, Crash also succeeds in keeping the audience thoroughly entertained. It is the kind of film that is best watched with a large audience because the chorus of gasps and shrieks that accompany many a scene provide a very intense experience. Although the characters are not entirely fleshed-out, since we keep jumping from story to story, we eventually (if not instantly) empathize with all of them, and experience each violently powerful emotion. The only major flaw that Haggis's film is at times guilty of is having monologues that sound a bit too much like soliloquies and dialogue that sounds too much like the morals that come at the end of a fable. Though most of the dialogue had a very realistic tone, and each character was a distinct individual, there were some points in the movie in which the character's voices became muffled by the voice of the author. Haggis was able to perfectly show rather than tell the moral of his story, and yet he chose to tell it explicitly some more even after we knew exactly what he was saying. Nonetheless, this slight break from authenticity by no means destroyed the overall strength of Crash. Perhaps it was worth it to sacrifice a purely realistic tone for a hard-hitting film that left a lasting impression on its audience.
It is interesting to note that the audience, just as the cast of the movie, was extremely diverse, but the reactions of the audience members were very similar. Each one of us was able to relate to the story on some level, and sitting side by side, realizing that we were all feeling very close to the same thing, was yet another deeply stirring aspect of the entire experience. For all of the reasons mentioned above, I recommend that you see this movie. For the reason mentioned here last, I urge you to go see Crash while it is still playing in theaters.