Crash is a movie that depicts the interactions between - to put it in the style of the movie - chinks, honks, niggers, Arabs and Latinos in an unabashed, unapologetic manner. The city of LA is apparently the perfect setting for a movie, which more than anything, not only ends up somehow justifying the paranoia that leads to racism, but also makes you sympathizes with the basic human fears and prejudices that promote racism. A pretty disturbing movie of interactive forces, with witty dialogues, powerful moments, and melodramatic soap-opera style directing, but a seriously skewed purpose. Like the previous Oscar winning flick, Million Dollar Baby, this movie too leaves a bad feeling in the gut that makes you wonder why the people who made the movie are not in an asylum.
The storytelling is masterful, and the acting by the star studded cast (Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, don cheadle etc) is superb, although Sandra Bullock is unconvincing in her role, the only character in the entire film who does not manage to get any sympathy from the audience.
The Iranian store owner and the Hispanic locksmith stand out, the Iranian guy does not understand the Hispanic's advice, which leads to his store getting trashed, and this culminates to the most powerful sequence of the entire movie. In crash, there is a surprise at every turn.
The sad part is that, the story uses stereotypes that it hopes to dissolve. There is a thin line between depicting what you think is a realistic portrayal of racism, and what is made up just to drive home the point. The story, I suppose crosses this line, with the coincidences and ironies seeming extremely contrived. There are many interesting sequences, where the prejudices of the audience itself is brought out - you get suspicious of the motives of the chars, question their rationales, and make judgments about who is good and who is bad... for example there is a good white cop giving a lift to a black guy (cop does not know the black guy is a carjacker). The black guy starts laughing after seeing a statuette on the dashboard of the cop's car. The cop thinks the black guy is laughing at him. They have an argument, which leads to the black guy saying "do you know what I have in my back pocket?" and he reaches out to get it, the camera is outside the car and they show a gunshot inside. You assume that the black guy shot the cop, but its the cop's prejudices and need for safety that makes him shoot the black guy. Only then do you realize that the black guy is carrying a similar statue.
The movie cleverly manipulates the audience into believing they were racist too, but this is a carefully planned trick of screenplay, which brings out false racist emotions in the audience. According to me at least, this is a cheap trick to pull.
Guess it deserved the Oscars though, because the movie did exactly what it believed in.
the website has a cool "experience the film" feature, click here
2 comments:
yes MJ... the film did exactly what it believed in. and paul haggis thoroughly deserved the oscar for best picture. i saw the movie too. i agree, maybe they resorted to desperate means to explain their point, which was indeed a strong one; but saying that - with th screenplay trick they manipulated th audience?? not justified! the finer details were brilliantly dealt with in th film, and the background score by mark isham was exceptional too... and th crux of d flick was th parallel stories colliding with such flawlessness. gr8 film...
wonder whether u've decided to scrutinize all that u witness.. eh?
neways,blog on - chintz.
ya ya sure sure why not
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