From the Vault: Crash

For all of its powerful moments, it's what lies below the surface of the film that makes it so troubling.

Starring: Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Frasier, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Ryan Phillipe, and Terrance Howard
Written by: Paul Haggis
Directed by: Paul Haggis

While not a new film by any means, this is a film that's still being talked about today, as many have heralded it as being an evocative look at living not only in a big city, but the general tensions faced in everyone's lives at one point or another. While this for the most part is true, the film uses a number of clichéd tactics that make the film in itself a bit stereotypical of the many Hollywood films in the past that have attempted to bring insight into the world of race relations. Before exploring that aspect of the film however, it has to be said that as a drama, this film simply works. Don Cheadle and Terrence Howard in particular give masterful acting performances, and while Ludacris was simply being natural in his role as Anthony, he still had a surprising screen presence. The cinematography was outstanding and the storylines surrounding Daniel (Michael Peña), the locksmith, as well as Graham (Don Cheadle) were incredibly powerful. The faults starting coming as it seemed that for the sake of narrative economy we just had to take Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) for being an exceptionally well off and consequently a raging racist, and it's from here that the movie begins to fall apart.
While it's understandable that for the sake of keeping a movie at a reasonable length one must make shortcuts to be able to tell a complete story without leaving holes, there must be certain aspects of characters that have to be linear. However, in the case of a film that deals with prejudices, how are we to see or understand anything within these characters if there's no explanation of the reasoning for their racist intentions within this film? That's not to say that nothing within this film could ever actually happen, and unfortunately essentially everything within this movie has happened within some point or another. However, the part that troubles me the most is that the film never provokes any thought more than "oh wow, that was racist."
Digging even deeper, another issue within the film was its use of stereotypical characters. You have the intellectual black men, that come off as being more along the lines of Uncle Toms that simply go the "safe" route no matter what, meanwhile the savviest of all the black characters was Ludacris and his partner, and both of them turned out to be criminals. What is that exactly saying about the make-up of African-Americans? Furthermore, the cliché racist cop, played by Matt Dillon, is supposedly racist only because, according to him, he saw what his grandfather did for blacks and how life has repaid him since, and as such he is a case of a person who is in a way seeking vengeance. Whether or not this is actually true or if he's just in denial about his own problems is clearly open to interpretation, and while it appears that he might've taken a turn for the better at the end, there's still no further proof of it one way or another. The most problematic is the aforementioned Jean Cabot, who appears to be racist just for the sake of being racist, and even if one was to argue that her husband (Brendan Fraiser) was having an affair with his secretary, she was so insecure about being around other races from the beginning that even that doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation.
With all of this in mind, while I'm certainly not trying to allude in any way that this is in fact an inherently racist film, I believe that--maybe due to the staggering number of individual stories at hand-- the films weakness in this area essentially undermines all that was good about it. It's really the type of film where while you're watching it you'll find yourself enjoying it and then afterwards you begin to find the darkness that lies within it. When watching one of Spike Lee's acclaimed movies for example, despite the faults that lay within each of his respective movies, there’s still an understanding for a necessity of change. In Crash, on the other hand, racism is almost used as anecdote (think to the car Crash scenes in the beginning and end of the movie, and the "jokes" thrown throughout).
Perhaps the movie really is just meant to be a gloomy outlook on human nature, and nothing more than that. However, given the painstaking process that is necessary in making film, it's hard to say that there couldn't be a more deliberate underlying tone within this film, and that's the part that deeply troubled me. As such, for a dramatic film, this was worth all of the recognition it received. However, as a political and social film, I do believe that Mr. Haggis should probably leave it up to others to explain how the racist mentality works.
★★★