Crash

When I saw Crash last spring, I wrote a review of what I thought was one of the more interesting movies I'd seen in a while. When Crash won Best Picture on Sunday, I thought that review would be a good column this week. So, here it is:

On a drizzly Sunday afternoon, Meggan and I hiked across the Boston Common to catch a matinee showing of Paul Haggis’s (“Million-Dollar Baby”) latest film, “Crash.” The cinema was our preferred antidote to stressful weeks at work (hers, not mine) and uncooperative weekend weather (30 degrees in May?!). If what we sought was a pleasant escape, however, our choice of “Crash” was disastrous. Of all the things that this movie is - and there is much good about it - pleasant is not one of them.

After the film, Meggan turned to me. “I didn’t think I could have been any more depressed. But,” she sighed, “I was wrong.”

Having enjoyed the movie, I felt the need to defend it, but the more I thought about the movie, the less certain I became that I liked it. And maybe that was the point.

Without spoiling anything, “Crash” depicts a 36-hour period when the lives of a dozen Angelinos of varying race and ethnicity crash into one another. There is not one single crash, but the many little crashes of daily life. However, underlying each crash is a single theme - stereotypes, bigotry, and cultural misunderstanding. Some crashes end tragically, while others offer hope, but each provides a scathing critique of racism in Los Angeles. Watching racism play itself out should not be pleasant. And it wasn’t.

As a film, it was uneven. Haggis was very effective depicting how quickly events can escalate based on misconceptions fueled by cultural differences, and there were several incredibly dramatic, well-crafted, and anxious scenes where Haggis was at his best in this, his directorial debut. But there were many moments when characters speechified. Barely five minutes passed between diatribes on race or ethnicity and such speeches came out of characters mouths seemingly out of nowhere. On their own, the speeches were interesting, but they were not believable dialogue.

To me, the film was Haggis’s attempt at showing the ramifications of prejudices. “Look what happens when we make decisions based on stereotypes,” the movie says. “It sucks, doesn’t it?” But Meggan took an entirely different message, and some end-of-weekend blues, with her: “We all hate each other and that’s that.”

Perhaps Haggis was too convincing, providing a glimpse of this problem without even the suggestion of a solution. This, however, seems to be the necessary first step that Haggis is urging us to take: until a problem is glimpsed and acknowledged, there will certainly be no solution. This is where the film succeeds - it forces viewers to acknowledge the problem, thus sparking discussion (hopefully) that could lead to a solution. That we remain stalled at this first step of recovery - acknowledgment - is more a failure of ourselves than a problem with the movie.

The problem with “Crash,” though, is that it reeks of the very problem - stereotyping - that is seeks to confront. We meet a stereotypical image-conscious, opportunistic district attorney and his angry, bigoted wife. We see a race-obsessed young black male with corn rows who is a carjacker, a racist LA cop, and a loud, overweight black woman. Although there are attempts to humanize all the characters, the reliance on stereotyped characters combined with their inability to talk about anything but racism, affirmative action, or discrimination undermines the film and reinforces the very stereotypes it critiques.

That being said, there is plenty to chew on after “Crash,” an accomplishment in itself and perhaps Haggis’s single goal. The dialogue the movie seeks to create, perhaps, is the solution Haggis is offering. There are no good characters or bad characters, but just characters attempting to exist in a city filled with many types of people who often misunderstand and even hate each other. We see how good intentions mean little. Simply doing the right thing does not make one immune from succumbing to despicable acts in a racist society. Likewise, being racist does not prevent one from being a good son or a hero. By unfolding these scenarios in such detail, Haggis forces us to evaluate the character based not only upon their unreasonable biases, but also on their reasonable fears and the very real pressures of their families or careers. Offering these glimpses of life in another’s shoes, the movie begins a conversation that it cannot, and does not attempt to, complete. Does that make it a bad movie? Not at all. Just unpleasant and not the right pick on a lazy Sunday afternoon.