CRASH

3 Stars - Challenging

Paul Haggis’ film “Crash” is a graphic portrayal of the racist failures of multicultural life in Los Angeles.  It is also a penetrating presentation of our attempt to find redemption in the face of such failure.  However, it is redemption without spirituality and failure without grace.

Like the complexity of multicultural Los Angeles, “Crash” is a film which joins the lives of a diversity of frustrated and angry people.  Connected only by geography and time, the characters in this film are interlaced in ways that cause them to inflict intense pain on one another.  But it is not just the usual pain of the unfortunate experiences of life, it is a pain laced with the acid of racial and social stereotypes.

The central recipient of this pain is Detective Graham (Don Cheadle) whose observation in the opening scene of the film describes both the theme and the struggle.  He is sitting on the freeway having been rear-ended in an accident and he says, “It’s the sense of touch.  In any real city you walk, you know, you brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you.  We’re always behind this metal and glass. It’s the sense of touch.  I think we miss that sense of touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”

Though his partner Ria (Jennifer Esposito) ridicules his observation, the film chronicles thirty-six hours of eighteen lives that prove his thesis.  Connecting their lives into a visual quilt, we see the pattern emerge in which their loneliness and spiritual isolation is obvious.  From an angry Brentwood housewife who cannot identify why she is angry and attacks a hardworking Mexican locksmith, to a frustrated LAPD sergeant who cannot get his HMO to correctly care for his debilitated father and therefore acts out his frustration by harassing an African-American couple and fondling the wife, to a Persian shop-owner whose fears drive him to buy a gun only to lose his store to vandals and so takes inadvertent vengeance on a young girl, the film demonstrates that our pain is passed one to another in interlocking distress.

But the film also demonstrates the other side of the human experience: the desire to redeem ourselves and find hope in the darkest of situations.  From the courageous behavior of the same LAPD officer, to the protective love of two daughters in two families, to the heroic intervention of a police partner, the desire to make life better for ourselves and others is also reflective of our multifaceted lives.

Religious language often speaks of touch.  From the “touch of God” to the greeting of one another with a “holy embrace,” spiritual experiences create a redemptive solution to the isolated, frustrated and angry situations of our lives.  But when religious experience and spiritual connection is conspicuously removed from our lives, then the soul longs for some type of touch.  Sadly, if we accept the message of this film all we are capable of achieving on our own is the crashing of our lives together.  

 

 

Discussion:                                   

1.       The observation is made that if we are “Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other.”  Do you agree with this?  Is it inevitable that we collide, or is colliding a result of the type of lives we are living? 

 

2.       The removal of all spirituality from eighteen Los Angeles residents representing a diversity of people including Mexican, Persian, African-American, wealthy, poor, police and thieves is highly unlikely.  Do you believe that faith was removed to show what our lives would be like if we had no spiritual power helping us to love one another, or do you believe its absence is how the filmmakers experience the world?

 

3.       The attempt by Sergeant Ryan (Matt Dillon) to redeem his behavior by saving the woman he fondled from dying is a redemptive moment.  Do you believe he was different after this experience?  Why or why not?

 

4.       When Sergeant Ryan’s partner Officer Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) decides to no longer work with Ryan because of his abuse of power with the African-American couple, he then covers up his own more heinous sin.  What do you believe happened to his soul?  What would you have done in his situation?

 

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Cinema In Focus is a social and spiritual movie commentary.  Hal Conklin is former mayor of Santa Barbara and Denny Wayman is pastor of the Free Methodist Church. For more reviews: http://www.cinemainfocus.com.