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Crash
Paul Haggis’ Crash is the most important film about racism in America since Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). Like Lee’s picture, which was probably the most controversial American film in the past twenty years, it is not content to simply portray racism as an evil, glowering entity that inhabits only Southern white males with pillow cases draped over their heads, but rather as a natural, negative energy that is seemingly, inexplicably found within every human being—as natural to our flawed existence as white lies and guilty fascinations with The Jerry Springer Show, though with much severer, tragic consequences. Also like Do the Right Thing, Crash offers neither an explanation nor a solution for racism, but it is smart enough to realize that no rationalization will ever suffice or end the hatred. Thus, it simply shakes its head sadly at this crippling bug, offering clues that will allow us to see the bigotry in all of us without necessarily pointing accusing fingers. We’re all in this together, Crash says, because we’re all only as flawed as the next person. In fact, Crash is such a continuation of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing that I am willing to insist that you should not watch one without immediately watching the other. Haggis takes Lee’s ideas and expands upon them, moving out of a predominantly African American city block in New York City and relocating into the melting pot of Los Angeles, tapping into the struggles met not just in communication between black and whites, but also Hispanics, Asians, Middle Easterners etc. The conflict is also no longer between city-block, neighborhood regulars, but spans from police officers to government officials, from the laymen to the Hollywood personalities. We see slices of the lives of over a dozen people, seemingly selected at random, and we get the impression that this film could continue on forever if it continued to pick out more faces from the crowd of Los Angeles or, for that matter, anywhere else in America. Do the Right Thing correctly points out that racism is still alive and active in America today; Crash takes this notion and uses it as a springboard to reveal that bigotry is inescapable and, sadly, inherent. Yet both films ultimately conclude with a glimmer of hope in that despite our twisted natures, equally inherent goodness still fights within us, and will often prevail in, yes, doing the right thing. I refuse to give any and all plot developments and characters; I watched this movie cold, and so should you in order to best understand and appreciate the often unpredictable (and startlingly ironic) journeys that the characters take. Revealing that the film infiltrates all levels of society and people politics is probably giving away too much already. The poignant moments and twists in the plot all work as separate, very effective short films, but played together, they become absolute revelations. As one character (played by Don Cheadle, whose work in this and last year’s Hotel Rwanda and The Assassination of Richard Nixon convinces me that he is one of the best actors working in America today) puts it in the film’s opening scenes, “It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk. You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” When they crash, so do we—and I shall leave it at that. Instead, I want to dive a little more into the different cinematic approaches that Haggis takes compared to Spike Lee. In doing so, I will reveal exactly how the films complete one another. The storm of controversy that Do the Right Thing met is almost entirely contained in the third act, which remains the most relentless, intense depiction of a race-related riot that I have ever seen. The question that remains, and one that the film does not (and cannot) provide an answer for, is whether or not the riot is justified. What makes the answer to this question ambiguous is that for the first two acts, Lee carefully, skillfully provides an ongoing slice of life in the New York neighborhood, so that we have come to admire the characters who eventually take sides against one another and commit unspeakable acts of violence. We are horrified that these characters are suddenly driven to rage, destruction, and murder, but what surprises us is that Lee has built up the film in a way that we cannot blame anyone for what they have done. In the confusion and the anger, human nature’s most troubling instincts simply have kicked in. The tragedy and the irony are so staggering that all we can do is be stunned to silent contemplation. Crash begins with those human instincts, with the racist bigotry already in full swing in all of the characters. Our immediate inclination is to hate them, to be angry at them. But then, as Haggis continues to build on these characters, a quiet, subtle shift occurs that progressively makes these characters seem a little more rational, a little more human, and a whole lot like a mirror for ourselves. They’re suddenly not just racists. They’re heroic, they’re noble, and they are justified in their anger. And that’s the point: They are us. We cannot demonize racism without demonizing ourselves, since racism and prejudice is a trait only known to human beings. Spike Lee’s film works us up to the realization the racism that kills is the racism that infects us all. Paul Haggis’ Crash begins with the blind hatred at the end of Lee’s film and works down from it, ultimately reminding us that the tragedy of racism is not in the violence that follows it, but in the fact that none of us are invulnerable to such instinctual prejudice. Haggis’ cinematic touches have much to do with Crash’s success, and they also work as a contrast of Lee’s. Spike Lee was content to let us sit quietly in Do the Right Thing, to slowly get to know his characters and allow them to resonate. His camera followed them around casually and lazily, and the hip-hop soundtrack casts a hushed spell that allowed us to get into his groove. Crash barely has time for any such comforting groove. The camerawork is fast, almost manic. The music is stirring and fast-paced. The acting is much more energetic, and the characters talk quickly, hardly giving us time to fully register what they are saying until the scene is over. The different filmmaking devices here are a sign of a faster, high tech time, and I think this fact points to a fundamental difference between racism from Lee’s perspective, who is African American, and Haggis’, who is Caucasian. Do the Right Thing dealt primarily with a predominantly black neighborhood, and in such a community, racist issues are more apparent and on the surface, since the open wound of slavery and intolerance still resonates and has left long lasting consequences. From a Haggis’ white point of view, people are in such a hurry that they don’t realize their own, often suppressed racist attitudes leaking into their everyday lives. The hyperactive pace of Crash helps prove this point: In Do the Right Thing, characters try to kid themselves and prove that they are not racist. In Crash, no one slows down enough to realize that their racism is even an issue, and this it is indeed slowly suffocating them to death. Because of its blunt, harrowing look at racism, Crash is of course a controversial film—loved by those who recognize its sour truths, hated by those who find it too extreme. Such controversy is to be applauded: Any film about this topic that wasn’t controversial wouldn’t be doing its job. It is a chillingly penetrable film about a topic as impenetrable as the problem of evil itself. In a way, Haggis’ film also reminds me of last year’s Downfall, which put a human face on the Third Reich in the same way that Crash puts a human face on racism. That film was equally controversial and just as compelling: It dared to suggest that the only way that we can avoid the terrible sins committed by Hitler and his supporters is to consider Nazis not as one-dimensional demons but as the multi-layered humans that they were. There are times in Downfall when we almost pity Hitler, but that is how it should be: We are horrified that we could emotionally connect with such racist, murderous slime, and we consequently see the capacity to be swayed to commit great evil in ourselves. Crash makes a similar case: Racism and bigotry infiltrate our nature—they are present when we sleep, work, make love, and carry one another. To demonize prejudice makes us more susceptible to it, because we come to believe that we can overcome it. Yet prejudice cannot be overcome or ignored, Crash reveals. Instead, we must isolate it, learn from it, and grow away from it. The more tolerant we become, the more stagnant it grows. The paradox is in the fact that such tolerance only comes about when we are strained into it, usually through a violent act of bigotry that forces us to take it seriously. It’s a vicious, sad cycle—one that we are all a part of. Cast: Lions Gate Films presents
a film by Bull’s Eye Entertainment. Written and directed
by Paul Haggis. Rated R, for language, violence, and a sex scene.
Running time: 113 minutes. Original United States theatrical release
date: May 6, 2005. |
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