Near Miss
Crash overcomes a weak first act
After five minutes of Crash, the movie seemed destined to live up to its name. It would be a wreck alright, a fiery implosion caused by the hammering repetition of clichés as written by some white freshman film student who interned at the NAACP or the ADL and noticed with shock that some people are victims of racism.
Detective Graham [Don Cheadle] begins with an overwrought soliloquy about how Angelinos are so segregated in their cars that they get in wrecks to initiate human contact. The moment feels forced, the theory unlikely [Our film student seems to be minoring in psychology as well]. Soon after, Graham mocks his girlfriend's Latina heritage as a bunch of people parking cars on their lawns.
The first twenty minutes are mind-numbing. By the time Sergeant Ryan [Matt Dillon] squares off with an insurance agent named Shaniqua [a sophomorically stereotypical name for a black women] the film is on autopilot. Paul Haggis seems content to depict racism without trying to understand it. One by one the multi-racial cast trots out to spew some righteous and ignorant vitriol, then disappear. Muslims hate African-Americans hate Latinos hate Asians hate whites hate African-Americans hate whites, et cetera.
The high point of this cavalcade of intolerance comes in a scene between Anthony [Ludacris] and Peter [Larenz Tate]. The two walk out of a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Anthony complains about the bad service they received. He thinks the waitress treated them poorly "because we're black, and black people don't tip." Peter asks, "Well? Did you tip her?" Anthony replies, "I'm not going to reward that kind of behavior."
It's an extended scene with very few cuts and great acting by both Tate and Ludacris.
Anthony goes on to point out that if two white people were to walk through Watts or Compton the way they are walking through Beverly Hills, the white people would be scared out of their minds. But, Anthony says, white people wield vastly greater power than blacks. Why then, he wonders, aren't he and Peter just as scared, outnumbered as they are in Beverly Hills? "Because we have guns?" Peter asks.
The scene ends with Peter and Anthony stealing an Escalade. The dialogue is funny and the timing is on, but the observations are nothing we haven't heard before.
Not until all the prejudices and animosity of the characters have been fleshed out and Crash begins to work its way into the the lives of these people does the film begin to gain altitude.
His course set by the events of the first act, Haggis begins to examine how the politics of race mix with conditioned responses in some, with emasculation and social inequality in others, with ignorance and impotent fear in still others to breed hate. He then patiently demonstrates how these things feed on each other.
Affirmative action, for example, was nobly designed to combat hate discrimination, however here it seems to create more animosity than it alleviates. Is the issue race or class? Or education opportunities? Have we made the debate about blacks and whites when it should really be about rich and poor? Perhaps, but Haggis' message seems more general still.
Graham [Cheadle] is pressured into making a hero out of a crooked African American detective who was killed smuggling cocaine. The district attorney [Brendan Frazer] needs a black hero to lock up the minority vote. He needs loyal black men in visible positions of power to keep the minority vote. He wants Graham to help him with both. The DA dangles Graham's brother's criminal record as incentive to cooperate. In Crash, the weak are impotent and the powerful are self-serving. Gradually, Haggis begins to suggest that these concepts--black and white, rich and poor--are specific instances of a more universal struggle. Power over weakness. Domination.
Haggis' greatest insight is that no one formula for hate exists because there is no single source of domination. There is no cure-all for injustice because it comes in so many forms, and a failure to understand the nuances of race relations results in blanket solutions that only make things worse. Discrimination and reverse-discrimination do not create non-discrimination.
As such, Haggis cannot suggest a solution, but he does offer a direction. These lives jostle around, making contact with each other, often violently. In some cases, though understanding is reached. Certain characters [and not the ones you expect] come to see the humanity that underlies skin tone and perhaps, begin to work through some of the intolerance. The result is imperfect and idealistic, but Haggis' argument carries weight because he weaves it into a tapestry of experiences and voices that is as complex and rich as anything since Traffic.
Don Cheadle creates a memorable character, as do Matt Dillon and Thandy Newton, but the two most surprisingly powerful performances come from Terrence Howard and Ludacris. The scene they share [after Anthony looks to steal another Escalade] is acted with subtle power. Howard's character Cameron, his hair conked the way Malcom X did as a young man, has been struggling with his lost identity as both a black man and as protector of his family. Sensing Anthony might be lost down a similar path, Cameron's words are impassioned. Though it's never stated, Ludacris gives us the sense that Cameron--this stranger he's known for 20 minutes, whose car he is trying to steal--is as close to a roll model as Anthony has ever had.
Each set of relationships in Crash is emotionally rewarding and fashioned to make pinpoint statements about modern race struggles. It is gorgeously written, plotted and paced, gradually working from broad surface hatred to its deep and specific emotional and socio-economic underpinnings. The presentation is compelling.
Crash's ultimately forceful, shocking and balletic movement of discovery makes the initial conceit--the thing about the people of Los Angeles subconsciously causing car accidents--seem pointless and abstract next to the concrete bounty of the film's human voices.
In all, though, Crash is a daring, hopeful film and a towering achievement for a talented writer.
posted by Luke @ 1:37 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I'm glad you mentioned that it is a 'hopeful film', because I think where Haggis most excels here is in exhibiting growth in the characters. There are few, if any, instances where a character steps back and realizes, "Oh, my gosh, what I'm doing or believing is wrong. I'm going to change." There are no light switches suddenly flipped on in the characters' heads. Instead, we consistantly see the wheels slowly turning in the backs of their minds.
One of the points that I particularly enjoyed was the variability in the depth of the characters' rascism and the manner in which they acquired it. For some, it was an instance, for others, a slow and steady process. Nowhere is it really suggested that any of the characters are right or true in their perceptions. This is why the film is hopeful. Haggis demonstrates that, almost -- but not quite -- as easily as someone can embrace rascism, they can begin to let it go, though the catalyst for the 'healing' is almost always an shock (crash?) instead of a slow and steady process. Where the actors shine here, is reacting to these catalysts in an understandable manner while still conveying the thought-process I mentioned earlier. I think that suggests something about human nature, though I can't decide what.
If I had to point to something in the movie as a solution, it would be 'contact'. The more contact we have with others, the more we are forced to re-evaluate our pre-conceived notions about them. Trite? Mmm. Not quite. Haggis doesn't hide from the fact that some of that contact sets us down the darker path just as easily as it brings us back.
Another fine review, Luke. I wrote one myself, but my editor is in the process of looking it over.
My reaction to the beginning of the film was just the same as yours; during the first 20 minutes I felt like I was watching a take on racism with about as much depth as Peter Jackson's exploration of violence in Dead Alive.
Anyhow, I was pleased with Haggis' ability to get to the underlying power relationships that racism springs from, and the general ways people--when stressed or angry with a stranger--do themselves a great disservice by defaulting to the simplest ways to "read" people.
Also, I noticed an absence of mention to Ms. Top-Billing Bullock in your review. I thought her performance was the only cacophonous note in an otherwise compelling movie. It wasn't that her acting was extraordinarily flawed, but its mediocrity was highlighted and underscored by Cheadle's, Dillon's, and Pena's deft performances.
Yeah, I mentioned Bullock in an early draft, something about enjoying seeing guns put in her face or something, but I had to trim some stuff for length.
Sheffler: You're right about contact, which in this case can be called knowledge or understanding. It's a pretty simple point that's certainly been done to death--thinking of diversity and tolerance lessons I got as a fourth grader in the class with the only half-black kid in school--but the real depth here, as you suggest, isn't the observation so much as how he dramatizes the change.
Also, in the case of Ryan Phillipe's character, how any kind of theoretical or even heroic stand against outward racism does little to quell that thing in the back of your mind that says, "he's black, and dangerous." Racism is only sometimes a conscious phenomenon. Often, at it's most dangerous, we're not even aware of it.
That was a gutsy move that only added to the film's depth.
i guess everyone hated Cheadle's opening monologue. i remember thinking, "If the movie is going to be like this, I want my money back." But i liked everything afterwards, even the rest of the first twenty minutes.
So, can anyone think of a movie similar to Crash besides Do The Right Thing? Just curious.
-ben
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