CRASH

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  • crap

    what a great movie!
    rented it last night and very much impressed

    http://www.apple.com/trailers/li…

  • Mimio0

    It was like a short Magnolia knock-off.

  • Rand0

    an email I received as part of an ongoing srgyument about the merits of Crash:

    "The reason that I find Crash to be an offensively bad piece of filmmaking is not because I object to movies that are concerned with social issues, or because I feel that any of the problems mentioned above are too "PC" to allow for a riveting work of art. In fact, the opposite is true: I believe that the best way to address difficult, complex problems such as prejudice and violence is through art, a mode of expression which is itself difficult and complex. And that is precisely why I have such contempt for Crash, despite its good intentions and high ambitions; in my opinion, it fails to represent racism with the level of intelligence and artistry that the issue deserves. Instead, beneath a guise of frank exposition and heartfelt emotion, it resorts to cheap melodrama, sentimentality, and the same shallow way of thinking that it claims to stand against.

    In my view, Crash suffers from Paul Haggis' inability to trust his audience with any hint of nuance or subtlety. Every frame, every scrap of dialogue, and every prop that the characters grasp and fondle, betray Haggis' anxiety that we won't "get it." Perhaps the most salient expression of this anxiety is the absurd hairstyle worn by the TV producer character. In real life, Terrence Howard has curly (or "kinky") hair. In Crash, however, he sports a chemically straightened (or "conked") coiffure, a style memorably depicted in *The Autobiography of Malcom X* as a symbol of black self-hatred. So, in case it isn't blatantly obvious that this character is a flaming Tragic Mulatto, Haggis provides us with a signpost: HI. I AM A LIGHT-SKINNED, SELF-HATING BLACK MAN WHO WANTS TO "PASS." THEREFORE, I DO MY HAIR IN A STYLE THAT HAS BEEN OBSOLETE SINCE THE LATE 1960s. Because clothes are an important part of Crash's thesis about the relationship between appearance and reality, or between surface and depth, the accuracy of characters' costumes is essential. There's no point in making a film about the limitations of stereotypes if you can't get the stereotypes right in the first place. To use this particular hairdo as a symbol of "racial identity crisis" is about as absurd as making Ludacris' character eat watermelon and tap-dance to signify his "blackness," or to have the Latino locksmith wear a sombrero and carry maracas. Obviously, film is a collaborative effort, and I'm sure that Haggis didn't personally style every strand of hair on each actor's head. It's interesting, though, that he allowed his costume designer to commit such an oversight in regards to this particular character when someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to design the other characters' costumes accurately-- and unless the tv producer's wardrobe was modeled after The Artist Formally Known as Prince, or the pimp that Howard played in Hustle and Flow, there's nothing remotely accurate about the use of conk here. Why, you ask, is this important? Why, Willa, for the love of CHRIST, should I care? Well, here's why: as poor as a job as mass media does of talking about race relations, it has done an even poorer job of representing what it means to be biracial in America. Because of the recent political gains made by minorities, it is no longer acceptable to portray black people as watermelon-munching pickaninnies, or to have Asian characters played by white people in "yellowface." Thus, popular media has had to shed these antiquated cultural archetypes and learn more subtle ways of being racist. But because biracial people have no coherent political identity, the representation of mixed folk (when they are represented at all) has scarcely changed since the early 20th century. By drawing on these images without asking if they even vaguely resemble reality, Crash succumbs to the same careless attitude that it wants so desperately to transcend.

    If this detail were the only objectionable moment in Crash, I probably wouldn't give a fuck. However, it seems to me that this particular problem reflects the film's larger flaws. Sadly, the greatest evidence of Crash's shortcomings lies in the thing we are meant to care most about: the characters. Instead of actual humans, we are given figures who exist only to represent a collection of different ideological standpoints. That would be fine, were it not for the fact that these figures express their beliefs about the world in the most banal and obvious way possible: by continually reciting them to other characters, often at the top of their lungs. The most subtle piece of dialogue occurs when someone from the DA's office says to Don Cheadle "What is it with you black people?" In this sense, Haggis' characters are less like people than a collection of talking points. You argue that the film is "risky" because it presents a series of stereotypes and then refutes them by carefully humanizing each character. While it's true that most of the characters come to show both good and bad qualities, I'm not convinced that the film ultimately succeeds in humanizing them. Is revealing someone as a collection of binary extremes ("nice" on one end, "nasty" on the other) the same as revealing their essential humanity? I'm not so sure. I'd like to think that humanity is more complicated than that, but maybe I'm asking too much. Here I'll borrow a line from AO Scott's review that sums up a lot of my frustration: "Mr. Haggis is eager to show the complexities of his many characters, which means that each one will show exactly two sides." You're right to say that many of the stories are surprisingly riveting, but I feel that this is due to the perilous situations in which the characters find themselves rather than the inherent depth of those characters. It seems to me that Crash manipulates us into caring about the fate of its characters through the time-tested dramatic impetus of violence: the steady rhythm of guns being waved in faces, bodies falling down stairs, and shrieking women being pulled from the flaming wreckage of cars is the only pulse that this film has. To me, Crash's poverty of imagination fully reveals itself when the angelic, utterly adorable Latina girl is shot. Haggis is too sentimental about little girls to have anything bad happen to this dimpled, bright-eyed kid, but he's not above reducing children to symbols for the sake of plot. Exploiting our collective Jean Benet Ramsey anxiety to keep the story moving seems like a particularly lazy form of writing, not unlike how Birth of a Nation exploits the image of Willowy White Woman Threatened by Over-Sexed Negro in order to further its ideological aims.

    For me, these elements reveal something troubling about the way that Crash understands prejudice. The underlying assumption is either that a) in reality, racism is always expressed blatantly, or that b) the only way to make movie-goers care about racism is to portray it as a series of dramatized interactions-- an extrinsic rather than intrinsic form of evil. I can't decide which is worse, but both strike me as irresponsible and, well, BORING AS FUCK. Yes, Crash has good intentions, but I cannot excuse a film that purports to be about the harsh realities of racial prejudice while relying upon a series of simplistic fantasies about how prejudice operates. You seem willing to excuse bad writing simply because it's not AS bad as most of the insufferable tripe that the Hollywood system cooks up year after year. This strikes me as an oddly cynical view, given the optimistic tone in which you discuss Crash's virtues. Being better than the majority of horrific mediocrities that make their sad journey through our megaplexes is hardly a cause for celebration, and I think that critics' generally positive reviews of Crash say more about the sorry state of American cinema (and our collective discussion of racism) than it does about the merits of this film. Nor can I fully accept the argument that Crash is successful because it gets people to talk about big issues. The fact that it declares its themes so boldly seems to have a polarizing effect on the viewing public-- people who already want to talk about racism and social justice go to see it and congratulate themselves for being open-minded, whereas people who think racism is a word invented by the Liberal Elite (or who are racist themselves) don't. Let's return to Birth of a Nation for a minute. If Crash were about the heroism of the KKK, but was the same film in terms of form and structure -- using the same actors, camera angles, plot devices-- would you still defend it? If not, do you think that people who find Crash's vision of race as offensive and false as we find Birth of a Nation's -- and such people do exist-- would be willing to accept Crash's ideology because of the power of its art? My guess would be no.

    For these reasons, I think of Crash as the cinematic equivalent of those state-sponsored anti-graffiti murals: a flat, aesthetically dull work that fails to transform its social intent into art, but fills people who share its social concerns with a feeling of comfort. For that, I give it three thumbs down. I would rather see a million spray-painted tags in dripping letters. At least they're honest."

  • mg330

    Magnolia is one of my favorite movies ever. And I know not a single person that liked it.

  • bradpitt0

    'crash' was a good movie.

  • Mimio0

    Really? Lots of peope like Magnolia...lots of people hate it too.

  • bradpitt0

    Magnolia is a great movie.

    *RESPECT THE COOCKKK!!!

  • Bitlounge0

    And there's the other Crash.
    http://www.imagesjournal.com/iss…

  • Meeklo0

    Magnolia is one of my favorite movies ever. And I know not a single person that liked it.
    mg33
    (Dec 20 05, 08:42)

    WOW!
    I have never met anyone that didn't liked it..

    what a... hmmm (what is the opposite of coincidence?? :) )

  • crap0

    but what do YOU think, Rand?

  • emokid0

    i like crash a lot. i did have some problems with it mainly because all the characters were quite stereotyped. i thoroughly enjoyed the movie nonetheless.

    the email rand received appears to be written by a frustrated english grad student trying to avoid working on his/her thesis.

    magnolia was fantastic.

  • Crouwel0

    i like magnolia. bought it as a present for someone recently as well..

  • Spix0

    indeed...it was good.

  • mrdobolina0

    just saw a ripper of it, good movie...

    now Im going to find this magnolia flick. thanks bastids.

  • winter0

    Magnolia was a very disturbing movie for me. I think it is a great movie, but I'd skip it if I could foretell it. I'm not sure any art is entitled to mess with our feelings in such a blunt way. We are all fragile, and I'm not sure we need disruption when we go to the cinema, especially when it doesn't help you. Life is enough for that.

  • tconn0

    Overrated.

  • jpolk0

    crash is one of the only movies i've ever walked out of.

    i think it's hilarious that people praise such an awful film just because it's supposed to be socially conscious.

  • Point50

    Magnolia = good movie

    Crash = predicatable, spoon fed

  • uberdesigner0

    is this the one where james spader fucks one of the arquettes leg scar? maybe I'm thinking of an episode of friends

  • winter0

    i guess we need another sort of cinema.

    that multi-level character thing in a plot works much better in a book. in reading.

    I personally like that way of story-telling but i also think that movies have a field for a non-plot image thing inside the the plot thing.

  • Jnr_Madison0

    That movie put my gf on such a downer.

    Funny thing was that I thought I was going to see the one where they fuck over car crashes. I kept thinking this film must get weird quick for that shit too happen, lol.