Writer-director Paul Haggis's Crash takes House of Sand and Fog's dramatic principle of the lose-lose situation and expands it to epic scale. The movie combines characters and incidents in a panoramic frieze of the various racial, ethnic, and national groups in Los Angeles and what they think of each other, and the news is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. (Religion, sexuality, and physical disabilities are not "represented," it is to be noted, but maybe it's just as well.) It isn't merely that people bear suspicion or ill-will towards other groups; when push comes to shove, which is all Crash shows, they can't keep their mouths shut, or their guns in their pockets. The possibility that people could be idealistically committed to what is now called "diversity," or that race and ethnicity could remain invisible to well-meaning people, especially in conflict, simply doesn't exist in the world of Crash.
Intemperateness is a general condition among the melting-pot population of Crash (to such an extent that an explanation out of science-fiction, an infusion into the earth's atmosphere of a toxic interplanetary gas, say, wouldn't have surprised me). And it comes out not just in traffic accidents or during the commission of crimes, but when people are trying to sell and procure what they want, i.e., typically when we're on our best behavior, even if insincerely. The intemperateness even comes out in intimate relationships — a black man resorts to epithets with his Hispanic girlfriend during a fight that starts when he takes a call from his mother during sex.
If you believe what Crash shows, there is no one in L.A., land of deals, who can negotiate his way out of conflict. Not even the white assistant to the D.A. who has orders to promote an African-American cop because the cop is African-American: he makes tactless and irrelevant racial comments during his pitch to the cop. In other words, the assistant manages to create ill-will in the very act of bestowing a benefit on a man of another race. There is, or was, exactly one idealist in town, a white cop, but the tensions of living in the city make him act like his festeringly racist patrol-car partner, whom he loathes, in about a year's time.
Well, at least Haggis's isn't a sentimental view of diversity, for once. And, notably, in Crash it isn't by any means whites alone who are bigoted. Everyone carries the taint. But if this view of friction-in-diversity isn't a sentimental view neither is it complete: it's the flip side of the sentimental view and only the flip side. This singleness-of-purpose undermines the movie's epic pretensions. In Crash Haggis doesn't give us the whole picture but one that will lead to the most "dramatic" exchanges of a certain kind. This means, then, that the movie can't function as an epic of the interracial and interethnic attitudes of L.A.'s mixed population because it can't account for someone like Haggis himself, a person who is ethically concerned about those attitudes. From Crash you get the impression that there's no one in L.A. decent enough to learn from Haggis's string of interlocking cautionary lessons.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Triniman
Thanks for giving away House of Sand and Fog without a spoiler alert.
2 - Alan Dale
Sorry. But I think that movies that are 2 years old are mostly fair game as far as spoilers go. It's not like a big surprise in the movie--it starts at the end and then flashes back.
3 - Jamal Sledge
Another amazing review, Alan. I actually enjoyed this review more than your critique on "The Milky Way" which was one of your best, in my opinion. I remembered reading a review from Armond White about Crash (which he panned by the way) and he called it Neil LaBute-lite. Maybe one day I can articulate myself and express why I dislike a certain movie like you. Sigh. One can dream, can't they? Great job, as usual
Jamal Sledge
4 - Alan Dale
Hey Jamal,
Thanks for the comment, and for spurring me to write about Crash in the first place. I agree with Armond White about David Denby--when DD calls a movie a masterpiece it generally turns out to be something I can barely sit through. Otherwise, although White is so angry he isn't always clear, I was interested to see that he also mentioned House of Sand and Fog. Thanks, finally, for the high expectations--they make me work harder.
5 - Scott Butki
I loved Crash. Saw it tonite and was blown away. I'll think about the points you make about it.
6 - Alan Dale
Can't reasonably ask for more than that--that you think about what I wrote. Thanks for writing.
7 - ClubhouseCancer
You hit on the heart of it, Mr. Dale.
My impression: Haggis set up all these plots using some very audacious and skilled filmmaking, and the surprises of the film's first half-hour are, indeed, thrilling.
I thought there was no chance that Haggis could keep that kind of excitement going for two hours (especially if he's gonna cram in a lot of self-righteousness about race in the process), and that turns out to be the truth.
But I never would have thought the failure so complete. These stories are wrapped up in as obvious and pandering a fashion as an episode of Fat Albert. AD is so right about the movie just devolving into a plot-driven exercise in who's gonna live or die.
It can't really present a coherent view of race relations because it doesn't have a coherent view. And it also doesn't present a thrillingly incoherent, wild view either, because the film is so beholden to its intended message that no individual plot can be allowed to deviate.
Thanks, Mr. Dale.
8 - Alan Dale
Thanks for your comment. I think your last paragraph sums up the source of the movie's incoherence nicely. Haggis's work isn't coherent, but it does grab people viscerally and based on many people's responses to Crash, and to Million Dollar Baby, which Haggis wrote, being grabbed that way is what a lot of people want from movies. This mystifies me, but then I'm not any kind of typical moviegoer.
9 - ClubhouseCancer
Me neither, but I'll admit I was grabbed, which was something. I think that's what made the simplemindedness of the plots' resolutions so dismaying.
10 - tommyd
The impression that I got from watching the film Crash is that big fat happy multiculturalism is a big fat Utopian fantasy. Good movie. About time a Hollywood movie shows some reak truth. Still though, the white characters never really got their chance at redeeming their severely flawed characters by the end of the film like the black characters did.
Anyway, it's all good.
11 - Scott Butki
Still though, the white characters never really got their chance at redeeming their severely flawed characters by the end of the film like the black characters did.
I don't know about that - Dillon's character redeemed himself, as did Sandra Bullock's... which character are you talking about that didn't get the chance?
12 - Scott Butki
Oh and my sister's question of the movie - what was the symbolism/meaning of the snow in LA?
13 - Alan Dale
Don't know if Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock were redeemed. When Dillon saves Thandie Newton from the car wreck I thought the point was simply to show contradictions within his racism--when it came to the line of duty he was a "hero" regardless of the race of the person he was saving. It struck me as ironic. And when Bullock hugs her housekeeper, it's insulting--she's saying to the woman, in essence, "My life is so fucked up that you're my best friend." Of course, the other characters' redemptions aren't so epic, either. Ludacris, for instance, realizes that he should free the slaves in the van rather than sell them. I don't experience much uplift when a contemporary American characater of any race merely rises to a minimal standard of human decency. (He didn't, for instance, make amends to the couple he'd robbed.)
14 - Alan Dale
The snow struck me as ironic, too. It's Christmas in L.A.--where's the peace on earth and good will toward men that's supposed to go along with the snow?
15 - tommyd
Alan Dale, well stated, and that's exactly how I saw it concerning the white characters played brilliantly by Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock. Although they might've realized their own misery, they didn't have and on screen catharsis per se. Ryan Phillipe's character never had a redeeming moment, and is portrayed as a killer as well as a poor police officer who was derelict in his duty.
Even the clean cut softie black guy TV director character had his "stand up" defining moment. He helps out a thug car jacker black man and this is portrayed as heroic, but Shaniqua can't help out Matt Dillon's father because Matt's a little hot-headed.
BUT, I didn't expect anything different from a Hollywood film. I didn't expect them to stray from the Political Agenda that only Whites are severely racist while blacks and browns and orientals and gays et al are all just poor little victims....of course, except for brown people from the Middle East.....like the Persian storeowner who was so stereotypically portrayed.
White people and Arabs: The only politically correct whipping boys of the Hollywood controllers.
16 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. There is a strong sense of victimhood in Haggis's conception--his entire sense of drama seems keyed to it. I think, however, that his pessimism about "diversity" is more encompassing than you say. Both Don Cheadle and the Chinese woman in the car wreck make anti-Hispanic comments, and isn't it the Chinese couple's van that's being used for human trafficking? (I didn't notice any gays in the movie at all, though I may have missed something.) I think Haggis would agree with you that "happy multiculturalism" is a fantasy, but I think that the rigged series of encounters he gives us is not a convincing way to demonstrate that point, if it is true, which I doubt. There's got to be something in the middle between Crash and its opposite.
17 - Joanie
I had wanted to see Crash...up until I saw the cast on Oprah. The fact that Terrence Howard seemed to be creating a history as the show went along really bothered me.
I'm still willing to give the movie a go, but only if I can watch it alone and throw things at the TV screen if needed.
18 - Joanie
I guess I should have noted that I have enjoyed Howard in other movies (Ray, Mr. Holland's Opus, Lackawanna Blues, and even....God forbid, Big Mama's House.) I guess there's still a part of me that continues to hold Biker Boyz against him. Well, that and his appearance on Oprah to promote Crash. Sorry. He's off my list of "must see" actors.
19 - Scott Butki
I'm not familiar with Howard enough to go or skip a movie based on his participation. I don't understand what you're saying about Oprah and what he did on that show.
let me ask this - the writer of Crash also wrote Million Dollar Baby? Did those who disliked Crash also dislike that movie for its attempt to address
difficult topics?
20 - Scott Butki
let me ask this - the writer of Crash also wrote Million Dollar Baby? Did those who disliked Crash also dislike that movie for its attempt to address
difficult topics?
21 - Alan Dale
Hey Scott,
Thanks for the comment, but it begs the question of whether Million Dollar Baby did, in fact, "address" difficult topics. M$B isn't an essay, it's a story, and I would say if anything it exploits, rather than addresses, the difficult topic of euthanasia. And I didn't dislike Crash because it addressed a difficult topic, but because of the way it addressed it. Other people may disagree.
22 - Scott Butki
"didn't dislike" = likes?
23 - Alan Dale
No: the reason I disliked Crash was not because it addressed a difficult topic, but because of the way it addressed a difficult topic. My mom would dislike it simply because it addresses a difficult topic, in fact, she'd avoid it for that reason, but not me.
24 - Scott Butki
Ok. Thanks for explaining. I can see your point.
25 - Eileene
Just read this review. I think this quote:
"From Crash you get the impression that there's no one in L.A. decent enough to learn from Haggis's string of interlocking cautionary lessons."
is one of the best I've read or heard about the movie. 'Crash' is kind of a paradox. A movie that wants to teach us something while at the same time seeming to deny us the ability to learn it. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was I disliked about the movie (beyond what many have been pointing out about it being contrived and over-the-top), but much of this review, and in particular the quote above, hits the nail on the head for me. Thanks.