“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? 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.” (Don Cheadle, Crash – 2004)
The year leading up to The 78th Academy Awards was an exciting one. George Clooney directed the brilliant Red Scare drama Good Night, and Good Luck and Spielberg had tackled another political topic in his Israeli assassination thriller, Munich. But nothing generated more discussion than Ang Lee’s controversial, much-heralded gay cowboy romance, Brokeback Mountain. I say “gay cowboy romance” because they were the three descriptors the film was incapable of escaping on the marketing campaign trail. I wasn’t convinced that the Academy was progressive enough at the time to break the LGBT glass ceiling (that would be Moonlight). I placed a bet on the eve of the ceremony that despite Brokeback Mountain‘s much-deserved praise, its acknowledgment by the Academy was the highest honor it would receive and that Paul Haggis’ L.A.-based race drama Crash would take home the gold. It was an unpopular opinion then and it is an even more unpopular one now. However, my intuition served me well. Like the Academy, I saw something novel in the film. It was one of the first of its kind to confront the issue of racism in a straight-forward, multi-dimensional fashion. Now, over ten years later the film has only become more relevant in a post-2016 election world.
The film follows the lives of two L.A. police detectives, two delinquent car-jackers, a wealthy housewife and her D.A. husband, a Hispanic locksmith, a rookie police officer, an African-American TV director and his valiant wife, a middle-aged Korean couple, and a naïve Persian store owner whose lives intersect in unique and sometimes tragic ways. The fascinating thing about Crash is the way it executes its racial politics. At nearly every turn, the film attempts to dismantle the audiences’ preconceived notions about racism and its functionality in our culture. It presents its heroes as deceptively flawed and its villains as deceptively redeemable. Not a single character escapes racism in the film. In contrast, no character is immune to acts of heroism, humanity, or feelings of remorse. Haggis was less interested in assigning the sins of racism to any one demographic and more interested in demonstrating its complex, manipulative, and situational nature.
One of the best examples of this practice is performed by the character Anthony (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), a seemingly ordinary, presumably non-threatening African-American male. He exchanges an innocuous glance with an upscale, Caucasian woman Jean (Sandra Bullock) outside a local restaurant. She clings to her DA husband Rick’s (Brendan Fraser) arm for safety, visibly startled. Offended by the occurrence, Anthony angrily rants “You couldn’t find a whiter, safer or better-lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear…If anybody should be scared around here, it’s us: We’re the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy LAPD. So you tell me, why aren’t we scared?” This pointed observation loses all credibility following Anthony’s decision to rob Jean’s vehicle in retaliation. It is contradictory moments like this that give Crash its power and intrigue because it suggests that racism and prejudice exist on a spectrum rather than in a binary vacuum. It declares to the audience that the film is not an exercuse in “white guilt.” By making Anthony a flawed character who speaks in noble platitudes, but doesn’t follow his own principles, the audience is forced to view racism as an isolated disease that can infect anyone.
“You couldn’t find a whiter, safer or better-lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear…If anybody should be scared around here, it’s us: We’re the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy LAPD. So you tell me, why aren’t we scared?”
Haggis was wise not to narrowly assign this social issue to blacks and whites, but rather broadening it across multiple races, cultures, and religions. Many have criticized the unsubtle and Aaron Sorkin-style sermonizing of his dialogue. And, admittedly, there is never a question as to what the theme or message of the film because it is stated and then restated for the people in the back who weren’t paying attention. For example, the character Graham (Don Cheadle) refers to his Hispanic girlfriend Ria (Jennifer Esposito) as a “white woman” while on the phone with his mother. Visibly offended, he explains to Ria “I would have said you were Mexican, but I don’t think it would have pissed her off as much.” Now livid, Ria declares “How about a geography lesson. My father’s from Puerto Rico. My mother’s from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico.” With a self-satisfied expression, Graham replies “Well, I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns.” Subtlety is a trait absent from the film, but there is a painful honesty in Haggis’ observations. The candidness and earnestness to his approach of tackling this touchy subject matter was both admirable and brave for a Caucasian, Canadian-based filmmaker with mainstream appeal. In a lesser film, the Caucasian characters would be the noble white saviors of the helpless, sanctified minority characters, both absolved of any guilt and accountability for their actions. Instead, each of the characters are layered, complicated, imperfect, and human.
It is rare to find a film featuring characters you loathe in the first act and grow to love or empathize with in the third (and vice versa). Once we are done fuming from something disagreeable that they say or do, they administer an act of kindness or compassion that reminds us all of our common humanity. The character Jean, for example, spends most of the film expressing her distrust and frustration with the ethnic minorities in her life, most notably her loyal Hispanic maid. In a surprising turn of events, she slips down a flight of stairs and breaks her leg. After several failed attempts to get aid from her “real” and “reliable” friends, her maid assists her graciously without being prompted. Later that evening Jean gives her an extended embrace, whispering “you’re the only real friend I have.” You can see (and feel) the guilt in Jean’s anguished expression. It is as if this kind gesture revealed the error of her ways and challenged her worldview. Crash asks us to look inward at ourselves to confront our own demons so as to not perpetuate the same vicious cycle of bigotry and systemic oppression.
In 2005, the characters, the racially-laced language, and the social politics in the film may have sounded hyperbolic or unrealistic. However, the reckless abandon and oversaturation of racial slurs, political vitriol, and social upheaval exercised in the media and every other facet of our society during the past presidential reign, makes Crash look like an omen we dismissed both flippantly and prematurely. In hindsight, it feels like a parody of the dark sociopolitical times we are currently experiencing. But like the characters in the film, I know there is still goodness and hope in our hearts. If the cinema is a medium capable of generating empathy for others (thank, Roger Ebert for the insight) then Crash is a well-oiled machine. As preachy as the film can be at times, its themes and message are essential and healing. I may forever be in the minority for declaring Crash deserved Best Picture, but thankfully, being in the minority is a way of life I have become accustomed to. Crash’s brazen honesty affected me so viscerally and its social relevance in Oscar history is something I still believe should be celebrated 12 years later.
