Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Crash and Burn
Writer/director Paul Haggis was the victim of a car jacking and this led to his thinking about “who the kids were” who did it. In his 2004 movie Crash, a very well-crafted movie, made in 35 days, he moves in a 36 hour time span through a TV version of different layers of Los Angeles society. Seamless, very well-acted, with a snappy Mamet-like feel for dialogue, and superb editing, the movie is compelling.
The dubious coda of the movie, presented contradictorily at the outset, is that we need to crash into one another just to feel something. The real message of the movie is that if we stub our toes our most likely reaction is a stream of racist invective; just under the surface we are ugly as sin. For the most part it is white liberals who are the most despicable in the movie — this is no doubt the reason it won three Oscars and numerous other awards; it makes the Hollywood community smugly feel it is courageous in self-criticism, willing to take a hard look at itself. The fact that this hard look is via stereotype and convention passes like a breeze over their privileged heads. The real truth is that Hollywood would sell its sister in its lust for profits. Hollywood is indifferent to issues of race and class, except as they can be exploited.