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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Crash - SPOILERS

17:20 / 05.09.05

I was very sceptical when I sat down to watch this, but then absorbed for the whole film. Which isn't to say that it was a perfect film, not by a long way. Here's some thoughts:

*MAJOR SPOILERS*

- I thought most of the issues were raised articulately and handled intelligently. Some scenes were very over the top though. The unloaded gun, for instance, was ridiculously melodramatic. Its only a personal taste, but I dislike camerawork that tells you *exactly what you ought to be feeling righ now*. The more major car wreck was also overdone, and I didn;t like it for other reasons which I might come back to in a separate post. Also I felt the plot relied far too much on coincidence, and was nowhere near as skillfully handled as Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, which its been compared to.

- I thought it was as much to do with masculinity as it was race. The Persian guy and his dependence on his daughter for example, Matt Dillon's relationship with his father, or Terrence Howard's character. In fact I think that plot was quite central to this idea, particularly the scene where Ludacris jacks his car and nice white cop Ryan Phillipe (see below) enables him to reassert his masculinity without getting into too much trouble for it. This was also partly why I really didn't like the car wreck scene with Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton. Dillon sexually assaulted her and this was hardly addressed beyond the fact that when it came to saving lives race and sex don't matter. And Thandie Newton's character's attitude to the incident weren't explored at all.

- I also wondered what people thought of the Ryan Phillipe storyline. For most of the film he's probably the character least involved in the plot, set up as a generic well meaning white guy, and various people have told me they were just confused by what happens in the closing scenes. I like what (I think) Haggis was trying to do here, namely explore more insidious, unarticulated racisms. The events in that car make you readdress everything Ryan Phillipe's character has done up to that point. At the same time though this seemed almost like a throw away point at the end, and again I thought the interesting ideas risk getting lost in the melodrama.

Any thoughts anyone?

22:47 / 05.09.05

I saw this in a full theatre and when the unloaded gun is fired, everybody and I mean everybody moaned. When Ryan Philipe shoots his passenger, everybody gasped audibly. There was not a dry eye in the house. Sure, it was melodramatic, but I still loved it. I think the observation on masculinity is somewhat off the mark; perhaps Crash is, as well, a meditation on generational relationships, but this would still be secondary to its main theme.

I find comparisons to Altman and P. T. Anderson to somewhat tedious. Yes, he's working with a large cast. Yes, he's working with unatural and impossible coincidences. I think the cinematic language of large casts is not exclusive to Altman, and it irks me when people compare movies like this to him. Why not make a comparison to The Towering Inferno, or The Poseidan Adventure? Sorry to sound like an asshole, but Altman isn't the only one.

I was impressed by Ludacris' acting abilities more so than any other actor, and this comes from somebody who loves Cheadle, Fraser and Tony Danza (just joking). Even though the character he played is only a few steps away from his own public persona, I forgot I was watching a rapper, and my criteria for excellent acting is that.

It was good to see Sandra Bullock do something other than giggle and snort for an hour and a fucking half.

05:58 / 06.09.05

Yes, sorry, just to clarify a few things:

I probably gasped myself when Ryan Phillipe's character shot the guy; the unloaded gun was flagged a bit more by the earlier scene in the gun shop so I wasn't quite so suprised there. What I didn't like about that scene was the way he filmed the character's reactions, not the event itself. It was no more or less melodramatic than the rest of the film, and I did really enjoy it as I was watching it.

I said that it worked well as a study of masculinity for two reasons, firstly because perhaps with the exception of Sandra Bullock all the major plotlines revolve around men (the Thandie Newton/Terrence Howard/Matt Dillon triangle had much more to do with the guys, I thought at least), and also because I thought most of the relationships explored raised issues about traditional masculine identity (unsuprising in a film largely about men!).

And I also thought Ludacris was pretty good. I hope my first post didn't sound overly negative, I was completely caught up in the film as I watched it.

14:36 / 06.09.05

My only real problem with Crash, and it is a slight one, is that the end becomes a little too operatic. Every plot is turned up to eleven, as it were. And that bloody snow... The last panning shots in Chinatown would have been more impressive (in my humble opinion) without the kitsch snow...

Regarding race and masculine identity, I believe that the film critiques and attacks both, as well as linking them to each other. This is where the question of dignity, of what a husband is meant to do, of what a son is meant to do, of what a brother, or a friend, or a good Samaritan hitchhiker-helping policeman is meant to do. Testosterone is a huge factor in the film, exposing itself in the anger of several of the characters, and leading to disaster in most of them. The machismo of the role of policeman was especially complex in the film: we see it in Dillon's offensive 'frisk', we see it in Philippe's accidental shooting, but we also see it in the latter's vocal ability to save Cameron's life, and then in Dillon's ability to more overtly save Thandie Newton's life. Everything was muddled up! No one is simple in the world, and this film thrives on that knowledge.

And that is what I loved about this film: there was no black or white, in any sense. Every conception and preconception was turned on its head. Every time you thought you knew where you were, the rug was torn from under your feet. It is a film that had the claustrophobia, and in parts inevitability, of Greek tragedy, yet at the same time made the viewers explicitly aware of even the understood and understated assumptions that we make about people every minute of every day, especially in city life.

That these all tied up with language, with dialect, with blakes and breaks, with the ability to read English, with the frustrating and problematic communications between normal people and the contrasting efforts of the DA and his office to communicate smoothly exactly and only the information they needed to communicate, added another intriguing and absorbing level to the film.

(Another small gripe was that I kind of hoped that Sandra Bullock would get more than a sprain at the end...)

16:41 / 08.09.05

Why are none of you talking about Deanna Troi?

This movie was Star Trek XI.

23:56 / 12.09.05

Overall, I liked this movie.

It made some good points, and it had its lame scenes. For me, the good outweighed the bad.

The first line of the movie, I loved. It was so poetic, but Don Cheadle's character for the rest of the movie never made another line this great.

And, since it was trying to get racism from every angle, I thought it left out a pretty big minority when it didn't have any gay characters.

I'm not throwing my fist in the air for gays, I'm just saying that if you are going to explore all options, then EXPLORE all of the options.

And as for the serendipity-coincidence thing, I didn't mind that. When I watched Traffic, all of those characters are hardly connected, and I just liked how it all came full circle. To me, it proved that everyone is a little prejudiced in some way or another.

00:06 / 13.09.05

***I just have to clarify...Oddman is not against gays. I didn't mean to piss off anyone.***

13:01 / 17.05.06

Brokeback Mountain was really, really robbed.

Essential Dazzler

18:50 / 17.05.06

Brokeback Mountain was really, really robbed.

Of What? By Whom?

19:39 / 17.05.06

Of a Best Picture Oscar, by the Academy, one would assume.

21:43 / 17.05.06

I think it was actually of its wallet, by Ludacris.

22:29 / 17.05.06

My hope is that some people looking for this on DVD accidentally pick up the Ballard/Cronenberg film by mistake.

Preachy, sloppy, over-acted parts far outweighed and decimated the decently handled stuff, and none of it ever rose to anything resembling entertaining or useful. Was this a message that needed to be communicated? A story that needed to be told or fulfilled some niche otherwise not tapped?

The best part about this movie was when I finished watching it, and turned off the DVD player, for the TV... 'Do the Right Thing' was just starting on cable and kicked this movie's ass all over. And that's something considering 'Do the Right Thing' has lots of the same problems, re: acting, directing, and preaching. And the Matt Dillon connection.

Actually, considering someone's comment in this thread about leaving out any gay/straight commentary... one of my oddest LA experiences was being harrassed by gay neonazis in West Hollywood. A point I thought the film could have bothered with and completely missed out on, is that, unlike many cities, LA is particularly crap at racism. Any other major city in the States, it can get pretty cut and dry, and play out in a sickly logical way... NYC, Chicago, Detroit... but, in LA, there's someone gets throttled by asshole cops with a racial agenda... LA riots. The Lakers win a major game... LA riots. Gay neonazis, Chinese-American white supremacists, the 'gay is like being black/no the hell it's not' thing, and my favorite: So many times in LA do you hear somebody come on with 'there are no Indians/Native Americans left' or none in the city, 'you can't be' et cetera... and there's more of us in LA than any other city in the country.

There's a racial element the film was utterly devoid of... because it would have had to address something unusual for Hollywood cinema and that might throw off some of its audience or make them have to think a new or unusual thought for two seconds. Can't have that.

Surprised there's an asian element considered, even. After all, race relations are all black and white, innit?

So, really, the film did manage to cull an emotional response out of me, which I suppose is some sort of success, but that response is just frustration at the inanity of the film, so probably not what the filmmakers were after.

19:39 / 18.05.06

that's pretty much the impression I got: cliched writing, overblown acting from the 'goddamn' school. there wasn't one character i found credible.

i admit i didn't make it all the way through (partly due to a sticking DVD) but i thought the part where a film-making colleague was able to read the black filmmaker's mind (his wife had been sexually assaulted) on the grounds that he had been acting less 'black' than usual beyond belief. or maybe i got that mixed up. i'm really not sure.