Oscar Week: Crash

"Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other."

Crash is painful to watch. I don't mean that it is a bad movie (in fact it's one of the best I've ever seen), but it just...hurts. I haven't met anyone who has seen it that has said otherwise. But it is because of that pain and in the midst of the most difficult scenes that we find the beauty of this film. 

In Crash, director Paul Haggis guides us through the lives of several people living in L.A. Though they are all very different people with individual issues, at some point in the film, each character collides with at least one of the others in life-altering circumstances. These collisions, these "crashes" are what the film is about, as is evidenced in the very first lines:

"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."

We watch as each individual's life collides with another, thus surfacing inner fears, prejudices, and judgments that can no longer be contained. They learn about themselves what they never knew before. I am angry. I am scared. I am judgmental. I am wrong. And these realizations bring each character to a crossroads that requires them to change or ignore the truth.  (note: Haggis intentionally places the shape of a cross in several shots to symbolize the intersecting of lives that bring such crossroads. It's awesome details like that that make a good director). As the movie progresses we watch one of its lines unfold before our eyes: "You think you know yourself... you have no idea."

Most viewers won't walk away from this movie feeling light-hearted and entertained. That was not the director's intention. There are some beautifully redemptive moments, but some heartbreaking ones as well. Haggis wants people to see them both and be challenged. He wants people to walk away questioning themselves, their thoughts, their relationship to others. He wants his audience to come to their own crossroad.

I know this is a dramatic statement, but Crash is the epitome of what I think film should be. It is absolutely beautiful in all technical aspects, and it grips the audience, making them part of the story and then letting them go, leaving them to marinate in the human drama they've just experienced. That, my friends, is what I call a movie.