crash and haggis and review and los angeles

The ancient philosopher and rhetorician Cicero once told a story about the emptiness of Roman official religion. According to him, when two priests passed each other in the street they couldn't help but burst out laughing because they know how they had hoodwinked the Roman people. That story came to mind as I was watching Crash!, the film recently awarded best picture at the 78th annual Academy Awards. As I was watching the unlikely unfolding of the plot, I almost couldn't contain my laughter. 'This is supposed to be a serious artistic effort?' I mused. Well, Crash has, like the priests of ancient Rome, fooled some influential critics, including this one from the New Yorker, who said about the film:

"Hyper-articulate and often breathtakingly intelligent and always brazenly alive. I think it's easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," though it is not for the fainthearted."

In fact, Crash is a film of enormous potential which repeatedly falls flat on its face just as it is about to probe interesting issues.

The "Thesis" of the Film

The idea behind the film is that Los Angeles, which now probably exceeds New York in the diversity of nationalities/languages represented in its environs, is not an island of relative laid-back racial harmony or even indifference but is a seething caudron of racial hatred ready to explode at the slightest provocation. And provocations there are in this film. Galore. Within the first few minutes we are exposed both to the promise and utter failure of the film. Two white cops, investigating the mugging and carjacking of the LA District Attorney and his wife, pull over a car similar to the car stolen and proceed to "pat down" its occupants, who happen to be an accomplished Black director and his wife coming home from dinner. Racial tension, abuse and power differentials are in the air as the "bad cop," the senior officer, proceeds to become too friendly with the Black female while her executive-husband has to look on helplessly. Humiliation of the couple is followed later in the movie by scenes of their gradual estrangement and, ultimately, of a near-fatal accident where the woman flips her car.

But if this one scene showed the promise of the film--the way that power, shame, sadness and humiliation mingle with the narratives of each person's life, it also demonstrates the critical shortcomings of the movie. And this in two ways. First, the bad cop is so utterly bad and acts so contrary to any established procedure of a police department (male cops normally do not "pat down" the private parts of female arrestees, especially when there are witnesses), that his activity called to mind the sensationalism of the OJ trial in the 1990s. Over the top. No real connection to reality. Then, if this wasn't enough, the scene of the Black executive's wife being rescued after she flipped her car later in the movie excites not our admiration or passions but our risibilities. For just in the nick of time, when the Black woman's car is about to explode, who else but our racist, groping officer, happens on the scene and must touch her fairly intimately again to rescue her. Naturally, she refuses his touch, until ultimately she realizes that her life is on the line. Whether or not the director is trying to say that bad touch can be redeemed by good touch (or if he is trying to say anything, really), the scene has all the verisimilitude of a Martian dropping into LA and initiating the War of the Worlds.

Further "Lacks"

I spent so much time on the opening scene and later "development" of it because this scene is a window into directorial style of Paul Haggis. Time after time a person is portrayed as a stereotype of the ethnic/racial group being presented (a Muslim who is absolutely irrational and won't listen to anyone's simple explanation of anything; a Chinese woman who can't speak English clearly--she presses on her "blakes" to stop the car; a Black woman with an obviously Black name who becomes the object of ridicule by the white cop who attacks her on affirmative action grounds), and that stereotype provides the tinder to start a new round of explosive and near fatal mishaps. By the end of the film we have no sense that humans have any depth to them at all; they simply are unthinking products of their cultural/ethnic group, ready at a moment's notice to leap into irrational behavior.

This reality is sad because the film had so much promise. It had several potentially poignant scenes--none more powerful than the story told by a Hispanic man to his daughter, to allay her nightime fears, about an invisible cloak that would ward off all bullets and other dangerous things that anyone could bring against her. When she is later mistakenly shot by the irrational Muslim, after she jumps into her father's arms while the Muslim is holding him at gunpoint, she is uninjured. While the child attributes it to the protective invisible cloak she wears, we learn that it is because the irrational Muslim's daughter has purchased blanks for her father's gun. This scene, like the opening one, had so much promise to it, promise that was skillfully snuffed out by director Paul Haggis who traded cliches, racial/ethic stereotyping and shallow portraits of frail humans for any deep understanding of the human condition.

Conclusion

Too much power, money, and glitz tend to make one see worlds that aren't really there. Politicians often can't see outside the Beltway; rich people can't see West of Central Park; and, unfortunately, many directors can't fathom the true desperation that characterizes the human condition. So we have films like Crash which received the best picture award. Best in comedy, perhaps; or maybe as a parody. But as a portrayal of ethnic/racial issues in our day, a resounding "No." The film, like many of its actors, crashed.

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