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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us May 12, 2005 ‘Crash’ explores myth of modern disconnection By Chris Honoré Tidings reviewer “Crash” is a stunner. One of the best films to come along thus far in 2005. Set in Los Angeles, it weaves together multiple story lines, each demonstrating that the melting pot, which has been long touted as the great strength of America, has evolved instead into a type of racial and ethnic Balkanization. The L.A . of “Crash” (is it fair to extrapolate to America?) is no palate of mixed colors; rather, it’s a city hunkered down and cordoned off. One wherein its citizens live in fear of one another, separated into socio-economic-ethnic-racial camps (Brentwood, Compton, East L.A.) wherein entrenched prejudices and stereotypes, emotions that nurture intolerance, breed a simmering rage, often made manifest by an overt hostility that can turn, unpredictably, murderous. “Crash” filets Los Angeles, revealing a cross section of seemingly disparate people — a spoiled Brentwood housewife and her DA husband; a fearful and angry Persian shoe keeper; two LA detectives who are also lovers; a Mexican locksmith; two young men from the hood; a Hollywood director and his wife — and then gradually brings them together, incrementally in a complex but finely tuned narrative. At the heart of this film is one of the great ironies of urban life: the greater the number of people who inhabit our sprawling cities the less real contact we have with one another. Instead we rage, we push and maneuver and glare, confront daily an abiding sense of anonymity, and spin surreal fantasies about possible threats and imagined slights. And as much as we might wish it — how much simpler life would be — the fact is that we don’t live in a black or white world; rather, we struggle to keep our heads barely below water in a sea of multiple shades of gray and brown and yellow. And so the title “Crash” is an apt metaphor, one that director and writer Paul Haggis takes to new levels of intensity. In an opening scene, Don Cheadle, as a homicide detective arriving at a crime scene, speculates to his partner, played by Jennifer Espositio, that the reason we crash our cars into one another on side streets and freeways is that we long to make contact with each other and not simply move along shielded and isolated behind steel and glass. So estranged are we that we play a form of emotional bumper cars. The writing in this film is brutal and bare-bones honest (never just scatological) and the perspectives of the characters, their views of one another, based on the most superficial information, are both damaging and corrosive. But because “Crash” is intent on doing more than simply reinforcing our fears, it asks the audience to also consider the humanity of each character, however flawed. Hence we observe a series of tightly constructed vignettes, each revelatory, each having its own impact, slowly begin to merge in a raw, jarring and compelling symphony of superb filmmaking. In the end, the film argues that our disconnection from each other is an illusion. Our lives intersect, bang up against one another, forcing us to “deal,” asking that we reexamine our assumptions and understand that it is that fragile intersection, harrowing as it might be, that can still make all the difference. If there is redemption to be found, it will be found in dialogue, in a shift, however subtle, of perspective, and in the abiding belief that when it comes to all things racial and ethnic and religious, there is nothing that is best left unsaid. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams