Most powerful movie I've seen in a long time...

[Atman]

After ignoring it in the video store and on ppv because I'd never heard of it, and it looked like a gangsta movie, I read a rundown of movie critics' Top Ten lists for 2005. Almost all of them had "CRASH" on their lists. So, I figured I better check it out, and tonight we finally did.

Holy crap, what a film! Very strong message in there. A lot of the plot twists are easy to guess, but that's not the point. It was a stunning, "make you think" type film. It was beautiful. Rent it. And please, mods, don't dump this post in the Lounge. "CRASH" makes a strong political/social statement that should be particulary poignent for democrats. Republicans probably won't get it.

[Oceansaway]

1. thanks for the reminder....thats the one with

Sandra Bullock isnt it?

[VolcanoJen]

2. Yeh, and Matt Dillon, and very powerful performances from...

... Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard, who play the couple pulled over by Matt Dillon's character.

Excellent, topical, important film.

[Oceansaway]

5. thanks...n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. What's it about?

[Atman]

4. It has everybody. Bullock, too.

Big ensemble cast. Sandra's role isn't even that huge, but it is good. The cast featured tons of knowns and a few unknowns, but every role was well played and integral to the story.

[VolcanoJen]

9. The story that was really mindblowing to me....

... was the involvement of the locksmith and the shopkeeper.

I still think about those scenes, and it's been months and months since I saw the film.

[Atman]

10. The locksmith story was sooooo powerful

You want to reach into the story and shake people, yell at them, make them see what they're doing. That what makes it so strong...it really involves you, emotionally.

[driver8]

23. The locksmith story hit me hard, too. First it got me when the

Sandra Bullock character insulted him. What really got me was when I thought his little girl had been shot. I have a four year old daughter and that scene absolutely tore my heart out.

A very well done and powerful film.

[FreedomAngel82]

24. I love Sandra Bullock

She always does great movies. There's another film out there called "Crash" I saw was on HBO last night I believe. It was really weird. I didn't catch the beginning of it.

[Atman]

26. That other CRASH was eff'd up!

That was the one about the guy (James Spader?) who got his rocks off having sex at/in car crashes. Bad.

[depakid]

31. That was Cronenberg.

His movies are always about the intersection between biology and technology--mainly the body becoming technological.

Sex in Crash became a function of the machine--mechanical and emotionless. The characters in Crash couldn't experience pleasure without being in proximity to or being involved in some sort of technological augmentation.

The woman with the leg braces is an example of this. As are the masturbation scenes with car crashes playing on television. The body becomes distant from itself through the machine--pleasure is secondary to function.

Better Cronenberg films are Videodrome, Existenz, and Spider.

[wiley]

3. Agreed

A great and powerful film about racism and authority and human beings.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. I saw it recently... and you're right.

as a matter of fact, I think someone on DU recommended it. ;)

[pamela]

7. Great movie.

I'm glad to see the critics aren't forgetting about it for their yearly lists. I hope it gets some Academy Award nods.

[goclark]

12. Absolutely a solid and powerful message!

A movie you just can't forget.

[Pushed To The Left]

8. One of my favorite movies of all time

I highly recommend it!

[handsignals4theblind]

11. Absolutely- Movie touched on a very universal and human theme

-----Oscar goes to Arnie for best performance of his life as a govenor for Kaleefoornia

[BeyondThePale]

14. I strongly disagree. The characters were...

absurdly multidimensional--allow me to explain. Many films suffer from one-dimensional characters (e.g., the good guy, the strong woman, the villain, etc.). This is true even in well-reviewed films (think of "Million Dollar Baby" -- all the characters were completely one-dimensional). On the other hand, the characters in "Crash" were forced into contrived situations just to make them perform characteralogical gymnastics so that they would appear extremely positive in one situation and extremely negative in another.

Yes, yes, I understand that the purpose of this was to examine the ambiguity and complexity of modern race relations (a noble intention). However, the characters and the situations in which they were forced to perform were patently absurd and did not suggest genuine depth or commentary on the topic. I found the characters even more unrealistic than the traditional unidimensional characters that populate most films.

Nice try, but a weak effort by the film makers.

[Atman]

19. Yours appears to be a unique take, Pale! (possible spoiler alert)

I'd be interested in hearing other's dissent, though. The only truly weak part of the movie, to me, was the movie producer's second run-in with the police. I can think of a hundred other ways that should have/could have/would have played out. But the "characteralogical gymnastics" you speak of were backstoried enough to lend some narrative legitimacy to them, imo. A bit too many coincidences, perhaps, but to complain about that seems to ignore the message the film was presenting.

I think all of us come across as one dimensional to others, to some extent, until we open up and intertwine our lives, and that was much of the point. For instance, you deal with a stranger in your office one day, as just a customer or client, without any clue or insight into what drives them. This movie gave both/all sides of the characters' turmoils in order to advance the story and send its message. Contrived? Perhaps. But as I said, many of the plot twists you could also see coming a mile away, but that didn't make the outcome of those twists any less powerful. I think the filmmakers did a great job adding a deeper dimension to a fairly common subject matter that often gets short shrift because of characters who often aren't multi-dimension enough to explain why they're doing what they're doing and acting the way they're acting.

[driver8]

25. As much as I liked this movie, I have to agree with your opinion

on the movie producer and his response to the police. It didn't ring true for me.

I know the director has two hours to get his point across and that is not much time, but this scene was a bit over the top.

[BeyondThePale]

29. I agree with most of your points, but...

I felt like the forced way in which all of the characters displayed such extreme patterns of behavior, emotion, and beliefs really took away from the film.

Again, most movies seem to have rather one-dimensional characters. This stems from the limited time to present characters and also, I believe, from most audiences not wanting to have to deal with the burden of understanding complex characters. So, we have simplified predefined character roles who are presented with a great many cues regarding their motives (e.g., the type of music tells us if we should be scared, happy, etc.).

On the other end of the continuum, we have films like "Crash" in which the film makers force the characters to be the extreme opposite--not only to not-be-one-dimensional, but to exhibit strikingly contradictory patterns of behavior (in part by putting them in extreme situations).

Clearly, humans are rich and multilayered in their behaviors, affect, beliefs, etc.--and the former class of films fails to tap this richness (even though I liked "Million Dollar Baby"). However, I am not sure that films at the other extreme, such as "Crash" adequately address complex issues like racism, because rather than express a richness of human experience, they just make each character have two different unidimensional characteristics (if that makes sense).

I think that Robert Altman and John Sayles (e.g., "Lone Star") do a much better job of weaving rich, multidimensional characters together in a way that speaks to social issues.

Ok, I will stop pontificating--again, this was not meant to be inflammatory or provocative, just to offer an alternative view...

[Auntie Bush]

21. You are beyond the pale ...with that post!

[BeyondThePale]

27. I get that a lot...

Seriously, I was not trying to be controversial or inflammatory--the film just seemed contrived to me (despite the fact that I applaud them for addressing the subject matter)

[Atman]

30. I don't think it was inflammatory at all. You're right on some levels.

The movie was indeed "contrived." But no more than a "Star Wars" or other film wherein the director/writer has to make shit up to advance the story. It is a movie, after all. My point in my rebuttal to you was that you seemed to be asking for too much from the film. Despite the shortcomings in the story-telling (like the over-the-top scenes mentioned), I didn't find them to be so severe as to dampen the impact of the film. In the movie-watching biz, I think it's called "suspending disbelief." You already know it's all fake, as it's happening to well-know actors, it's not real at all. You have to be able to step back a bit, suspend disbelief for a couple hours, and bask in the message.

Besides all that, you're certainly entitled to your opinion of the film. That's what this place is for, right, expressing our opinions? I was frankly surprised there weren't more dissenting opinions. I didn't actually expect such near-universal agreement with my initial post! But I'm happy to see so many people dug the film. I hope everyone gets a chance to see it. Contrived or not, it is an important work.

[Beam Me Up]

22. Yeah, but real people are boring.

Most of them anyway.

We want EXCITEMENT and INTEREST when we go to a movie, don't ya know.

Note: I haven't seen the film but will based on the OP of this thread. My statements are somewhat sarcastic but mostly just lame as I'm dead tired and shouldn't even be reading DU, much less posting to it.

[Dawgs]

36. Not unique take at all...

Nobody talks or acts like the characters in this movie. It was a good movie, but not spectacular by any means.

[BeyondThePale]

40. I strongly recommend John Sayles' films for...

character-driven studies of complex social issues. Again, my favorite is "Lone Star", but he has many other excellent films.

I agree that films are artificial and "nobody talks or acts like characters in this movie." However, "Crash" wants to speak to a difficult social issue--and its ability to do so is limited by only presenting characters in paradoxical extremes.

[TahitiNut]

39. The weakness of 'Crash!' was in its scope.

I don't believe they could've done justice to any in-depth character portrayal when they chose to compress every character's 'story arc' into a sketch-book Reader's Digest precis.

While I enjoyed the movie, and was also surprised about the plot based on my misapprehension regarding the title, I regard 'Grand Canyon' to be a far more satisfying and full-fledged development of characters with a similar theme. It probably goes hand-in-hand with my enormous respect for Lawrence Kasdan as a writer/director. He's a true craftsman, imho. The detailed technical and artistic craftsmanship - editing, script, pace, cinematography - of 'The Big Chill' still astonishes me each time I view it.

[Atman]

41. Grand Canyon and Big Chill were amazing character studies

You are right on that one. In fact, "...like a Lawrence Kasden movie" is a phrase I've used for years to describe situations in which I've found myself surrounded by, well, a bunch of characters. Again, though, we're comparing a guy whose filmography lists "The Love Boat" and "Return of the Shaggy Dog" with Sayles and Kasden and Altman. I don't think we're looking at the defining film in Paul Haggis' career; maybe his name can rightfully be uttered alongside those guys some day, but for now, it was simply a strong addition to a filmography which appears to be getting better, and that is the direction in which one generally wants to be heading in their career.

[SeattleGirl]

15. Saw it a month ago, and I agree.

I actually want to see it again because there is so much going on in it.

[Nicole]

16. I loved this film

I especially liked Terrence Howard's portrayal of his character.

[StellaBlue]

17. ditto

[leftofthedial]

18. great acting

[Hello_Kitty]

20. I just googled the trailer. Definitely on my rental list. Thanks. n/t

[0007]

28. I'll take your word and get it today when I'm out.

[tishaLA]

32. I thought it was pretty terrible

The direction was bad, the intertwinced narratives felt forced, and the message was so ham-fisted and repetitive that it became utterly banal by the mid-way point.

There is some very good acting in this film by Mr. Dillon and Mr. Cheadle. Ms. Bullock is better than I remember seeing her before and the film shows the great promise of Ludachris. But I think director/screenwriter Haggis study the work of master storytellers like Robert Altman more assiduously before he tries to create these overlapping narratives again. His direction is far too obvious and sanctimonious.

I found its POV decidedly suburban and banal. I was happy to see it on quite a few ten worst lists, too...not because I think it *was* one of the worst--it was just average--but because it was so unbearable.

[Atman]

35. I guess the comparisons to Altman are inevitable

You have a point, but you're comparing a relative light-weight (IMO) against a master of the genre, which isn't entirely fair. Maybe Haggis IS studying Altman. Maybe he didn't get it entirely right this time. But Altman's done some stinkers, too. I think, considering his rather lightweight bona fides, Haggis made a hell of a film. Perhaps one day he'll be considered the next Altman, not just an Altman wannabe.

[seabeyond]

33. knocked me on my ass. excellent movie. so much in it n/t

[Dawgs]

34. Disagree!!!

I couldn't find one realistic scene in that whole movie.

[Atman]

37. That's how I felt about King Kong.

But I still think it was a good film.

;-)

Come watch a day in the life of my family if you simply want "realistic." This was a message film.

[Dawgs]

38. I didn't say it wasn't a good movie.

;)

[blogslut]

42. I saw your topic a few times

..and didn't click. Yet, I knew you were going to talk about Crash. Sure enough, I open the thread and voila!

Hell of a flick. Let the naysayers kvetch. It's virtually impossible to get a difficult story with complicated characters made, much less recognized by both audiences and critics. Maybe the plots were contrived. Maybe the principals were too many and too easily swayed by the machinations of the director. So what? I think they pulled it off and it was good.