Review of Crash

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.

Came across this interesting review of Crash here.

While in broad agreement with this review of Crash I disagree the ending was lame. It is anything but. The slight smile on Anthony’s face after he ‘frees’ the Chinese, fecund with multiple meanings, is reason enough for the denounement of Crash to reflect the fine tapestry of human relationships and emotions in the film itself.

I think the central messages of the film are palpable even in Sri Lanka. We live in multiple ghettos – our lives circumscribed though overlapping and inter-connected comfort zones based on social class, wealth, proficiency in English, religion, address, education, gender, ethinicity etc. Our interactions with the “other” are accidental – we are often neither prepared for such interactions nor do we give them second thought once over. We literally Crash into relationships, with all our parochialism, bigotry and prejudice.

So the question for me, as articulated through the film, is whether redemption is possible in an imperfect world? Or is redemption itself temporary, ephemeral, linked to a specific time and place? Are the characters who survive the film any better than how we saw them at first?

We aren’t really sure – Crash collides with the traditional Hollywood denounement of simplicity and restored order and instead, for a moment, shows us that redemption, though possible, is also perhaps fleeting.

After all, the films end with an unresolved crash.

Also found this to be a useful exchange on the movie.

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