Crash: A Soaring Tour de Force

Since losing two DVDs owned by Blockbuster, I haven’t been able to rent my usual share of movies, even though they continue to bill me each month. One of the movies I would have rented was offered on Virgin Atlantic’s amazing inflight movie system, where a veritable blockbusterish bevy of movies is available. Tonight, among the movies I watched was a great one called ‘Crash.’

The movie reminded me ‘Grand Canyon,’ it was set in LA and focused in the same way, on urban anxiety and race relations. But ‘Crash’ went much farther, delving into the complex relationship between blacks, upper class blacks, Chinese, Iranians and Arabs, police and thugs. There was so much realistic hate in this film, it resonated like the soundtrack, that alternated between Middle Eastern chants and haunting soaring singing. One of the thugs kept criticizing rap, saying it made black people sound dumb, and he also defended his crime, since he never attacked blacks, only whites.

There are so many complex conflicts in the film. Among them, resentment over status, reaction to stereotypes, justifiable fear, misplaced anger and enough chilling scenes to sear itself in your mind. This is a movie that moves beyond where most films take you, to an emotional place full of the conflicts and angst that make up modern urban life.