The American Nightmare

Abstract

I saw Crash on a DVD, which I recommend, especially for the extended commentary by the writer-director, Paul Haggis, who wrote Million Dollar Baby and the co-writer Bobby Moresco, and Don Cheadle, who starred in Hotel Rwanda, and plays an L.A. Detective who is investigating an accident in the film. Cheadle said he was struggling not to laugh at some of dialogue which is definitely not PC but real. The dialogue between Larenz Tate and Chris “Ludacris” Bridge is like a running commentary of two hip-hop stand up comics. Humor is the great equalizer providing some relief to this very edgy production. Crash is a complicated film about power and race relations in L.A. The opening scenes are hypnotic. It is pitch black and the car headlights are white and yellow, dramatizing the color contrasts with the stunning cinematography of J. Michael Muro and creating an atmosphere where anything can happen. The use of filters, shooting into the sun, using slow motion to accentuate the terror of racism and exploitation is superb. The urban sprawl of car-dependant Los Angelinos, with drivers secluded in their own socio-economic sphere, does have its irony, sometimes comical and other times terrifying. “In L.A. no one touches you. We missed that so much that we crash into each other,” says Cheadle’s character. The script confronts the prejudice and nastiness of racism in all of its forms. Everyone is racist. Far from being a polemic, the film is not your ordinary action picture. It is hard to pin it down to a genre. There are various labels that could apply; it is a morality play, fable, nightmare, and tragic comedy. To me the key element in this film is that it defies stereotyping which is at the heart of prejudice. Via interlocking stories it highlights the soul searching and spiritual wasteland of Los Angeles with its mixture of cultural and racial diversity. There are cops and robbers, blacks, whites, Latinos, Koreans, Chinese, Persians and Hispanics all exploiting one another without sensing what they are doing. The Koreans are mistaken for Chinese, the Persians for Arabs by the color of their skin, or their inability to pronounce certain words, or simply by their own anger which blinds them to the