Fear and loathing in LA
Crash is a film of cameos from a range of respected and not so respected actors and actresses, and it is uncommonly successful and moving.
I was reading Michel Houlebecq’s Atomised when I went to watch Crash and was struck by a similarity of theme between that novel of ideas and the film. Crash is inhabited by people who have trouble making and keeping connections, trouble choosing the right actions in any given circumstance. People who are essentially alone and lonely and in that regard their own worst enemies.
It is as if all the moral guidelines of society have been removed and now every decision we make is based on fear. Fear is one thing the characters share, both a specific fear, largely racial, as well as the more general overriding existential fear identified by British academic Frank Furedi as the defining emotion of our time.
Furedi is big on the debilitating affects of fear and you don’t have to go much further than Crash to see them in action. Once it takes hold, as it does of Sandra Bullock’s Jean Cabot, it wreaks untold destruction both on her life and her relationships.
The film starts with Bullock and her husband being carjacked, sending her into an emotional spiral. Like Julia Roberts it is clear that there is more to Bullock than we may see in romantic comedies such as Miss Congeniality. Here she is an utter bitch.
But this is a film without poor performances. All of the actors deliver and considering how many there are, that is quite something.
Despite relying on a couple of unlikely coincidences, Crash is propelled by plot and characterisation. The car-jackers, Jean and her husband, and most of all the amazing Matt Dillon as the corrupt Sargeant Ryan who cops a big feel of Thandie Newton’s Christine in front of her husband Cameron (Terrence Howard).
Why? Because he can and because his life is crap.
If all of that sounds rather dark, well it is. But where Atomized is unforgiving, Crash does have hope. Matt Dillon’s devotion to his ill father and his brave efforts to save Christine, the woman he had previously abused, offer redemption.
It’s as if the common condition of modern life, fear, is the enemy of all of the characters in this film. But while it may evoke the defining emotion of our time, Crash does not surrender to it. Some at least overcome.
This is a big film. See it.
I was reading Michel Houlebecq’s Atomised when I went to watch Crash and was struck by a similarity of theme between that novel of ideas and the film. Crash is inhabited by people who have trouble making and keeping connections, trouble choosing the right actions in any given circumstance. People who are essentially alone and lonely and in that regard their own worst enemies.
It is as if all the moral guidelines of society have been removed and now every decision we make is based on fear. Fear is one thing the characters share, both a specific fear, largely racial, as well as the more general overriding existential fear identified by British academic Frank Furedi as the defining emotion of our time.
Furedi is big on the debilitating affects of fear and you don’t have to go much further than Crash to see them in action. Once it takes hold, as it does of Sandra Bullock’s Jean Cabot, it wreaks untold destruction both on her life and her relationships.
The film starts with Bullock and her husband being carjacked, sending her into an emotional spiral. Like Julia Roberts it is clear that there is more to Bullock than we may see in romantic comedies such as Miss Congeniality. Here she is an utter bitch.
But this is a film without poor performances. All of the actors deliver and considering how many there are, that is quite something.
Despite relying on a couple of unlikely coincidences, Crash is propelled by plot and characterisation. The car-jackers, Jean and her husband, and most of all the amazing Matt Dillon as the corrupt Sargeant Ryan who cops a big feel of Thandie Newton’s Christine in front of her husband Cameron (Terrence Howard).
Why? Because he can and because his life is crap.
If all of that sounds rather dark, well it is. But where Atomized is unforgiving, Crash does have hope. Matt Dillon’s devotion to his ill father and his brave efforts to save Christine, the woman he had previously abused, offer redemption.
It’s as if the common condition of modern life, fear, is the enemy of all of the characters in this film. But while it may evoke the defining emotion of our time, Crash does not surrender to it. Some at least overcome.
This is a big film. See it.
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