Crash
I finally got to see Crash last night. It had been a long day at church: teaching Bible class, rehearsing for the Christmas musical, etc. I'd gone to the video store the night before armed with my free Blockbuster coupons and picked up The Interpreter, which was fun enough, but without much wallop on the suspense meter, and Crash, a film I'd heard good things about, but that hadn't really caught my imaginative attention.
Anyway, Anjie sat down for our Sunday night decompress and watched the film and were simultaneously drawn in to this amazing elegant bit of storytelling that is unabashedly making its audience look racism right in the eye. Superbly acted by a top notch ensemble cast, Crash lets all its characters be real people, and that is it's brilliance. The racist cop is a hero both on the job and in the intimate manner in which he cares for his sick father. The good cop who saves one black man ends up horrifying himself with an act he didn't think he was capable of. There are so many richly drawn--albeit minimally drawn--characters, and the filmmakers make each one of them struggle with racism's inhumanity, the major pathos of which is that they're all caught in the same trap. Again, the whole of problem of racism elegant stated.
Of course, where the film has the hardest time is with its answer to its own question. How do we move past these things. There are moments and symbols of grace throughout, and and mixed with acts of courage under immense pressure, actions in which we see characters from various parts of the world straining to make contact in valleys of the shadow of death, I get the sense that the filmmakers understand that there is a real mystery in love, compassion, understanding, and grace, all of which are a far different reality than our beloved "tolerance." But for grace, we will kill each other in our brokenness.
One of the best films I've seen in a long time.
7:13:31 AM
