Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)

[Feast on me]

Damnit, Criterion must release the Cronenberg Crash ASAP!!!

[Napoleon]

Damnit, Criterion must release the Cronenberg Crash ASAP!!!

Why? Are you terminally ill?

[LightBulbFilm]

This is stupid... It seems Haggis is getting full of himself... I say this because the last thing I heard when the first edition came out was that he didn't want a special edition, he thought the DVD that originally came out was perfect...

[Andre Jurieu]

This is stupid... It seems Haggis is getting full of himself... I say this because the last thing I heard when the first edition came out was that he didn't want a special edition, he thought the DVD that originally came out was perfect...

We don't actually know that this was his decision or that Haggis specifically requested another edition. Lion's Gate could have requested a "director's cut" in order to double-dip and improve their bottom line, much like Fox did with Ridley Scott's Alien.

[manicsounds]

Hmm, right after I ordered the newly lower-priced 1 disc version....

Havent seen this movie yet, as Japan is late with movies....

[ben d banana]

Wow, it's the Showgirls of race relations, complete with fall down the stairs.

[Napoleon]

Wow, it's the Showgirls of race relations, complete with fall down the stairs.

Has anyone checked for a Parker/Stone writing credit on this?

[HerrSchreck]

Electrician here at the studio just dropped off a dvd for me to watch-- okay I threw CRASH up on the player. I don't have much too add to this thread, as (grab on to something) Andre pretty much summed up all my feelings & problems on this film. It's your basic Feature-Length Heavy Hallmark Commercial.

What I just have a real hard time taking, is when heavy emotional scenes are underlined by minutes long, soupy emotional songs played start to finish. Breathy silences gathering all the sad seriousness of the world. It's bad enough so much big studio product has lost such a vast amount of subtlety, where everything is so manipulative & underlined so even a pair of socks strewn on the floor will get all tight inna throat... but these fucking songs laid over for punctuation. Jeez...

EDIT-- one other thing about the Dillon character... his heroic pose after rescuing the director's wife, strewn on the ground masculinely in front of a fire truck with gasoline smoke pluming behind him, it really typified what Jurieu was talking about above viz some kinda washing away his sins. There was such a 9/11 subtext to that image, a la These are our Heroic American White Boys, they may not be perfect but we owe our lives to them. This white boy found it a bit over the top.

[Carson Dyle]

In a genuinely complex film, Thandie Newton would have told Matt Dillon to fuck off after he rescued her. OR she would have refused his help and then died because he wasn't able to get her out of the car in time. But no, she allows the big, strong man who molested her and pretty much destroyed her marriage to cradle her in his arms. "And the Oscar goes to..."

[jcelwin]

I watched 'No Way Out' the other week. An excellent film. Its comments on Racism are still very powerful, after so many years.

In comparison 'Crash' looks even worse than before. 'No Way Out' makes 'Crash' look like it was written by a child. How the hell did it get the Oscar?!?

[Andre Jurieu]

'Crash' look like it was written by a child. How the hell did it get the Oscar?!?

I think you may have answered your own question.

[Antoine Doinel]

In a genuinely complex film, Thandie Newton would have told Matt Dillon to fuck off after he rescued her. OR she would have refused his help and then died because he wasn't able to get her out of the car in time. But no, she allows the big, strong man who molested her and pretty much destroyed her marriage to cradle her in his arms. "And the Oscar goes to..."

I don't think she would have chosen DEATH to spite the racist cop. Yeah, that's really showing him

I think the movie is stronger because both of those characters are that complex. Hatred isn't - to pardon the pun - a black and white issue. For many people racism rears it's head only in certain circumstances. It's amazing how many people don't have a problem with black/Jewish/whatever people until they have to work alongside them or they're dating their daughter.

[Carson Dyle]

I don't think she would have chosen DEATH to spite the racist cop. Yeah, that's really showing him

I didn't mean to imply that she would have "chosen" death, but in the movie when Dillon first comes to rescue her she does freak out. What I was suggesting was that if Newton's intial impulse to recoil from him stole valuable seconds away from his ability to get her out of the car and she then perished, that would have been a lot more interesting to me than that "can't we all just get along" embrace between the two of them.

[bunuelian]

I agree, Carson Dyle, that would've been more interesting, but then we'd have been faced with lots of slo-mo shots of her husband weeping and the cop looking dazed . . . in other words, more of the same. And isn't the point of the film that despite all the hatred and ignorance, everyone comes out ok in the end and no one needs to feel bad about the color of their popcorn?

[cdnchris]

I agree, Carson Dyle, that would've been more interesting, but then we'd have been faced with lots of slo-mo shots of her husband weeping and the cop looking dazed . . . in other words, more of the same. And isn't the point of the film that despite all the hatred and ignorance, everyone comes out ok in the end and no one needs to feel bad about the color of their popcorn?

Mmmmm, popcorn.

[Carson Dyle]

I agree, Carson Dyle, that would've been more interesting, but then we'd have been faced with lots of slo-mo shots of her husband weeping and the cop looking dazed . . . in other words, more of the same. And isn't the point of the film that despite all the hatred and ignorance, everyone comes out ok in the end and no one needs to feel bad about the color of their popcorn?

I don't disagree that that is the point of the film. The Newton/Dillon storyline supports it 100%. I didn't believe a minute of it, though.

Have you seen Inside Man? There's an almost throw away exchange between Denzel and a racist cop character that was so much more complicated and illuminating than anything in Crash. (And I didn't hate Crash. I just thought it was incredibly simplistic.)

[tryavna]

I agree, Carson Dyle

Carson Dyle is dead, Mrs. Lambert!

[Antoine Doinel]

And isn't the point of the film that despite all the hatred and ignorance, everyone comes out ok in the end and no one needs to feel bad about the color of their popcorn?

Um, no. Nothing really ever tied up completely in the movie and that was kind of the point. The fractured lives of these characters were even more fractured by the end of the movie.....no one ended up being "okay".....

[skuhn8]

And isn't the point of the film that despite all the hatred and ignorance, everyone comes out ok in the end and no one needs to feel bad about the color of their popcorn?

Um, no. Nothing really ever tied up completely in the movie and that was kind of the point. The fractured lives of these characters were even more fractured by the end of the movie.....no one ended up being "okay".....

bunuelian, are you on the right thread? Which film did you watch? Just curious, because The Crash I saw left everyone pretty battered at the end. I still don't understand all the rancor. It's not like the year that piece of trite crap "Chicago" won 355 oscars.

[Carson Dyle]

Carson Dyle is dead, Mrs. Lambert!

Good for you, Tryavna. I've seen that movie more times than is healthy.

[bunuelian]

Well yeah everyone had a few good cries, and some black kid got killed, but who cares? I mean, he was a carjacker and poor!

Seriously, I can't stand this film, so I'm just . . . not being too serious.

Chicago was most certainly much worse, though at least it had sufficient audacity to avoid any pretense of being important on a social level. Crash feels like a slow-burning liberal mind's final reconciliation with the Rodney King riots.

[tryavna]

Carson Dyle is dead, Mrs. Lambert!

Good for you, Tryavna. I've seen that movie more times than is healthy.

Glad you appreciated it.

It's my mother's favorite movie of all time, so I also saw it more times than I probably should have while growing up.

[ben d banana]

Really, this movie is a bucket of wet dogshit. Dillon's character may as well have knocked up his slave in-between her helping his old man off the toilet, only for her to die during childbirth, leaving him to take care of their mixed race baby as a halo illuminates him in his self-sacrificing glory.

[Len]

Watched this yesterday, didn't like it too much.

However, I did love the scene of Sandra Bullock falling down the stairs. That was comic gold and I salute Paul Haggis for it. The vaguely ethnic The Gladiator-esque wailing in the soundtrack and the dramatic, slightly slow-mo stumble down the stairs. That was great, definitely one of the funniest scenes of 2005.

[dekadetia]

Watched this yesterday, didn't like it too much.

However, I did love the scene of Sandra Bullock falling down the stairs. That was comic gold and I salute Paul Haggis for it. The vaguely ethnic The Gladiator-esque wailing in the soundtrack and the dramatic, slightly slow-mo stumble down the stairs. That was great, definitely one of the funniest scenes of 2005.

Definitely the highlight of the film; if you look at it with the right goggles, in fact, the way the scene is cut suggests that Bullock transforms into a cellular phone in midair.

Also, during the "Best Original Song save 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp'" montage, the vocalist sounds like she is singing "and I peeeeee" as Dillon's father is attempting to do just that. =D> Best picture, folks.