Crash
2005 · Directed by Paul Haggis
Original language: English
- drama
The story
In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.
What it’s like
Cool, washed-out daylight and sodium-orange interiors, with hand-held camera that lurches close to faces in cramped cars and shops, then drifts back to wide, smog-hazed freeway shots of Los Angeles. The palette is bruised and dusty, with grey-blue cold in the wealthy Brentwood homes and warm amber in the lived-in corners of the city, and the editing cross-cuts between strangers so that a single moment ripples across several lives. The score is restrained strings and piano that swell at the wrong moments, and the city's noise (sirens, traffic, raised voices) sits right up against the mix. Vibe: tense, weary, sour-sweet and uneasy, the kind of film that sits heavy after the credits. It suits a night in when you want something serious, not a background watch. Its intensity is moderate to high: a few sudden, brief outbursts of violence, gunfire and a car accident, plus strong profanity, racial slurs, and sexual harassment themes, but no gore. Its people are prickly and stuck, slowly and painfully seeing each other more clearly. For viewers who want a morally tangled, emotionally bruising portrait of a city under strain.
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