It’s fate, not coincidence

"In L.A., nobody touches you... we’re always behind metal and glass... people miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something." This is the opening scene where Don Cheadle’s character states the main theme of the movie. Crash is set in Los Angeles shortly after the ominous Sept. 11 attacks. It is an ensemble drama which tracks the intersecting lives of a Brentwood housewife and her district attorney husband, a Persian store owner, a female doctor, two police detectives who are also lovers, an African-American television director and his wife, a Hispanic locksmith, two car-jackers, a rookie cop and his racist, disillusioned partner and a middle-aged Korean couples.

The film brings us a distinguished cast, who sacrificed their big salaries for the project: Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Don Cheadle, Ryan Philippe, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges.

Crash, with its limited release in Metro Manila, is not a conventional film. Do not expect any "Hollywood special effects," or a feeble storyline. But expect dramatic twists, unpredictable plots and sub-plots and profound dialogues.

Crash begins with out-of-focus lights, moving in the dark, as if a stunned post-collision consciousness was slowly coming back into focus. The time is Christmas, a very cold Christmas for Los Angeles, with dreamy flakes of snow in the air. At the side of the road the police are investigating a shooting; a young black man has been killed. Cheadle’s detective examines the crime scene. The movie then goes back to the previous afternoon and fills in the events leading up to Cheadle’s unhappy moment. Two young African-Americans, Anthony (the rapper Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Peter (Larenz Tate), argue merrily on the street. Anthony is convinced that everything in his life, is part of a white plot to humiliate blacks. The real joke, however, is that Anthony, who rants that whites assume that all young black men are thugs, is actually a thug.

Crash is built on the principle that we are connected to the strangers who pass through our lives for no more than a second. There is no such thing as coincidence, only fate. We are meant to crash into one another, to take something from each other, to touch another’s life as we try to figure into one another, to take something from each other, to touch another’s life as we try to figure out our own.

What makes Crash so fascinating and moving and even a little funny at times is how nothing happens as we think it will. Tragedy befalls those nearing redemption, while it gently passes over those who have gone out of their way to meet a bad end. Those we think kind exhibit casual cruelty, and those we think awful reveal humanity when least expected. And the film allows for people to evolve, to actually learn from their mistakes and pitiless ways, and does so without proselytizing.

Haggis, directing a stellar cast in what is ultimately an important movie and one of the year’s best, reminds us that it is the small disasters that ultimately do us in, that our demises come not with a big bang but a quiet thud – that moment when we sell our souls for the promise of something better, that moment when we say something we can never take back, that moment when we sell our souls for the promise of something better, that moment when we say something we can never take back, that moment when we look the other way and invite doom through our door. Crash reminds us we are not safe from the outside world or from ourselves, that we are all susceptible to foolishness, selfishness, avarice, cowardice and, most of all, ignorance.