Crash - We're Interlocked!

 (2004) ★★★★★

'Crash' was considered a black horse when it won the Academy Award for Best Picture back in 2004 over 'Brokeback Mountain', which is totally not my cup of tea because a) I'm not gay, b) I'm not a fan of Ang Lee's films, c) there's nothing technically impressive or emotionally striking really, at least to me. 'Crash' did leave Brokeback fans heartbroken back there, but if you've watched them both, you should've known why 'Crash' is in any sense a better flick, and is even one of the all time classics.

There're stories of people of different races and backgrounds so skillfully told that you wouldn't confuse who's who and what's going on. That's something very challenging for a scriptwriter or a director to accomplish though. It could go terribly wrong if you make the audience feel like those characters and their stories are forcefully or say, non-purposefully blended. 'Crash' is like a beautiful symphony of different groups of people, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, struggling to realize the fact that they're in essence no different at all. They're nothing but victims of racism, of their ignorance, of pride and prejudice, of jealousy and bias.

The message is, we should learn to put aside our bias and emotions before we can get to understand this world and people around us much better and more accurately. We tend to, like those in 'Crash', judge a person by what he appears, but the fact is, what it appears is not what it is. Sadly, that's something we never learn. Even though we try to sometimes, we find it so hard to change the way we look at those who don't belong to our group. We can't see who they really are. What's worse is, we think we know who we are, but we don't, till we meet the 'crash'. How pathetic indeed.

'Crash', however, is not a bleak, cold film only made to upset or disappoint you by telling you how discrimination is so inevitable. Instead it's full of hopes that men will learn; men will change; men can be fixed after all. All they need is the 'crash' to really get to know one another and how they're intertwined in fact.

Next time you walk down the streets, don't think of people passing you by as something irrelevant to you. The truth is, they're part of you, and you're part of them. You would be the trigger of the crash in their lives, and so would they in yours. That's, whether you like it or not, how it works!