Some notes about crash

Fatima Dannemann

A multi-car accident is the start of Crash the first film directed by the screen-writer Paul Haggis. But Crash is not a film about traffic accidents or cars. Its story is based on prejudice and the ways it can spoil not only human relationships but an entire life.

Haggis got the idea after he had his car stolen in Los Angeles in 1991. The way he was involved with authorities, police and the material loss made him reflect about life in big cities. In his opinion, the influence of TV, cinema and other mass media, health system, police and justice makes people develop prejudice.

For this reason, people who have never met before act as mortal enemies only because their ethnicities, religion or appearance. After the accident in the begin of the film, we were taken to the day before and the main caracters and their stories are introduced.

First, two black man steal a luxury car from a white wealth couple. The only reason is because the thieves were mistreated in a restaurant. Then, a mexican who fixes something in a persian shop. This shop were robbed and broken everyday by a group of anti-arab people. There are also the affairs between a black policeman, his latin girlfriends, his junk mother and his brother; The prosecutor and his snobbish wife, the TV director with his asiatic wife.

There is much more. Winner of the Oscar, Crash joins a big and famous cast: Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Brendar Fraser and others. For all these reasons, it is one of the best movies of the last years.