Exam essay: Crash

To what extent do you agree that films offer an insight into society (past or present)? Respond to this question with close reference to a film or films you have studied.

This essay requires you to discuss theme. However, a good film essay should include some reference to the features that make film different form a novel or other type of text. I have tried to include some references to film techniques here. I've indicated this in blue.

ESSAY

Good literature always offers insight into society and films are no exception. In fact, Paul Haggis’ 2004 film, Crash could almost be accused of trying too hard to preach to us about the dangers of racism. However, this does not prevent it from making us think about the way we interrelate with other cultures. He paints a powerful picture of stereotyping, ignorance and fear in the multiracial city of LA.

One of the film’s gentler characters, Daniel, a Mexican locksmith, is twice the victim of stereotyping. Jean Cabot the wealthy wife of a Los Angeles District Attorney lashes out at her husband about Daniel because of his obvious Mexican appearance, his tattoos and low slung jeans, referring to him and his associates as “homeys” and “gangbangers”. She has just been car jacked by two black youths and seems to be fearful of all non-whites. Later Daniel tries to repair the door lock of a Persian shop-owner who accuses him of ripping him off when Daniel says the whole door has to be replaced. This eventually leads to Farhad the shop owner almost killing Daniel after another break in which he thinks Daniel must have engineered. Haggis shows how wrong Farhad and Jean are in their stereotyping of Daniel by techniques such as the “invisible cloak” this loving father gives to his little daughter and the religious aura of the scene where Daniel and his wife clasp the little girl after she and he miraculously escape death at Farhad’s hand.

Related to stereotyping is cultural ignorance and misunderstanding. Los Angeles is one of the most racially mixed cities in the Western world but people show surprising lack of knowledge about other races. Anyone Hispanic is referred to as Mexican with all the connotations of illegal immigration and poverty that the word gives rise to. Even black LAPD officer Graham Waters calls his partner Mexican when in fact her parents are from Guatemala and El Salvador. Antony, a black car-jacker who is redeemed somewhat by freeing some Thai slaves, calls every Asian person a “Chinaman”. When he frees the slaves he gives them money for chop suey and when they look at him uncomprehendingly, he mutters, “fucking Chinanmen!” People who attacked the Persian shopkeeper’s gift shop accuse them of being Arabs and when Farhad and his daughter argue and hesitate over buying a gun, the red neck shopkeeper says, “Plan the jihad in your own time.” This motif of stereotyping is repeated in many of the ten or eleven storylines and is linked effectively by editing so that the tension-filled scenes segue seamlessly into each other. Haggis is trying very hard to make us see the results of racism in society.

While stereotyping and ignorance go hand in hand, they also give rise to worse manifestations of racism: fear and frustration. In Crash, this results in a near murder and an actual murder. The one kind and neutral police officer in the LAPD, Tommy Hanson, tries throughout the film to rein in his bigoted partner, Ryan, who harasses an innocent black couple, Christine and Cameron. When he informs his superior of Ryan’s behaviour, he receives no sympathy. However, he is able to assist Cameron in a later incident, assistance for which a now embittered Cameron is not grateful. Finally he picks up a black hitchhiker, Peter, and in spite of all his good intentions, he too falls victim to racial fear and shoots Peter when he reaches for a St Christopher statuette, thinking it is a gun. This might sound incredible but in the overall context of the film where one racial incident is piled on another, Tommy’s actions give us an insight into how stereotyping and fear inform attitudes to other races in virtually all of us. The wide camera shots of the barren roadside where Tommy throws Peter’s body, sum up the sense of desolation that such division in society can give rise to.

In the post 9/11 world, cultural tensions are high, not just in America but throughout the world. Detective Graham Waters’ words at the start of the film tell us that LA is a city where different races make contact only when they ‘crash’ into each other. The car crash of the title therefore becomes a metaphor for racial division and confrontation, a problem that is particularly bad in LA but also a problem in many communities, including those in New Zealand. Haggis therefore offers us vivid insights into society.

Editing in Crash

Editing is the way the film is cut and put together. It also refers to the transition from shot to shot. In a film like Crash with its multiple storylines, editing is even more essential in conveying the story of the film.

• Remember that there is much meaning at the point of the cut. This is where ideas can be linked between scenes etc.
• Process like fading to black or white as well as dissolves can create a sad mood and give the effect of time passing or of someone's thought processes. It is editing that helps a director to show that a character is remembering the past as in a flashback scene.

Crash won an Oscar for editing. Why?

• the short scenes with segue into each other involve 10 or 11 storylines. It takes real skill to edit these together without confusing the viewer and without a jarring effect
• scenes are matched by common features like the stop sign which is shared at the end of the scene where Cameron tells Antony "You embarrass me, you embarrass yourself" and drops him off at a stop sign. A stop sign is seen in the inpoint of the next scene where Fahrad looks in the rear vision mirror as he waits for Daniel to return home. The visual link is also a symbolic link because stop signs remind us of the central metaphor of the film: the collision of cars and cultures.
  
• Other appropriate links are vehicles. The stolen black navigator is seen driving by when the scene changes from Antony and Peter to another set of characters.
• In the scene where Ryan rings Shaniqua from a cafe, we see in the same location the Thai slave deal being finalised between two Asian men. When Ryan walks outside a white van drives past and obscures him: the van in which we will later see the Thai slaves. Then the film cuts to Antony and Peter in the black SUV which drives fast, turns and skids after which we see a crash scene where Conklin has shot Lewis the black cop and Graham Waters and Ria have been called to investigate. The movement of the black SUV is to the right and the movement of the officer pulling the crash scene ribbon is to the left so the two scenes merge into each other seamlessly and are linked also by the motif of cars which continues through the film. In this short section of the film we see three different scenes but between them and within them are links because they all do with racism in many different forms: Asians against other Asians, resentful black youths stealing from rich whites and a white police officer abusing a black health official. This is an impressive feat of editing.
  

Summaries of main plots

These are some of the main plots. They are very simple when you read them in chronological order (in normal order of time) and this makes you appreciate how skillfully they are woven together and how they reinforce each other by providing parallels.

1. Detective Graham Waters and his partner Ria are called to a shooting: a narcotics detective Conklin has shot and killed another officer, a black detective Lewis. Internal Affairs investigates; $300,000 is found hidden in the spare tyre of the car Lewis was driving. Waters is asked by the DA's office to support their making an example of Conklin for the incident, from which they will gain political advantage. Graham resists a job offer but agrees to their request to save his brother Peter from a mandatory life sentence in prison. Later, Graham arrives at a crime scene to find that his brother has been shot.
2. Farhad, an Iranian shop owner, buys a gun after his wife was threatened. He does not realise that his daughter Dorri has taken blanks instead of bullets. Daniel is sent to fix the lock on the shop door, but advises that the door needs replacing. Farhad thinks he is being ripped off. When the shop is vandalised, the insurance company decides it is negligence. Farhad blames Daniel and demands recompense; Lara sees her father facing a gun without his 'protective cloak' and runs out to save him. The gun goes off but Lara is fine.
3. Peter and Anthony car-jack the Navigator of D.A. Rick Cabot and his wife Jean. They knock over Korean Choi and dump him at A&E; because of blood on the vehicle, Lucien rejects it. They try to steal another Navigator but Cameron resists ; Peter runs away , but Anthony is in the vehicle when the police stop it. Officer Hanson persuades the other officers to let Cameron go. Anthony finds Choi's abandoned white van and it is found to be full of illegal Asian immigrants. Anthony releases them.
4. D.A. Rick Cabot looks for a way of spinning the car-jacking and decides that hanging Conklin out to dry would be the best way.
5. Jean Cabot feels threatened by Daniel, a Mexican, who changes their locks; she falls down the stairs and discovers none of her 'friends' actually care about her, whereas her Mexican maid is kind.
6. Locksmith Daniel Ruiz is a loving father who has recently moved house because a bullet came through the window of his five-year-old daughter Lara's bedroom. He calms her fears with a fairy cloak that will protect her.
7. Choi is paid for his van-load of Asian (Cambodian?) immigrants but is knocked over before he can deliver them and is dumped at the hospital. His wife Kim Lee, who had previously rear-ended Ria's car , finds him; he tells her to cash the cheque. Anthony takes the abandoned van and releases the Cambodians.
8. Officer John Ryan cares for his father who is suffering from a urinary disorder; Ryan can get no help from his medical insurance company. Angry, Ryan takes off after a black Navigator even though his partner Tommy Hanson tells him it is not the stolen vehicle. Seeing what he thinks is a white woman with a black man, he stops and harasses the Thayers, sexually assaulting Christine. Later, he rescues her from certain death in a car crash.
10. Officer Hanson is appalled by Ryan's racism and harassment and asks for a different partner; he is assigned to his own car. He rescues Cameron, who is defying police out of anger and frustration. Later, he picks up Peter who is hitch-hiking. Hanson mistakes Peter's St Christopher for a gun and shoots him; he dumps the body and burns his car. Graham arrives at the crime scene where Peter's body lies and recognises his brother. He takes his mother to see the body. She blames Graham.
11. Humiliated by Ryan and by his wife's anger, Cameron goes to work and is further angered by another racist put down. When Anthony and Peter try to steal his Navigator, he responds with fury and fights them. He takes off in the vehicle with Anthony in the passenger seat; stopped by police, he defies them. Hanson, to make amends for Ryan the previous night, defuses the situation. Cameron agrees to go home, and eventually tells Christine he loves her.

Crash DVD chapter headings and plot summary

The list of chapter headings below gives you a rough idea of the structure of the plot. Note that there are actually 60 scenes. Also take note of how skillfully Haggis weaves all these different scenes together. Another important task is to trace the character arc of some of the lead characters like Cameron and Antony, Jean and Farhad. The next blog entry will look at editing and character arcs.

1. Credits/Frame of reference

• Accident scene - Graham and Ria's car rear-ended by Korean woman, Kim Lee. Ria argues with Kim Lee and mocks her English while Graham crosses to other side and speaks to officer. A "dead kid" has been found in the scrub. Graham looks at shoe and then into the distance. The shot is held, the screen fades to white and then to a wide shot of LA with Yesterday superimposed

2. Fear

• Gunshop.Farhad - angry - with help of Dorri is buying a gun. Speaking in Parsi, accused of being a terrorist by the shop owner, sent out of shop. Dorri takes gun and buys some ammo in red box - shopkeeper wonders if she know what sort of ammo it is. He makes suggestive marks to her.
• Street, coming out of coffee bar Antony and Peter in reverse tracking shot walking towards us. Articulate, humorous, conversation about whites' 'unreasonable' fear of blacks. Jean and Rick Cabot are walking towards them, Jean complaining about the time Rick spends on the phone. Antony and Peter carjack the Cabot's Lincoln Navigator.

3. A nice gun

• Antony and Peter converse in side the navigator, mainly about the St Peter's statuette
• Crime scene where a shot man is a dead cop, black, shot by a white cop
• Cabot home. David is changing the locks and Jean complains about his tattoos and ethnicity. Rick complains about what the carjacking will do to his image - he needs a positive spin on his relationship with blacks

4. Sobriety test

• Cafe: Park hands Choi a cheque (we later find out it is for illegal immigrants). As he leaves he passes the phone to Ryan who is trying to get help for his father
• HMO office - Shaniqua at end of phone
• Cafe: Ryan walks to car. Choi's van passes
• Inside car. Ryan joins Hanson. Get message about stolen Navigator. A different one passes; Ryan pulls it over in spite of protests from Hanson.
• Offensive strip search of Christine.

5. A little anger

• Fahrad's shop. Door will not close. Must have been a forced entry earlier. Dorri loads gun for Farhad.
• Christine and Cameron's house. they argue because Cam did not stand up to the police.

6. Invisible and impenetrable

• Daniel's home. They have moved becaus eof a previous drive by shooting. He gives Lara an invisible cloak

7. A personal problem

• Inside Navigator. Antony and Peter discuss hip hop. Knock over Mr Choi.
  
• Precinct office. tommy Hanson asks for a new partner to escape Ryan's racism. Lieutenant Dixon tries to dissuade him because Dixon is black and does not want to rock the boat.
• A & E: Antony and Peter dump Mr Choi
  

8. Locked and loaded

• Fahrad's shop
• Daniel changes lock but tells Farhad he needs a new door. Farhad thinks he is being ripped off - insults Daniel who screws up the job sheet and throws it away.
• Stolen car yard. Navigator is rejected by Lucien because it has blood on it.
  
• Grahams bedroom
• Mother rings while he is in bed with Ria. He and Ria argue and he calls her a Mexican

9. Taking the bus

• Ryan's place: father having trouble urinating
  
• Farhad's shop: door has been vandalised
• DA's office in City Hall: Rick and Karen come through. Ask about the Conklin shooting
• Antony and Peter come out of A's place: poor: contrast to City hall. Car won't start. Antony says he doesn't like stealing from black people.
• Cabot house: Jean snaps at Maria about dishwasher
• Street: Antony and Peter forced to walk. Buses are designed to humiliate people of colour

10. Ringing false

• TV studio: producer tells Cameron that black actor does not sound black enough
• HMO office: Ryan talks to Shaniqua to get help for father but then talks angrily about how positive discrimination destroyed his father's life

11. Brother's Keeper

• Locksmiths office: receptionist refuses to give Farhad Daniel's address
• Farhad's shop: Shereen is washing walls and wondering how people can call them Arabs when they are Persian or Iranian
• Mrs Waters place: she asks Graham if he found her brother. Drugs. He puts her to bed and checks her fridge for food. As he returns to car Ria tells him Internal Affairs has called to investigate Conklin killing.

12. Uninsured

• TV Studio: Christine comes to meet Cameron. She ends up arguing with him about police sexual harassment.
• Farhad's shop: Insurance will not pay because door should have been replaced

13. Trust

• Police precinct: Ryan tells Tommy Hanson who has asked to work alone that he has no idea who he is
• Internal Affairs garage with Ria and Graham. They find $300 in a tyre in the Mercedes. Suggests Lewis (cop who was shot) was on the take or dealing.
• TV studio: Cameron broods
• Farhad's shop: he sits outside and broods. Rubbish bin: see Daniels cast-off job sheet
• Street: Ryan and new partner Gomez arrive at a car crash. Christine trapped inside - petrol dripping. Christine is scared of Ryan but he saves her.

14. On a gut level

• DA's office Flanagan persuades Graham to support a prosecution against Conklin
• Graham is determined not to accept a bribe but then grimly accepts a deal to make his brother's arrest warrant go away.
• Fahrad's car: he drives through Daniels suburb and sees kids come home from school

15. Breaking Point

• Cameron is held up by Antony and Peter. His pent up fury and frustration give him the strength to fight them off. Peter runs off and Antony gets in car with him. They argue - chased by police car - stop at Santa figure with hand up

16. Threatening gesture

• Cameron angrily confronts armed police. Tommy defuses the situation. Drives away with a concealed Antony. Lets him out: "You embarrass me."

17. A really good cloak

• Farhad confronts a puzzled Daniel and then shoots at him, not knowing that Dorri has loaded gun with blanks. Meanwhile Lara has run out of house to protect her father with the invisible cloak.

18. Happenstance

• Mrs Water's home. Graham stocks her fridge while she sleeps
• Cabot house: Jeans talks to friend but seems to be cut off. Falls down stairs
  

19. Miscommunication

• Car: Peter is hitching and is picked up by Ryan. Misunderstanding and fear. Hanson shoots Peter
  

20. Human cargo

• Side of road. Aerial shot of wasteland where Graham looks at body of his brother. this is what he was looking at at start.
  
• Bus: Antony is riding in it! Sees a white van with keys in door and gets out.
• Hospital: Kim Lee finds her husband. Mr Choi tells her to cash a cheque immediately
• Stolen car yard: Antony takes van to Lucien but they find illegal immigrants within it. Lucien offers to buy them

21. Things to Do

• Morgue: Ria watches as Graham brings mother to see Peter's body. Dorri takes phone call. Graham's mother blames him for brother's death. Graham walks out
  

22. Connections

• City Hall and Cabot house: Rick talks to Jean in bed with sprained ankle. None of her friends available to help her. Is Rick having an affair with Karen? Maria brings Jean a drink. Jean: "You're the best friend I've got."
• Waste ground: Tommy burns car
• Ryan residence: Ryan hold his suffering father
• Cabot house: Rick locks door and looks out - at his reflection?
• Daniel's house: Lara and Elizabeth asleep in bed. Daniel looks out window.
  

23. LA Snowfall

• Cameron's car at waste ground. thinks snow is falling. Gets out - it is ash. Cathartic effect. Christine rings from their bedroom. Cameron: "I love you."
• Roadside: Graham looks over city from site of Peter's body. Find St Christoper's statuette
  
• Street: Antony pulls up in van and lets Cambodians out.
  
• Street: Shaniqua's car is rear ended. Camera pulls out to aerial shot. Snow falls.
  

24. End credits

crash set design

Designing a Film - with acknowledgment to Artemis Film Guides

The Production Designer and the Art Director work very closely with the director to create the look and feel of the film.

The Set Decorator (or dresser) is responsible for providing the detail of a set, whether it has been built specifically for the film or rented: the pictures on the wall, the books or ornaments on a shelf, the wallpaper and style of curtains. Clothes and the décor of rooms can be a quick and useful way of giving information about characters, about their style of life and their personalities, just as the objects that you value - your favourite clothes, treasures, photos, souvenirs - tell an outsider something about you. Objects can be as important as people in a film, and can develop an overwhelming sense of presence. The way they are lit and photographed can contribute to this.

Crash had an Art Department of nine. It was filmed entirely on location in L.A., making use of existing places, as cheaply as possible. The police station was set in a Red Cross rooms; the hospital entrance was a school. The house the Cabots live in is director Paul Haggis's own home. The two bedrooms of Cameron and Christine and Ryan are the same space with a false wall in place.

When designers and set decorators decide what a room will look like, they are actually creating a backstory for the characters that live there.

Jean and Rick Cabot: large house, beautifully kept; wood panelling; art work on walls – everything suggests money; housekeeper to keep it clean. Many framed photographs. Expensive kitchen – with child's paintings cf. Daniel's

Daniel and Elizabeth: small, modest home in suburbs; welcoming inside – Christmas tree with home-made decorations; Lara's room has drawings and posters on walls.

Cameron, Christine – bedroom only: beautifully colour-co-ordinated with deep red and cream – superb taste; modern lamp; African art on walls – they have both the money to indulge and clearly the interest

Ryan – bedroom, bathroom: plain, simple, bare – a very masculine environment; no women, not much money, which probably feeds his anger

Graham – his bedroom: mostly white; wooden furniture, armchair; books on shelf; fairly plain décor, no frills; no real sense of his personality from it – he just sleeps there

Mrs Waters' place – where Graham grew up: piano, family photos suggest better times in the past; state of her fridge + drug gear suggests she does not take care of herself.
the exterior of Anthony's place: poorer part of the city – rickety wooden gate etc. He isn't getting rich stealing cars. Lots of trees and other greenery. Old furniture and other rubbish on the street. Contrast with the steel and glass of the centre of the city (referred to by Graham in his opening speech).

It is clear to see how the set design defines and reinforces the characters. Notice particularly the warmth and humility of Daniel's place in contrast to the cold expensive luxury of Jean's. Daniel is one of the good guys in the film. He has not become cynical but gives his daughter a protective covering of love and faith. The set design reinforces this ordinary goodness.

Setting of Crash

Setting

In any work of literature, setting is more than just a background. A well depicted setting helps create the world of the film, a world we enter into to become involved in the characters and their struggles. In a good text the setting works with character and other aspects to convey the themes or ideas. In a film because it is a visual text, setting is particularly important and has a symbolic function. It can also create mood, atmosphere and emotion, heightening our emotional connection to plot and character.


Crash is set in the real world, in modern LA. It is a realistic yet also symbolic setting, as the city is imbued with meaning and many shots draw back to the birds eye view to give us an eye of God perspective on the isolation of individuals and the collision between them in an impersonal city.

Haggis refused to shoot the film in a cheaper location. This is a strength of the film because it is grounded in the real LA, using various identifiable parts of the city, notably Ventura Boulevard, which is mentioned by name, as are Westwood and Studio City. By grounding his film about racism and division in a real place, he has made the social problems more concrete and recognisable. We can then absorb his message better and transfer it to our own world or universalise the message.

You could also say that the city is a character. Graham's opening words inform us that this is so.

Moreover, LA, home of Hollywood is not unknown to us. We see it as a an extreme example of Western materialism and will certainly be aware of racial tensions there since the Rodney King fiasco of 1992, especially.

Rodney Glen King is an African-American taxi driver who was violently arrested by officers of the LAPD The event was videotaped by a bystander. The incident raised a public outcry among those who believed it was a racially motivated and gratuitous attack. In an environment of growing tensions between the black community and the LAPD (as well as increasing anger over police brutality and more general civic issues such as unemployment, racial tensions, and poverty in the black community of South Central Los Angeles) the acquittal in a state court of the four defendants, charged with using excessive force, provided the spark that led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. (Wikipedia)

One motif of the setting (repeated image) is the barren land by the motorway outside the city where the Graham and Ria have an accident and Peter's body is found. Several times at beginning and end we go there. Wide shots of the lonely area with the lights of the city in view establish a bleak and foreboding atmosphere for the consequences of all the crashes or racial collisions that have occurred in the film. This is teamed with close ups of Graham's face as he looks at his brother shoe and helicopter shots giving us a wide perspective of the area.

Other shots which establish the setting as recognisably LA and establish atmosphere are those of suburban streets with their ubiquitous palm trees and Spanish style houses such as when Cameron gets into conflict with the police and Farhad confronts the Mexican locksmith. That it is a rather cheesy American society is established by the American flag flying in the street and all the ostentatious Christmas decorations like the inflated Santas and reindeer and so on which decorate the streets for the Xmas season.

Haggis used LA locations wisely. Shots of 'City Hall' are taken in a spectacular old building whose elegant corridors seem to symbolise the gap between the life of the poor in LA and the world of the rich and powerful. It also acts as an ironic counterpoint to the corruption that occurs there where people will cover up crimes with bribes and blackmail.

The time of the setting is also important. It is close to Christmas. This gives Haggis a chance to use the irony of the happy Xmas decorations and ti use snow as a possible symbol of blessing. As the director says, "If it can snow in LA, then there's hope for all of us."

It is contemporary as can be seen by the references to 9/11. "Yo Osama. Plan the jihad on your own time."

The social setting is of a racial melting pot which boils over frequently into violent confrontations. A setting where fear and ignorance poisons people's perceptions of others.


All in all, the setting in this film is one of its best features. It has a firmly local LA identity that gives it a good foundation in reality and an excellent springboard from which to look at multicultural matters in the wider world today, especially the world post 9/11.

Crash booklet

I have just completed a rough copy of a Crash study guide: just themes and character. You can link to it here. More to come!

Good Essay on Crash

CRASH: FILM NOIR IN POST-MODERN LA

Authors: Wallace Katz ^a; Paul Haggis ^a

Published in: New Labor Forum, Volume 15, Issue 1 May 2006 , pages 121 - 125

Subjects: Political Philosophy; Theory & Political Sociology;

Formats available: HTML (English) : PDF (English)

If you would like to pay in any other currency please see the purchasing help pages for more information.

Abstract Crash is a movie about racial divisions and conflict in Los Angeles, a metropolis that now has a larger and more diverse minority-majority population than any city in the country, including New York. Asians, native and immigrant blacks from Africa and the Caribbean, Latinos from the Caribbean, Latin and Central America and especially Mexico, as well as newly arrived white immigrants, particularly Russians and Iranians, now comprise LA's demographic majority. Crash's ostensible or initial message is that these minority groups cohabit but do not cooperate; indeed, they dislike and fear one another as much or more as they dislike and fear white Angelenos. Everybody in the film, one way or another, is or turns out to be a racist, which makes for a disturbing movie. Don Cheadle plays a conscientious and decent black police detective who nonetheless describes and thereby offends his Latina lover (and police partner) as Mexican, when she is in fact El Salvadoran and Puerto Rican. Matt Dillon plays a white cop who stops an upper-middle-class black couple, knowing full well that the van they are driving is not the one reported stolen. Dillon's character then creates a situation in which he can humiliate the man - a TV director in Hollywood - and grope the woman. The cop justifies his racist behavior in this instance by the fact that he caught husband and wife having sex in public in their big black van. Two young black men are amateur car thieves who work for a chop shop run by a Russian immigrant. One of them is constantly mouthing prejudice against whites, even as he fears them, and it is probably out of racial hatred and fear alike that, on the spur of the moment, he and his pal highjack the SUV of a white couple in a white neighborhood, Westwood, a venue usually off-limits to angry lower-class black youths. The white couple is not harmed, but the woman (Sandra Bullock) and her spouse, coincidentally the District Attorney of Los Angeles (Brendan Fraser), are stunned. The woman is portrayed as nasty, imperious, self-pitying (it is obvious that her husband, the DA, is cheating on her with his gorgeous young black aide) and a racist to boot. When, after the car theft, a Latino locksmith shows up to replace her house locks, she tells her DA spouse - the locksmith is within hearing distance - that it is another immigrant and olive-skinned gangster who will now have duplicates of her keys to distribute to his "homies." The DA is also a racist, but in a very special way that shows him as a political player, a man of power who will do or say anything to get ahead, but with little regard for the public good or for trivialities like justice or truth. What bothers him about his car being hijacked by two black youths with guns is that he needs black votes and black support for his political career and he fears that if he makes a big deal of the robbery he will seem like a law-and-order and anti-black politician. What is more, in the face of considerable contrary evidence, he wants to make an example of a white cop who has killed a black cop in the line of duty, just so he can make points with blacks. Lastly, there is an Irani shopkeeper who is both the object of racism and a murderous racist himself. When he goes to buy a gun to protect his shop against theft, the gun store proprietor insults him by calling him Osama. Later in the film, this same Irani shopkeeper is robbed because he fails to fix his back door. When his insurance company refuses reimbursement for the robbery because of the broken door, the Irani blames everything on a Latino locksmith who installed a new lock but also advised that the door be replaced. The Irani goes after the Latino locksmith (the same one who came to fix the locks on the DA's house) with gun in hand and intent to kill. Paul Haggis, the director, has clearly laid out a complicated story involving many characters of diverse and divided races. This is a good start, but, happily, Crash gets better. It is a great film because it is about many things equally as important as race - for example, socioeconomic class and status. The DA's wife is not so much a racist as a classist; she despises herself and uses her high position in society to project her anger and self-hatred on immigrant servants - maids, locksmiths, etc. In Crash, class distinctions can be subtle and intra-racial as well as interracial: after a scene in which the upscale TV director saves the life of one of the car thieves, he tells the young hood: "You embarrass me"; and, more important for the kid's self-understanding and later transformation - "you embarrass yourself." Crash is also about the city of Los Angeles itself, especially the spatial geography of this sprawling polycentric metropolis. Contrary to what many people who have never been there think, Los Angeles is not a suburban or exurban city or an aggregation of so-called "edge cities." It is about the extension of the urban in all directions on an apparently never-ending basis.