A Soul Crash

    I』ve seen hundreds of movies before, and I』d like to spend one or two hours every week indulging myself in those stories which would obsess me. For me, watching a movie is interesting and exciting, because every time I would put myself as one of the characters and experience the totally new and different life inside; but it’s also a solemn process, just like a ritual, for after viewing there’s always something left for us audience to think, to retrospect, to feel and to comprehend.
    I would say I am a movie junkie, definitely——but not for a movie like Crash. I』m not saying it’s not a good movie——however from every aspect, it’s perfect, and its perfectness has won it the best film in Oscar 2006. It’s just too grave, too heavy, for me to watch and bear the plot of it.
    The movie is full of racism and discrimination: East-Asians and Hispanics are treated inferiorly, African-Americans are insulted or even killed by Caucasians, Chinese are caught and nearly resold and et cetra. We could run into slangs, fights, gunshots at every scene, and people in the movie always behave with hatred, fears and tears.
    It’s just the surface. What’s ironic to me is that a person who I believed to be just and he himself even tried to be impartial at last killed someone innocent simply because of his own suspicion which turned into his injustice; a white guy whom I despised because he sexually harassed a black woman and meanwhile humiliated her husband surprisingly saved that woman’s life in a car accident under the risk of losing his owns. It’s funny, but sad, to have my impression of each character subverted all the time throughout the two-hours watching, to realize there’s no exact boundary between good and evil. It’s even sadder to see the victims pity themselves but without consciousness also discriminate others and therefore hurt someone else. There』re a lot of scenarios that almost made me cry, but I didn』t, and instead when the movie felt into the end, I slid into a depression.
    The first time I heard the name of the movie, Crash, I thought and imagined of it literally: two cars crashed, owners quarreled, and then misunderstandings and discrimination generated. It was the image I hold until the movie really began, and in fact, it is the beginning of Crash. However, with the story going on, I figured out it’s not the point at all. Except the beginning and the ending, we could barely see any car crashes at any other minute. Then why the movie is called 「Crash」?
    I』ve been thinking of this question for a while. I thought the director could give it a better name, I even tried myself, to utter any name more directly related to racism and discrimination, but I failed. It has come to me that with the already given name 「Crash」, any other words to title the movie would fade, because the word 「Crash」 is not that simple, not that easy to mean only an accident; it represents the complicated collision of our thoughts, views and souls. What would we do when we have to seek help from someone we dislike? What do we feel when someone we used to look down upon turns out to be a helping hand and gives us a warm hug consoling our minds?
    Crash has all the answers.
    I would』t have encountered such a meaningful and thought-provoking film myself. It just crashed on me unintentionally, but I』m wholly hit.