Viraj's Weblog

I haven't been watching alot of TV so had no idea what this movie was about initially. What drew me to it was a previous movie also called Crash by David Cronenberg. Let's look at the plot outline of that movie on IMDB:

Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former 'TV scientist' has become obsessed by the marriage of motor car technology with what he sees as the `raw sexuality' of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes who they contort into the shape of trapped-corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.

I loved that movie . In general, I loved all Cronenberg movies. They are so visceral and deal with extremely odd aspects of human behavior.

However, this new Crash is far from the old version. It's a story about racial tensions in Los Angeles, and I have to admit it's one of the most intelligent movies I've seen tackling this subject. It reminded me of Magnolia, where many different threads in the story are followed and they ultimately all interweave with each other as if through divine intervention. It shows how good people are capabable of evil, and how bad people are capable of good.

There is an interesting comment by the Don Cheadle character describing life in LA as being seperated from other beings between glass and steel and no one touches you. We desire so much to feel another person that we crash into them.