It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.
Incredible, intense and demanding of undivided attention, Crash is a movie I recommend all people see. It is about people being real and worried, fearful, angry, unpredictable, and volatile. It is about prejudices, judgement, expectation and failures in communication. The viewer gets to see the lives of dozens of people as they criss-cross unexpectedly every moment of the movie. By the end, you know everyone and you know no one. By the end, you barely know yourself. Like Officer Ryan says, “You think you know who you are? You have no idea.”
I can’t believe how people could do what they did in the movie, but then I think about it and realize I do very similar things in my every day life. I make decisions about people that aren’t based on reality, but instead on fear, assumptions, worry and guilt. I judge people and label them for my convenience rather than think about who they really are and appreciate that. I hate what I don’t understand and I blame others rather than accept responsibility for my actions. I am crashing into things all around me and I wonder how others could possibly act this way. I sit still for a second and wonderful how I could possibly stop.
As hard as it is to love others some of the time, it is harder to love others and care about them all of the time. All throughout the movie, that is the challenge. “The ultimate measure of a man,” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” It isn’t the easy times that put people in a difficult position, it’s the critical moments when everything compounds and explodes. Then everyone has to decide what they are going to do and you start to see who these people really are. That is who Officer Ryan is saying we have no idea about: the real side of us that we have not met yet, the side we crash into.
I can’t believe how people could do what they did in the movie, but then I think about it and realize I do very similar things in my every day life. I make decisions about people that aren’t based on reality, but instead on fear, assumptions, worry and guilt. I judge people and label them for my convenience rather than think about who they really are and appreciate that. I hate what I don’t understand and I blame others rather than accept responsibility for my actions. I am crashing into things all around me and I wonder how others could possibly act this way. I sit still for a second and wonderful how I could possibly stop.
As hard as it is to love others some of the time, it is harder to love others and care about them all of the time. All throughout the movie, that is the challenge. “The ultimate measure of a man,” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” It isn’t the easy times that put people in a difficult position, it’s the critical moments when everything compounds and explodes. Then everyone has to decide what they are going to do and you start to see who these people really are. That is who Officer Ryan is saying we have no idea about: the real side of us that we have not met yet, the side we crash into.
