Nick Jordan
Jonathan Rattner
Film Theory
15 February 2010
Collisions: Eisenstein and Paul Haggis’ Crash
“A good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre”
-Paul Haggis[i]
Paul Haggis’s film Crash (2005) fits his criteria for a “good film” by dramatizing race relations in Los Angeles using only the most severe situations. Haggis’s use of extremes to maximize tension and his goal of engaging the audience provides a modern adherence to the theories of Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein believed that “film is not a product but an organically unfolding creative process in which the audience participates both emotionally and intellectually.”[ii] In this paper, I will examine the process through which Crash engages the audience as its story unfolds and how it relates to Eisenstein’s theories regarding the medium of film.
One of the most striking qualities of Crash is the interconnectedness of all the characters. Coincidental interactions between the characters occur throughout the film, yet these interactions are broken up through the fragmentation of storylines. We see the story from the whole perspective while characters are unaware of what is going on each other’s lives. For example, a young black man, Anthony, played by Ludacris, carjacks the District Attorney of Los Angeles. We then see a cop, Ryan, and his partner Hansen, pull over a black couple, Cameron and Christine, and despite Hansen’s protests, Ryan molests the black woman in front of her husband because he threatens to charge them if they protest. The film continues and Anthony tells his partner in crime that he will never rob a black man. We then see Cameron and Christine fight. Hansen requests a new partner and ends up riding solo. Then, Anthony carjacks Cameron in his navigator and doesn’t realize he is black until it is too late. Hansen responds to the call. Cameron gets out, and Hansen has to talk him down.
These three men have no idea what each is bringing to the table in this situation. The confrontation heightens Anthony’s guilt for breaking his vow to never rob a black man, especially after Cameron tells him he is a disgrace. Cameron has no idea about Anthony’s past vow. Hansen seeks forgiveness from Cameron and wants him to understand that he does not condone what his partner did, but Cameron has no idea what Hansen thinks. This omniscient point of view gives us insight into connections that the characters are unaware of.[iii]
The fragmentation of story through editing and the arrangement of events reflects Eisenstein’s idea of film art. Eisenstein would say the Crash uses “’bundles’ of attractions” to create an experience by piecing the attractions together rhythmically and thematically[iv] using editing and race relations. Had we only seen the story of one of these characters, instead of the extreme experiences of all the characters, we would have no idea where each of them came from. When we see the whole picture, we connect each character’s story through this confrontation in a way that maximizes tension. Instead of one character wanting something, we see the melting pot of their motivations and what each of them is seeking individually in relation to the reactions of each other.
As an audience, we can now draw conclusions from the collision of storylines instead of just one simple story line. We are far more engaged in the complex nature of Crash than we would be in a fluid story from one point of view. For Eisenstein, “(a shot) is a question of audience experience and is thereby a much subtler, much richer concept.”[v] Crash builds on this by using shots to make the audience connect ideas and experience the tension of race in Los Angeles. The shots used depict isolated, dramatic instances from each character’s point of view, leaving the audience to piece together the different racial tensions presented.
Eisenstein would also approve of the way Crash creates a montage of its characters’s lives. The broad array of races represented among its characters enhances the theme of racial tensions even more. For Eisenstein, “montage is… the means by which the individual ‘cells’ become a living cinematic whole; montage is the life principle which gives meaning to raw shots.”[vi] The way shots and raw material of film is put together creates substance behind cinema according to Eisenstein. The interconnected storylines of Crash actually represent a montage of characters more than a montage of shots; however, the effect is still the same. While each story individually may have a simple meaning, when seen as part of a whole, the film raises huge questions of race relations. Haggis juxtaposes the racism of both whites and blacks, Hispanics and Asians, to incite thought in his audience.
Haggis follows Eisenstein as well in the way that he allows the audience to draw conclusions about what is actually going on. In one scene, the D.A. and his wife (both white) are walking down a street towards two young black men, Anthony (Ludacris) and his friend (Larenz Tate). The D.A.’s wife sees the men and draws closer to her husband as Anthony gripes about the blatant racism against blacks in society, commenting on the fear of woman in front of them (the D.A.’s wife) because of their presence. This initial incident raises questions of not only the characters, but also the audience. We are forced to question ourselves and wonder if we would have reacted the exact same way if we were in the woman’s position. We are confronted with not just the character’s racism, but also our own. The scene proceeds, and the two men actually carjack the D.A. and his wife! Her fears are fulfilled and in this way, so are ours! Haggis leaves something open-ended here however. He neither confirms nor denies that the motive for the carjacking was the woman’s racism. It is up to the audience to not only engage their own personal reactions and racism, but also to provide some sort of meaning to the film and connect the dots of the story.
By engaging the audience and encouraging us to draw our own conclusions, Haggis diverges from giving the whole film over to the common Eisenstein-ian edict of art as a machine. For Eisenstein, “the film achieves its effect when the spectator realizes the conclusion…of the collision of such major ideas,”[vii] indicating that there is a specific conclusion that the major ideas are communicating. Crash is more conflicted in the way it presents racial ideas. While Cameron is mistreated by the police for being black, he also fails to stick up for blacks in his work when he gives into the demands of a white director for an actor to act more “black.” The film is full of these contradictions. It juxtaposes the ideals of racial equality with the reality of racism and forces us to choose a path. In this way, the film communicates something to the audience, but we have an ultimate choice as to what that is. Eisenstein would agree with leading the audience to confront a theme,[viii] yet the idea of the audience choosing rings more true with the organic side of Eisenstein’s theories.
Ultimately, Eisenstein goes back and forth on how much the theme dictates the ultimate outcome of the film; however, he never went so far as to completely give the outcome over to outside forces.[ix] Eisenstein’s ideas of theme apply to the development of the film because the organic nature of Crash demands that we see multiple story lines from multiple racial points of view as well as the most dramatic scenarios. These choices had to be made in the production process, one of Eisenstein’s views of the organic nature of film.[x] However, in the end, there is nothing absolute or concrete being said about the finality of racial tensions and relations.
In the end though, the synthesis of Eisenstein’s theories embodies the development and effect of Crash. “Eisenstein, in forcing the spectator to create the image by putting together all the relationships between attractions…, gives to the spectator not a completed image, but the ‘experience of completing an image.’”[xi] This final statement concerning Eisenstein’s take on film parallels Crash. The spectator must put together all the relationships between the characters and their experiences. By piecing these things together, we as the audience do not get the actual image of what is going on, but rather we get to piece it all together and decide for ourselves what the film is actually talking about. Crash doesn’t make blanket statements about race, but rather presents us with conflicting viewpoints and lets us draw conclusions from there.
Crash raises many interesting questions through its dramatization. First of all, what we see is not reality, but not fictional either. The world of Crash is one where the only truth is the most extreme possible situations. Drama is maximized. The characters feel alienated, but through the way it is put together, we see how they are connected.[xii] The irony is that as race separates these people, it is their racism that connects them and creates a community among them. “Eisenstein believed that “to attain ‘reality’ one must destroy ‘realism’”.[xiii] Crash does this by only depicting the most catastrophic and intense moments of each character’s life. We see the reconstruction of reality according to a principle of tension. In addition, Haggis wrote the film using his own experiences (a carjacking that happened to him) as well as things he had heard about (like a black director giving into the racial comments of white directors) in Hollywood.[xiv] From here, he started thinking in hypotheticals to heighten the racism inherent in the film. This thought process presents us with contradictions where characters lash out against racism, but at the same time, give into it when they refuse to make the personal sacrifices that result from challenging racism.
Overall, Crash develops in a way that Eisenstein would approve of. Seemingly unrelated characters and events coincidentally collide to incite a response in the audience. Each individual situation and character is a building block to the whole scene of race relations in the Los Angeles area. In honor of Eisenstein’s love of haiku, I’ll end with Crash in haiku form:
Connected racists
Conflict reveals cowardice
Would we be different?
[i] Applebaum, Stephen.
[ii] Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories: an Introduction. Oxford University Press: New York, 1976. p. 67
[iii] Hsu, Hsuan L.
[iv] Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories: an Introduction. Oxford University Press: New York, 1976. p. 47
[v] i.b.i.d. p. 51
[vi] i.b.i.d. p. 52-53
[vii] i.b.i.d. p. 63
[viii] i.b.i.d.
[ix] i.b.i.d. p. 65
[x] i.b.i.d. p. 64
[xi] i.b.i.d. p. 73
[xii] Hsu, Hsuan L.
[xiii] i.b.i.d. p. 66
[xiv] Applebaum, Stephen.
Bibliography
Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories: an Introduction. Oxford University Press: New
York, 1976. p. 67
Applebaum, Stephen. “BBC-Movies-interview-Paul Haggis”. BBC Home. August 2005.
February 8 2010.
.shtml>.
Dale, Alan. “Paul Haggis’s Crash: First the Bad News”. Blogcritics Video. 19 July 2005. 9
February 2010 < http://blogcritics.org/video/article/paul-haggiss-crash-first-the-bad/>.
Hsu, Hsuan L. “Racial Privacy, the L.A. Ensemble Film, and Paul Haggis’s Crash”. Film
Criticism. 22 September 2006. High Beam Research. 9 February 2010
accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-153620396/racial-privacy-l-ensemble.html>.
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