Depth Analysis of the Movie "Crash"

Essay by adones1University, Master'sA+, June 2006

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Abstract

This paper will provide a broad analysis of the movie "Crash", and yet a specific

picture of visual narrative techniques and audio techniques. The categories contributing to the nucleus and major movie components are theatrical elements, cinematography, editing, and sound. The Academy Award winning movie Crash is a story about society's controversial subjects projected in an "in your face" depiction of lives that in some way or another, cross.

Depth Analysis of the Movie "Crash"

The over-all theme of the film is racism, which is dealt with honestly, brutally, and without justification. This 2006 release from Emmy award-winning writer/producer

Paul Haggis is focused around two unsettling car accidents, a disturbing carjacking, vicious unprovoked workplace vandalism, and the suspicious killing of one police officer by another. The R rated, post 911 drama and action movie is staged against the backdrop of a racist Los Angeles justice system and Los Angles Police Department (Haggis, 2005).

The storyline begins in medias res with the event of the title, a front to rear crash

on Mulholland Drive. The movie then starts over, backtracking 48 hours explaining how

everyone arrived at that crash site. According to Jean-Luc Goddard, "A story should

have a beginning, middle, and an end...but not necessarily in that order."

Several life stories intertwine in the following 36 hours involving a collection of

seemingly random characters consisting of; a black police detective with a drug rehabbed mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race comparisons, the distracted district attorney and his angry, society wife, a racist veteran cop caring for a sick father at home and his young, idealistic patrol partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who thinks everyone...