From the Salmon

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. It’s the sense of touch. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.

These words of regret are the first we hear as the camera eases from the title sequence of Paul Haggis’s Crash to survey the intermingled wreckage of a car accident and a crime scene. It’s a fitting opening image for a movie that proceeds to pick through the shattered lives of a handful of characters thrown together on a tense winter day in Los Angeles.

On the surface, Haggis’s film is wholly concerned with the pervasive evils of racism, or rather, Racism. And to this end, it’s about as subtle as a Lincoln Navigator doing 65 through downtown LA. The epithets fly, the hatred boils, the injustices pile up, forcing you alternatively to gasp and cringe. But the obvious lesson is unoriginal: on some level, we’re all racists. We use race to justify all manner of destructive self-delusional acts. And if we think we’re better than that, all it takes is the right amount of pressure to bring our ugliest natures to the surface.

If that’s all this movie sought to teach us, it would be oppressive; even the moments of redemption would ring hollow.

But the film’s epigraph suggests that there’s more to this story than that. Racism is certainly central, but I think Haggis presents it as a symptom of a much deeper malaise.

We lash out in this way because we’re afraid. But I don’t think we’re truly frightened by a lack of common ancestry or a difference in skin pigmentation. I think we’re terrified in part because we so desperately long for real community and we don’t know where to find it anymore. We long to be embraced, to be fully known and fully loved. But we’ve forgotten how. That is, if we’ve ever knew how in the first place.

John writes in his first epistle that “perfect love drives out fear.” Fearless love sounds great, except we don’t love each other perfectly. Not even close. Love requires intimacy. Intimacy demands that we be vulnerable. And when we’re vulnerable, we give others the power to take advantage of us, to use us, and to hurt us in dazzlingly creative ways.

It’s safer not to go down that road at all. It’s safer to bunker down in our homes, to drive to the ”buy-everything-you-don’t-need-in-one-place” stores where no one will know us. It’s safer to go to the big church where we can slip in and slip out without being noticed. And yet....

I think we miss that touch so much.

I’m ashamed to say that this is the first movie I’ve seen in, quite literally, months. I was inspired to see it by Adam at The Pub, who posted eloquently on this theme after only seeing the trailer:

We can’t live together anymore we must live across from each other instead. Only a few feet from life and yet they might as well be an eternity away.

Friendships have all turned into casual acquaintances because we are terrified to get close to each other. No hugs, no tears, only good times and back biting. A punch in the shoulder or an insincere compliment meant to take the place of genuine human intimacy. To the point that no one knows us and we don’t know them. We are safe, and dying.

We are safe. And dying.

Where is the hope in all this? Haggis doesn’t offer big answers, but he shows redemption beginning to take hold for a few of his characters. I’d love to tell you how, but that would give away too much.

I will say this. The way of hope is to see our self-imposed isolation for what it is, before the walls we’ve built come crashing in on us. The way of grace is not to see vengeance as justice, no matter how badly we’ve been wronged. It’s to love boldly, not live safely. It’s to assume the best about people, even if it gives them an opening to hurt you.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Sounds hard.

Well it is.

It’s turn-the-other-cheek crazy. It’s take-up-your-cross-and-follow-me hard. Haggis doesn’t quite put it this way, but the way of hope and grace is also the way of the cross. And no matter what some American evangelical churches preach, following this path is anything but safe.