DEAUVILLE, France— “Crash”, a movie about the dark side of America — its racism, urban alienation and crime — won a standing ovation at a screening at a French film festival.
The enthusiastic reaction to the feature, an ensemble piece starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Thandie Newton augured well for its chances in the competition in the event being held in the Normandy town of Deauville, which each year showcases new Hollywood releases.
More importantly, the response it has generated here and elsewhere has clearly set it up to be a contender for the next Oscars ceremony.
But the Canadian-born director, Paul Haggis, told journalists that while awards “are all very nice — we like them — the reward that counts is to work with terrific actors.”
The movie follows various ordinary characters, several of them police officers, as they deal or suffer crime and racial discrimination in Los Angeles, where their daily lives are intertwined to redemptive or bloody effect.
It’s an unsafe, violent world filled with pathos and a sometimes depressing hyper-reality that is counterbalanced by near-miraculous coincidences.
Unlike many mainstream movies, it relies on the strong characterisations — filled out by well-known actors working for less than their usual fees — in which good and bad coexist in each of the personages.
“We give you characters we’d feel very comfortable judging, and then go: ‘Oh yeah? Watch this’,” said Haggis.
Haggis explained that the germ of the idea behind his script came from a 1991 carjacking he experienced in his adopted Los Angeles, and that the movie developed as the characters filled out.
“It was very important to me to talk about my fears,” he said, adding that the LA setting in the movie was meant to be representative of the alienation many people feel in modern cities in which they are increasingly separated from others by cars and prejudices.
“Fear spreads and it’s because of ignorance.... On a deep, cellular level, we need the touch of strangers.” Dillon, the sole member of the cast to present the film at Deauville, said his own ideas changed as he researched his role as an LA police officer — a figure he previously thought abused their power over citizens.
“I had my own prejudices and now I see them as human,” said the New York-based actor. He also paused a moment to reflect on how some of the themes — notably America’s uneasy black-white relations and urban insecurity — had emerged in real life in the country’s deep south after the devastating Hurricane Katrina.
Louisana, the worst-hit state, he likened to “a poor country in the Carribean,” and said that “it’s upsetting to be here and see what’s going on over there.”