Crash vs Magnolia

There's a moment in certain movies, where a coincidence brings two characters together, and they don't know it but we do. When it works, man: chills. Crash is set up like that. It lives or dies completely by the coincidences encountered by its huge cast. Mostly, it lives, and lives large. Crash is intricately plotted, to the point of near-contrivance, but when those random meetings and accidents happen, and those lives intersect, it works. Crash is a complicated movie, but it's simple in its power and message, which if it has one, might be Pay attention to each other.

A rich white couple is carjacked in Los Angeles. He's the District Attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his wife (Sandra Bullock) is so uptight and angry she has the locks changed at home. When she sees that her locksmith is Latino and tattooed, she demands the locks be changed again in the morning. At home, the locksmith (Michael Pena) finds his daughter hiding under her bed, still frightened of the gunfire from her old neighborhood. On his next job, the locksmith encounters an angry, frustrated Persian store-owner, whose trouble speaking English will bring them each an unimaginable degree of fear and sadness. We never have to wonder what any minor character's story might be, because it's coming up, trust me. A racist cop (Matt Dillon) pulls over and harasses a wealthy black TV director and his wife (Terrance Howard and Thandie Newton), while his naïve partner (Ryan Phillippe) looks on. The scene is powerful, and fairly self-contained, but we then get subplots featuring every single character in the scene, away from each other and in various groups. Crash does this again and again. In Los Angeles, we're told, people miss the touching, nudging and bumping they get in cities with fewer cars, so in L.A., just to feel, you have to crash. Couldn't you just nap? Or maybe get a special massage? But no, they crash: with cars, with words, with bullets. Everybody has a story, be they snob, locksmith, carjacker or cop. Everyone gets their say, and for most of them, it's fear, prejudice and hate that they hit with first.

Crash was written and directed by Paul Haggis, no doubt with the aid of multiple Post-its, index cards, charts, drawings and possibly even some tacks and yarn on a map. Somehow, he keeps it all together (there are at least three other subplots I've not even touched on here), not to mention beautifully filmed and edited. The performances in Crash are first-rate, especially Michael Pena, Don Cheadle (as a detective connected to several of the stories), Matt Dillon and Terrance Howard. Dillon probably has one of the harder roles, since he has to be such a nasty guy, but he nails it. He never seems sinister or corrupt, just tired and bitter. He's got a sick dad at home, and while that doesn't excuse his narrow-mindedness and inability to keep his hands to himself, it does go a way in explaining how a guy who was once probably upstanding has now shifted into the easier life of blaming and name-calling. There's a well-timed scene late in Crash with Dillon meeting Newton again. Like ten things need to happen, and they all do, both for the plot and the characters, and the performances are so exciting and tense it's amazing the scene is only about five minutes. Did I mention one of them is upside down? Also surprisingly good is Sandra Bullock. It's not surprising for her to be good, but it's surprising for her to be good in this way. She's a stiff society wife, snapping at the help and going off on racist rants when she feels threatened.  You know who else is really good? Ludacris. His character starts the events in Crash and wraps one of them up in the end. If he had any idea what happens in the middle, he'd probably stayed at home.

Like Crash, Magnolia has a huge cast running around Los Angeles in a series of near-misses, coincidences, and of course, crashes. There's so much happening in Magnolia, sometimes it's hard to keep track of it all, but I think that's part of the idea. You can never know how many lives are connected to yours, and how the larger events that seemingly touch us all are being interpreted on an individual level. Magnolia is one of my favorite movies.

Magnolia was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and he dodges any of the criticism Crash might receive (sometimes a coincidence in a movie can feel a little like a con) by putting all his cards on the table at the start of the movie. We see urban legends and famous wacky coincidences played out for us, so we know the level of plot we're dealing with. Characters are going to cross paths, and unusual events will take place, but rest assured; as a character tells us at the film's climax, “This is a thing that happens.” (Or something like that. Magnolia is three hours; you expect me to memorize it?) The events of Magnolia aren't probable, but that's the idea. They're meant, I think, to be memorable to the characters in the film, so that when anybody brings up (spoiler) the night it rained frogs, then one of the characters can say, “Oh, what a crazy night. That's the night I was working as a nurse for this rich old man and I called in his sex-guru son to say goodbye, while his trophy wife was out trying to commit suicide and a cop was helping a disgruntled employee who was breaking into the stereo shop, and a game show host was breaking down on-air while his star contestant had an even bigger breakdown, and did I mention the stereo shop guy was on the same game show when he was a kid? And that the host's daughter is dating the cop?” And on and on. Magnolia features about twenty brilliant performances; some of the best-framed scenes I've ever seen; intricate, bullet-fast dialogue; and for crying out loud, a cast sing-along. It's too much, really, just like any given day for most randomly selected groups of secretly-connected characters, driving around L.A., hoping for a touch, but settling for a crash. Even the frogs.

Crash: B+
Magnolia: A