Crash (2004)

Visual and Audio Codes

 Crash

Whats it all about?

Crash is an inspirational movie set in Los Angeles. Ordinary American citizens with very separate and different lifestyles interweaving in stories of race, loss and redemption. Each character has to deal with the tense race relations that occur in the city.

Among the characters are: the Caucasian district attorney, who uses race as a political card; his Caucasian wife, who, having recently been carjacked by two black men, believes that her stereotypical views of non-whites is justified and cannot be considered racism; the two black carjackers who use their race both to their advantage and as an excuse; partnered Caucasian police constables, one who is a racist and uses his authority to harass non-whites, and the other who hates his partner because of those racist views, but who may have the same underlying values in his subconscious; a black film director and his black wife, who believes her husband doesn't support their black background enough, especially in light of an incident with the racist white cop; partnered police detectives and sometimes lovers, one Hispanic female and the other black male, the latter who is dealing with a drugged out mother that feels he isn't concerned enough about taking care of family; an East Asian man who is run over but who is hiding some valuable cargo in the back of his van; a Persian store owner, who feels he isn't getting satisfaction from American society when his store is robbed time and time again; and a Hispanic locksmith, who just wants to keep his family, especially his young daughter, safe in a seemingly unsafe world.

Technical and Audio codes

There are many music tracks in this film which portray the drama genre, the music creates suspense and helps us embrace the story line and understand the mood they want to create. Voice overs are used to give a sense of the past, it also fills us in on the information that is not shown during the film that we need to understand the plot.

The directors use many different camera shots. They used long shots to create a wider view of the surroundings and the positions of the characters from a greater scale to give the viewers non verbal information. Close ups are also used to create emotion and to show the effect racism has on society and how it makes people feel, they also help the viewer to understand what the directors are trying to highlight to get a message across.