2005. In fair Los Angeles, where we lay our scene..
Critics and the media were sent into a tailspin at the 77th Academy Awards, when Crash was awarded the Best Picture Oscar. It had faced stiff competition in the lead up from Brokeback Mountain, a gay love story that had been considered a shoo-in from early on in the race and considered to be a fitting contender for Best Picture.
Many would argue that Brokeback Mountain is empirically, a better film than Crash, but Academy voters choose with their hearts, not their heads. A trawl through the history of the Academy Awards, exemplifies how the Best Picture Oscar regularly awards premise over craft, rather than vice versa. Although style and craft may deem a film worthy of a nomination, Academy members are at the behest of constructed narratives that will stand up in stature with its predecessors.
Despite being regularly noted as of the most unlikely Best Picture winners, I’ve always argued that Crash was a deserving winner that year. A number of factors ultimately led to this underdog coming out on top.
The Power of a Narrative – Crash Vs. Brokeback Mountain
Backed by Lionsgate, Crash engaged in a clever campaign which saw DVDs delivered to every member of the Screen Actors’ Guild, a minor branch of the Academy voting base. It was one of the first to engage members directly by ensuring viewing of Crash as a necessary consideration. As a film which dealt head-on with racial tensions in Los Angeles, its handling of such a theme would need to be equally handled in a judicious manner. When Oprah Winfrey was cited as a key advocate of this film, her support got the public talking.
What was the key difference in narrative that had allowed Crash to supercede one of the first mainstream, same-sex love stories? Ang Lee, the director of Brokeback Mountain had expressed his excitement of marketing the film ‘for what it is.’ When Ledger and Gyllenhaal appeared on adverts, the tagline ‘Love is a force of nature’ was plugged alongside them. Its promotion of the subject matter was lukewarm to say the least, and for such a groundbreaking premise and delicate storyline, the supporting marketing materials didn’t match up to the potential narrative it could have created.
In comparison, Crash sold itself as a drama examining the human condition, intertwined with the untreated racial prejudice in America. Its Los Angeles setting was a vital component of the story, the first lines of the script encapsulating the uniqueness of the vast and bizarre city that many Academy members called home.
“It’s the sense of touch. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
Its tagline was powerful: ‘Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other,’ and was repurposed in marketing materials to supplement a superb, multi-faceted script. Crash’s screenwriter and director Paul Haggis, had been inspired by his own experience of being the victim of a carjacking attempt, in which he questioned the identity and motives of the two men who had targeted him. He aligned a human parallel with this fictional screenplay, and in doing so crafted a narrative that gave real life credence to this story. Subsequent taglines reiterated this sense of societal bias and racial stereotyping, by questioning the audience themselves and the views they may consciously or subconsciously carry around with them, ‘You think you know who you are. You have no idea.’
On critical reception, the film was attacked by a select few for being a vehicle for protracting racial stereotypes. Paul Haggis, the film’s director laughed off the critiques. It had been his very intention to lure the audience in with these stereotypes, before gradually deconstructing them, with raw humanity in the mix. Haggis to this day is still surprised at this Best Picture win, however he noted that it was the narrative and likely the Academy base living in Los Angeles where the film was set, which they identified the most with, ‘for some reason that’s the film that touched people the most that year.’ It doesn’t matter whether voters would have picked Crash or not, if asked again today – it is the film that speaks to them most powerfully at the time that really counts.
FILM FOR THOUGHT 