This movie is rated R. Please use discretion when using the movie in church settings.

The complexities of race and racism are front and center in this year's Oscar-winning film, "Crash."  Indeed, the film serves as an examination of our deepest worries and anxieties about race.   It does so by showing the ironies that are at the heart of our racial dis-ease where all is not as it seems.  I have always relished the saying, "Anywhere you find an example of irony --it is sure to be God at work." Though an oversimplification, it remains a good rule of thumb.  If it were strictly true, Paul Haggis, director and author of "Crash," might qualify as a theologian. "Crash" presents a realistic, no-nonsense perspective on racism that takes its irony seriously.  It also shows that grace can be mediated through the most unlikeliest of vessels.

 "Crash" is a gritty account of 24 hours in parts of Los Angeles unlikely to be seen through the windows of a tour bus.  During this single day, lives collide with the velocity and impact of an automobile accident.  In the opening scene of the movie, the black Detective Graham (Don Cheadle) sits in the passenger seat of a police car -- he and his partner have just been rear-ended at the scene of an apparent murder. He stares out the window and says, "It's the sense of touch.  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.  I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

Detective Graham poignantly articulates the isolation and alienation that characterize his life as a black man. That his state of mind is immediately mistaken by his partner to be crash-induced delirium sets the stage for the irony that will cascade forward. One tag line for the movie is, "You think you know who you are. You have no idea." No one and nothing is as it seems at first glance.

The spiraling "Crash" storyline never loses its power and is never allowed to spin out of control. Haggis reveals interconnected yet disparate lives.  Characters are so fully and sympathetically portrayed that the viewer can't avoid identifying with them. We feel their confusion and despondency, and the connection can be disconcerting. We recoil to see our own deeply hidden prejudices reflected in them.  True to life, every character is layered with some degree of racial bigotry, love, self-loathing, compassion, suppressed anger, violence, shame or humiliation.  No one is spared.  Haggis' story challenges every preconceived notion we have about the characters. There are moments when truth is not recognized for what it is, and a character, having the opportunity to speak up, remains silent. The danger of such silence and isolation is that we lose our sense of place in society and end up, either by accident or intent, crashing into one another.

"Crash" begins and ends with scenes of racial wreckage.  But glimpses of redeeming and touching compassion keep the movie from unremitting darkness.  There are even examples of self-sacrifice from those in whom we least expect to find it. "Crash" is a profoundly moving film and if, like me, you are conflicted by your own attitudes about race you may recognize yourself in it. Following a screening of his film, director Paul Haggis reportedly said, "I hope after people see this movie they will not just talk about the movie so much as they will find a way to talk to each other." We have a lot to talk about.