with the mayor of new orleans blathering on about chocolate on monday, i finally saw 'crash' friday night, dreading whatever racial lessons were going to be unleashed, and i was pleasantly surprised. sure, it totally stressed me out to see the lapd and l.a. but i was surprised how true the movie rang.

not about race. i don't think 'crash' is about race at all. it's too convenient to say it's a race movie. l.a. is too racially diverse to avoid racial tension but race is often a handy metaphor for what l.a. feels like beneath everything. but beyond racial conflict, the movie is really about the basic, crazy isolation of los angeles.

i was born in l.a. but i hate it. it makes me tense. i feel like i'm on some lonely planet whenever i visit. and what i noticed in the film is that every conversation, the basic bridge from one person to another, misfires with possible disaster as a consequence. beneath every conversation, you sense there's something a character really wants to say: about desire, fear, something. there's something he desperately wants to get out. (you see it most with terrance howard's character, especially in his scene with ryan phillipe. you see it in the last scene between nola gaye and brendan frasier and he's saying good night to his wife. there's always something under the surface and the opportunity to voice what it is never presents itself.) but they either don't know how to say it, or they've been so alone in their bubble, they've forgotten about other people.

not because of race, but because l.a. makes you that way.

the women didn't seem to have this much of a problem, though. the female detective, the persian daughter, the tv director's wife, the DA's wife - the women in this film try to pierce the little bubbles that surround them, to varying degrees of success.

when i talk to midwesterners who moved to l.a. for a little bit, then came back hating it, i nod. they felt like they were going insane. no one talked to one another. no one touched each other. there was nowhere to go. it felt like people spoke a secret language only a few others could understand. it was too isolating. and that's what l.a. is. it's a skinner box. you're in your car for hours at a time; then you're in your office park; then you're back in your car; then you're home.

l.a. doesn't have public space; it doesn't have sidewalks full of people. the streets are too large to cross in one traffic light. none of the public transportation goes quite as far as it needs to go. but it has commerce. it's not unnoticed that the most popular places in the city are places like The Promenade or Universal City Walk or The Grove, the old Farmers Market on Fairfax that's been turned into a huge outdoor mall where they manufacture snow for the holidays. it tries to capture the way a neighborhood is supposed to feel but instead it just feels like an amusement park.

think of it - in l.a. people drive miles to find a place to walk around and brush shoulders with other people. how sad is that??

when you live in a city that's just a nasty ball of artifice, distance and commercial calculation how can you not feel crazy and disconnected?