An American Film and the Iraqi Problem

I have seen the movie Crash, which won the 2006 academy award for best picture, several times. It’s a movie I never tire of watching and I invite everyone to buy the DVD. Every time I finish watching the movie, I get these ideas about the possibility of making an Iraqi version. The movie deals with the conflicting components of American society and the areas of convergence and intersection between the various cultural and ethnic identities that exist among Americans. It tells seven different stories simultaneously — stories which intersect and overlap in certain areas, with the pivotal theme in the movie being the variety of backgrounds among the numerous characters.

The movie presents the conclusion that all is not completely rosy in the American society, and that justice, equality, prosperity and civil rights didn’t descend from heaven to America alone. Rather, they are achieved daily through conflict, through the interchange of ideas and viewpoints between America’s manifold ethnic groups.

The story of justice, equality, welfare and social security is never ending in America. At the end of the movie Crash, after the seven major stories are resolved, viewers are treated to the spectacle of a new story, just emerging: we see in the aftermath of a car crash a fight developing between an African-American woman and an Asian-American man. Here we see symbolized the depressing fact that stories of conflict and friction between the various ethnic groups in American society are never ending.

In the end, in this movie or in other movies and stories, it always comes down to the fact that preconceptions about the other are dominant, that they distort relationships and cause severe cracks and reactions that sometimes lead to crime and loss of life. When I said I’m thinking about the possibility of making an Iraqi version of this film, I meant the possibility of being this honest and open about the reality of Iraqi social strife and exploring the fact that each group’s preconceptions influence its views of other groups.

Our ideas, perceptions and fears of the other are secrets that few people dare to reveal.

Iraq’s various ethnic and religious groups differentiate themselves from one another, see themselves as fundamentally apart. And yet it is impermissible to talk about this, for the purpose of preserving peace, as if the problems with which we live are transient problems and depend on transient factors that will pass.

As long as we are talking about cinema, I’m waiting, just like others, to see which Iraqi filmmaker will dare to address the issues of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Sabian Yazidis and others and expose their prejudices and preconceptions — perceptions which contradict the logic of life and yet remain subsumed, kept quiet in order to protect a transient peace.