I would go so far as to say that the main character in Crash is Providence. As the individual stories intersect in surprising ways, it is impossible not to consider the force behind such awesome coincidences. Despite their best attempts to isolate themselves from the world around them, Providence causes them quite literally to crash into one another. In fact, Haggis opens the film with Don Cheadle's character musing about this isolation after being rear-ended: “We miss that sense of touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
It is this theme in Crash that illuminates the importance of human relationships; we cannot escape our need for one another. The characters demonstrate this human interdependence beautifully as their choices determine the course of one another's lives. For instance, in one astonishing moment, an especially unsympathetic character saves the life of a woman whom he had actually molested earlier in the film. This turn of events is shocking, and it shows that these individuals are subject to one another, whether for benefit or for harm. Here, Crash echoes the communion of the Body of Christ: “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor 12:26).
Communion is evident also in the unpredictable circumstances that equalize all characters. Those who are initially filled with malice soon redeem themselves, and those who win our esteem fall into the gravest sins. Despite race, class, or presumed righteousness, all are simultaneously subject to serious sin and capable of heroic generosity. Is Haggis simply exposing our fallen nature? I think it is instead a glorification of the virtue of humility. Those who think they are above sin are ultimately most susceptible to it. The only character who does not fall is the humble repairman, who seems only concerned with doing his work and loving his family, even allowing himself to be wrongly accused like so many of the saints.
