Although I didn’t predict the surprise Best Picture win CRASH at the boring Oscars sunday night,
I had been hoping the Academy would come to their senses and deliver the award to this film. This is one of the only films to move me, challenge me, or make me think in years. If you haven’t seen it DO SO! I argued with a customer before they announced the winner on Sunday night. He seemed to think that the Best Picture award had to go to Brokeback because it is “the only film on the list that actually addresses real issues in America today. The only film that can get something done.”
My jaw drops before I can catch my breath to ask him if he had heard of a little event we like to call Hurricane Katrina? Now, I’m not saying the hurricane is racist, but no one can deny that Katrina exposed a world of class division so dramatic, it wouldn’t even make a good movie. So when the little prick looks at me and says, “well, I have lived in L.A. and all of those characters were ridiculous stereo types that don’t exist anymore! The racist abusive cop?”
Pick your jaw off the floor Belle…
“Hey Whitie, you didn’t happen to live in a daddy paid for apartment near beverly hills and drive a car only five years old, huh?”
I just lost my tip. “cuz in that case you’re right. there is no racism in your world, nor abuse.”
stupid prick guy: “well, race issues aren’t the issue this year. It’s not an effective move to beat a dead horse.”
My high horse mouth, “it is if the poor people have to eat it.”
and then my film won.
“Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it’s remarkable that Crash even got made; that it’s a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents–black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian–is downright amazing. A politically nervous district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his high-strung wife (Sandra Bullock, biting into a welcome change of pace from Miss Congeniality) get car-jacked by an oddly sociological pair of young black men (Larenz Tate and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges); a rich black T.V. director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) get pulled over by a white racist cop (Matt Dillon) and his reluctant partner (Ryan Phillipe); a detective (Don Cheadle) and his Latina partner and lover (Jennifer Esposito) investigate a white cop who shot a black cop–these are only three of the interlocking stories that reach up and down class lines. Writer/director Paul Haggis (who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby) spins every character in unpredictable directions, refusing to let anyone sink into a stereotype. The cast–ranging from the famous names above to lesser-known but just as capable actors like Michael Pena (Buffalo Soldiers) and Loretta Devine (Woman Thou Art Loosed)–meets the strong script head-on, delivering galvanizing performances in short vignettes, brief glimpses that build with gut-wrenching force. This sort of multi-character mosaic is hard to pull off; Crash rivals such classics as Nashville and Short Cuts. A knockout. –Bret Fetzer”
