Crash
Just watched Crash at home over the weekend. Definitely my choice for Oscar's best picture compared to Brokeback Mountain. Still trying to figure out why Brokeback is so highly rated.
Back to Crash, the movie... This tragically beautiful movie revolves around few people's lives from the diverse population of Los Angeles which collided within 36 hours. Crash shows the power of racism through all eyes of those involved, from the victims to the wrong doers.
The district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his wife (Sandra Bullock, strikingly uncongenial) are carjacked at gunpoint by two black men (Ludacris and Larenz Tate). At home, the wife orders the locks changed and then changed again because a Mexican (Michael Pena) did the first job. A black TV director (Terrence Howard), getting a blow job from his wife (Thandie Newton) while driving home, is stopped by two white cops. One officer (Matt Dillon) gropes the wife to humiliate the husband, while the other cop (Ryan Phillippe) watches helplessly. A Persian store owner (Shaun Toub), taken for an Arab, buys a gun for protection. Don Cheadle plays a detective who ties these stories together when he finds a dead body in the road.
The acting was top notch, and each actor and actress delivered performances that brought out the true emotion and power of the movie.
Racism is everywhere, from developed nations such as US and UK to developing nation like ours. Many times in our lives we pass judgment on a person based on colour rather than content. I would like to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. (I have a dream) but in reality it's way more complicated than that. Can racism be eradicated? I highly doubt so.
1 comment:
Just my 2 cents on the film.
I too predicted before the Oscars that Crash might create an upset by taking the Best Picture gong. However, I just think that the film is trying to be too clever for its own good by introducing too many characters. This type of ensemble casting has been before in other films with better effect, e.g. Pulp Fiction, Traffic, and the recent Syriana. However some characters, like the Fraser-Bullock couple, just disappear halfway through the film.
Would have worked better if the storyline focussed more on the racist white cop story arc with Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
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