Crash?

By now we all know that the racially-charged Crash pulled off an upset at Sunday's Academy Awards, clutching the Best Picture Oscar from Brokeback Mountain and several other more worthy films. What gives, mes amis? I guess the Academy loves L.A.

Ms. Muppet and I rented Crash on Saturday, as we had heard rumours that it was Brokeback's only real competition for best picture. I will concede that Crash was a brave film, daring to make almost every character intolerable and sympathetic in different turns. Good on you, Mr. Haggis. The problem is that none of it seemed remotely plausible. I'm not just referring to the ludacris plot coincidences (ha ha); I was more put off by the rather contrived dialogue. It was like every character was driven to spew out some heavily rehearsed invective in order to generate conflict. At several points I cringed at the speeches, being unpleasantly reminded of high school drama (I cannot be the only one who does this in movies). Many people are racially intolerant or insensitive to some degree, and of course those feelings lead to terrible consequences on occasion, but I find that this whole thing was written in some imaginary universe. An imaginary universe is fine if you're dealing with fantasy or science fiction, but a film that purports to be a harsh examination of reality should have some connection to reality. Perhaps people like their social criticism played big, bold and fake.

Crash wasn't all bad. I thought that a lot of the ideas were great and the execution was competent. But best picture of 2005? As Gilman has noted, the film was a lot like Paul Thomas Anderson's epic Magnolia, right down to the supernatural atmospheric phenomenon and the poignant vocals hovering over the characters' moments of clarity. The difference is that Magnolia was complex, dark, epic, beautiful, and just shy of real.

Maybe I missed something with this movie. Ebert and Roeper, whose opinions are usually reliable, did love Crash. In fact, I think Ebert picked it as the #1 film of the year. What gives, homeys?


(I notice that that's two blogs in a row with me complaining about things ... I promise to say something positive next time!)