Last night at the Oscars, the racial drama "Crash" landed with a thud, and played the role of spoiler when it rode off with the best picture award.
There had been rumblings all week that this might happen, however, I was hoping the rumors were created by Lions Gate studio and simply constituted wishful thinking on their part.
But then it turned out to be true.
"Crash" was a good movie with an excellent ensemble cast, but it was not the best picture of the year.
Just because it dealt with race doesn't mean that it should get a free critical pass. It tackled the subject fairly well, but it was still obvious in several places and heavy-handed in others.
The main message was the race plays a huge part in our daily interactions, and that our own prejudices influence our reactions to people, places and situations.
This volatile mix can often lead to horrible and unforseen consequences.
No shit.
I didn't feel that the film tackled racism from a radically different angle; it merely showed once again that prejudice is bad.
"Crash" lacked several things that I liked about "Brokeback Mountain," which was lean and sparse and let the audience draw its own conclusions. "Capote" was also a superior film as it reveled in its ambiguity towards characters.
On the whole, the Oscars were solid and predictable, but Hollywood just couldn't help itself when it came time to hand out the biggest award of the night, and it turned out that a good film leapfrogged some great ones.
I stand by my initial reaction to "Crash," which I blogged about last May. It read:
I saw "Crash" this past weekend, and it was almost exactly as I anticipated from the previews - well-meaning but ultimately a little heavy-handed.
The issue of race is the beginning and end of every action, conversation and thought in "Crash." The movie is set in Los Angeles, but the message is that it could be anywhere, USA and that we all bring our own experiences and prejudices into our daily interactions with other people.
That message is just fine as any movie that makes people examine their own actions in the context of race relations seems more important than any Vin Diesel movie that comes to mind.
The ensemble cast also does a fine job with the material as Don Cheadle and Matt Dillon are particularly good.
My main problem with the movie is that every single problem or issue boils down to race.
Maybe the filmmakers just wanted to drive home their point, but a little more subtlety would have been appreciated.
I'm not going to argue that there's a fair amount of underlying racial hostility, but "Crash" is the kind of movie where a character would be walking down the street and another person could knee them in the crotch, thus making them very angry.
The person who got kneed in the crotch would be justifiably furious, but he wouldn't be mad because he got a sharp, painful object jabbed in his privates but rather because the person who did it was African-American or Hispanic or Muslim or some other nationality that the victim hates.
If a person walked by and kicked me in the crotch, however, I wouldn't care about my assailant's race, religious credo or political idealogy - Whomever it is that just kicked me is going down.
Some things are not about race; sometimes it's simply about the family jewels.
-BDS
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