Crash
What I'm listening to: Caedmon's Call's Share the Well
Completely fascinating. Intensely shocking. Progressively moving. And I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. (That hasn't happened to me since American Beauty) Crash is not what I expected. But I go into most movies with very little because most of what I've seen in the last few years has lowered said expectation level. However, I'd heard the film was powerful. I loved Million Dollar Baby - which earned every award it won - and Crash was also written by Paul Haggis, so I picked it up after work tonight expecting to see a good movie, but not like this.
I was taken on a journey through a day in the lives of 15 or so different characters. Some I hated, some I loved. All I ended up caring about. So much so I found myself tracing the reason a person behaved a certain way back to the character that first encoutered them. It's Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia without the quirky sense of humor. And it has a better purpose.
This movie is about race. About the stereo-types we are pre-disposed of, and how we know they are pre-disposed, unjustified, but we believe them anyway. Actually we don't even believe them. We just feel them. And this movie makes us ask why.
Michael Pena's performance is enduring. Matt Dillion's is powerful. Thandie Newton's is amazing. Don Cheadle is cold yet heartbreaking. Everything about this movie means something. It has a point. Not just to shock you (which the language and dialogue is clearly meant to do) but to help us understand one another. The Cameron character said it best "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself."
Go rent it. What I say about it will never do it justice.
Completely fascinating. Intensely shocking. Progressively moving. And I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. (That hasn't happened to me since American Beauty) Crash is not what I expected. But I go into most movies with very little because most of what I've seen in the last few years has lowered said expectation level. However, I'd heard the film was powerful. I loved Million Dollar Baby - which earned every award it won - and Crash was also written by Paul Haggis, so I picked it up after work tonight expecting to see a good movie, but not like this.
I was taken on a journey through a day in the lives of 15 or so different characters. Some I hated, some I loved. All I ended up caring about. So much so I found myself tracing the reason a person behaved a certain way back to the character that first encoutered them. It's Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia without the quirky sense of humor. And it has a better purpose.
This movie is about race. About the stereo-types we are pre-disposed of, and how we know they are pre-disposed, unjustified, but we believe them anyway. Actually we don't even believe them. We just feel them. And this movie makes us ask why.
Michael Pena's performance is enduring. Matt Dillion's is powerful. Thandie Newton's is amazing. Don Cheadle is cold yet heartbreaking. Everything about this movie means something. It has a point. Not just to shock you (which the language and dialogue is clearly meant to do) but to help us understand one another. The Cameron character said it best "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself."
Go rent it. What I say about it will never do it justice.
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