Saturday, April 08, 2006

Crash

I know it's somewhat cliche to talk about the film CRASH, now that it's won "Best Picture" and all, but Amy and I finally got around to watching it last night and I just feel like I've got to say something.

For the first 45 minutes, I was somewhat turned off by the over-exaggeration of the race theme. I found myself saying "Give me a break, that's not ALL people talk about ALL the time."

Then, the second act began.

I've never, ever been shook to the core by a movie. But for some reason, I was so sucked into all that was going on that I literally almost had a nervous breakdown (I'm not kidding). For those that have seen it, the scene involving the cop pulling a woman out of the overturned car almost put me into a panic attack.

I think this is why: none of the bad guys are REALLY bad, none of the good guys are REALLY good. We're so used to seeing 2-dimensional characters in Hollywood that seeing compassion in a dickhead is strangely heartbreaking. The race thing was expected - that's not really what spoke to me about this film - to me it was more about the fickleness and complexity of being human and about the glorious, unfortunate horrors of the dark side of life.

6 comments:

Jon said...

Well, I'm going to have to see it now.
Thanks!

Darrell Grizzle said...

Thanks for posting this, Trev. I'm sure Crash is a good movie, but as someone who has had panic attacks, I've now decided not to go see this movie.

blessings ~
Darrell

isaiah said...

Very hard to watch, but one of the best movies I\ve ever seen. It was sureal at times- certain scenes...almost to the point of panic for me as well- but I'm glad the movie was made and that it won critical acclaim.

New Life said...

I said last May on my blog that it is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I see that Allison and Isaiah have had similar expereinces.

Andrew said...

We had kind of been holding out on seeing this one, having been pulling hard for Brokeback Mountain to win Best Picture.... but okay. We'll check it out.

BrianCook said...

It is honestly the best movie I have seen in a very long time, well deserved Oscar.