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connielane at 12:40pm on 07/05/2005
connielane at 12:40pm on 07/05/2005I knew I'd have plenty of time to see Kindgom of Heaven, so I decided to make Crash the movie event for this weekend. This movie is not to be confused with the 1996 David Cronenberg movie of the same name, which instantly came to mind when I started seeing the advertisements. I was intrigued by the trailers, though, and by the comments of Roger Ebert (who I admire more every day), but one of the small things that drew me in was the fact that Sandra Bullock was in it and was a)not the lead, and b)playing against type.
It wasn't an ideal moviegoing experience, as far as environment went. I am extremely anal about non-movie noise during the movie, and I had noisy groups on both sides of me - a few Ludacris fans (yes, Ludacris is in this movie) to my left and a family with two small children on my right. I did lots of tutting and internal "STFU"s throughout the movie.
The movie itself is stunning. It was written and directed by Paul Haggis, who wrote the screenplay to Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby. It's a bit stylistic, but not overly so, and it's pretty much a home run in every aspect. The writing is strong, the acting is even stronger, and the visuals are mesmerizing.
The movie has lots of interconnected stories of people living in Los Angeles and the way racism, however extreme or subtle, affects these people's lives. Matt Dillon gives one of the strongest performances in the film as a racist LAPD cop (imagine that). He sees what he thinks is an interracial couple engaged in an, errr, illegal act while driving. He pulls them over, and discovers that the woman (Thandie Newton) is a light-skinned black woman. He then puts the couple through a series of humiliations, including molesting the wife while the husband is forced to stand by and do nothing. This leads to a colorful exchange between the man and his wife and the couple's own racial bugaboos are revealed.
One of the great things about this movie is that none of the characters are, for lack of a better term, "black or white." None of them are wholly good. None of them are wholly bad. Dillon's character, it turns out, is caring for his sick father at home, and when he blows up at a black HMO worker, it's not as much about race as it seems at first. Sandra Bullock's character is the epitome of a "rich bitch." When she and her District Attorney husband (Brendan Fraser) are carjacked, she asks him to have the locks changed, and when the locksmith turns out to be a Latino, she wants to have the locks changed again ("by someone who's not a gang member"). But her good side shows up eventually as well. And the seeming good guys have their own flashes of racism, like Ryan Philippe's liberal cop who makes his own judgements about a young black man, and Don Cheadle's character, who stereotypes his girlfriend as a Mexican.
There are a couple of huge emotional moments (as in tearjerker-style), including the scene from which the picture above was taken. Another includes the Latino locksmith. There's an incredibly sweet scene where he gives his 5-year-old daughter, who has been scared because of some recent gun violence in the neighborhood, a Special Invisible and Impervious Cape. Later on in the film, the little girl is convinced she needs to put it to use. I won't say too much more about it, but during this scene one of the women next to me literally screamed, stood up, and put her face in the back of her seat. That was a rather extreme reaction, obviously, but the rest of us felt a somewhat muted version of exactly that. It's a powerful moment, to say the least.
It might seem like there are too many concidences in the movie, but it never felt that way to me. The whole thing feels very real and just works amazingly well. The dialogue doesn't feel forced, and it's thought-provoking without being preachy. It helps, I suppose, that Haggis doesn't feel the need to sugar-coat the actors' words with political correctness. All of these people have their ugly spots, and the point of the movie is basically that we're all guilty of racism from time to time. No matter who we are, we sometimes see people in a certain way because of the color of their skin.
As I said above, I'm easily annoyed by talking during the movie. There was a lot of talking through Crash, but it didn't seem to bother me as much as usual, except when the Ludacris fangirls were fawning. For the most part, the talking just seemed to be an extension of the film. If a movie is good, people will talk about it. They just usually wait until the movie is over. This is one of those films that I think will encourage discussion. It probably won't change the world, but I think it will at least change some minds.
It wasn't an ideal moviegoing experience, as far as environment went. I am extremely anal about non-movie noise during the movie, and I had noisy groups on both sides of me - a few Ludacris fans (yes, Ludacris is in this movie) to my left and a family with two small children on my right. I did lots of tutting and internal "STFU"s throughout the movie.
The movie itself is stunning. It was written and directed by Paul Haggis, who wrote the screenplay to Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby. It's a bit stylistic, but not overly so, and it's pretty much a home run in every aspect. The writing is strong, the acting is even stronger, and the visuals are mesmerizing.
The movie has lots of interconnected stories of people living in Los Angeles and the way racism, however extreme or subtle, affects these people's lives. Matt Dillon gives one of the strongest performances in the film as a racist LAPD cop (imagine that). He sees what he thinks is an interracial couple engaged in an, errr, illegal act while driving. He pulls them over, and discovers that the woman (Thandie Newton) is a light-skinned black woman. He then puts the couple through a series of humiliations, including molesting the wife while the husband is forced to stand by and do nothing. This leads to a colorful exchange between the man and his wife and the couple's own racial bugaboos are revealed.
One of the great things about this movie is that none of the characters are, for lack of a better term, "black or white." None of them are wholly good. None of them are wholly bad. Dillon's character, it turns out, is caring for his sick father at home, and when he blows up at a black HMO worker, it's not as much about race as it seems at first. Sandra Bullock's character is the epitome of a "rich bitch." When she and her District Attorney husband (Brendan Fraser) are carjacked, she asks him to have the locks changed, and when the locksmith turns out to be a Latino, she wants to have the locks changed again ("by someone who's not a gang member"). But her good side shows up eventually as well. And the seeming good guys have their own flashes of racism, like Ryan Philippe's liberal cop who makes his own judgements about a young black man, and Don Cheadle's character, who stereotypes his girlfriend as a Mexican.
There are a couple of huge emotional moments (as in tearjerker-style), including the scene from which the picture above was taken. Another includes the Latino locksmith. There's an incredibly sweet scene where he gives his 5-year-old daughter, who has been scared because of some recent gun violence in the neighborhood, a Special Invisible and Impervious Cape. Later on in the film, the little girl is convinced she needs to put it to use. I won't say too much more about it, but during this scene one of the women next to me literally screamed, stood up, and put her face in the back of her seat. That was a rather extreme reaction, obviously, but the rest of us felt a somewhat muted version of exactly that. It's a powerful moment, to say the least.
It might seem like there are too many concidences in the movie, but it never felt that way to me. The whole thing feels very real and just works amazingly well. The dialogue doesn't feel forced, and it's thought-provoking without being preachy. It helps, I suppose, that Haggis doesn't feel the need to sugar-coat the actors' words with political correctness. All of these people have their ugly spots, and the point of the movie is basically that we're all guilty of racism from time to time. No matter who we are, we sometimes see people in a certain way because of the color of their skin.
As I said above, I'm easily annoyed by talking during the movie. There was a lot of talking through Crash, but it didn't seem to bother me as much as usual, except when the Ludacris fangirls were fawning. For the most part, the talking just seemed to be an extension of the film. If a movie is good, people will talk about it. They just usually wait until the movie is over. This is one of those films that I think will encourage discussion. It probably won't change the world, but I think it will at least change some minds.
thoughtful
(mystery)