My boet watched this movie on the aeroplane the other week and said it was worth watching. So I took it out and watched it on the weekend. And its every bit as good as he and Roger Ebert, the famous movie critic, says it is. One of those movies that gives you the occassional goosebump (even us hardcore men).
Ebert describes the movie as follows: “Crash” tells interlocking stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless, all defined in one way or another by racism. All are victims of it, and all are guilty it. Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never that simple. Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows what the other person is thinking? The result is a movie of intense fascination; we understand quickly enough who the characters are and what their lives are like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so much depends on accident. (read Ebert’s full review here).
So take it out and review it for yourself. My star rating: **** and an eigth.
🙂
4 responses
I have to agree, I loved this movie. Hadn’t even heard about it when I watched it. I couldn’t stop talking about it after I saw it. Really good, clever interrelated stories that make you think, a lot.
Confession – I ended up watching it 3 times over two long incredibly indirect flights that spanned about 4 days worth of travelling. After all, one can only watch Batman Begins so many times…
I was really moved by this film, so all the criticism of it surprised me afterward. Lot’s of people saw it as a melodrama without a happy ending. It didn’t seem so simple to me.
All our actions have consequences. So we see in the film how our negativity spreads out in waves in front of us but we are mostly blind to these effects. The tragedy is that in our good intentions we keep looking for the direct results, but like our negative ways send out circular waves so too our positive ways. We keep thinking in terms of our actions like billiard balls and that metaphor doesn’t fit. The indirect results of actions, the subtle ways our actions return, was something that impressed me about the film. It showed how we are all connected in ways we are blind to.
The film doesn’t have a conventional happy ending, and still there is hope to be found. LOL love is the answer. But love in the particular–those we love– not love in a general and abstract sense.
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