Crash: Worst Movie of the Year

As a film studies major I've been trained to sit through any cinematic experience -- from Andy Warhol's 8-hour long Empire (yes, 8 consecutive hours of the Empire State Building in real time) to Derek Jarman's Blue (an hour plus of an unchanging blue screen dramatizing Jarman's AIDS-related blindness) -- and never abandon ship (incidentally I loved both films). It took all this training and more to endure this year's Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Crash, which I saw this summer in, alas, its entirety. I've already written about how I'm not a huge fan of Brokeback Mountain, the other Oscar contender, but it's definitely a better film than Crash, which I would have walked out on had it not been for my stalwart companions.

White critics like Roger Ebert, who proclaimed it the best film of the year, and David Denby of the New Yorker loved it. Denby wrote that it "makes previous movie treatments of prejudice seem like easy and self-congratulatory liberalizing."

I couldn't disagree more; easy and self-congratulatory liberalizing is the epitome of the film. To my mind, Crash's central message is: There's a lot of racism in the world, but it's all rendered meaningless by a magical force. This force is called sheer coincidence. I'll happily spoil the denouement for anyone who hasn't seen it. The racist white cop (Matt Dillon) sexually molests a black women (Thandie Newton), but is really a good guy because he saves her from a car crash (oh, and because he loves his ailing poppy). His partner's (Ryan Phillipe) anti-racist protests are really irrelevant because he ends up killing an innocent black teenager (Larenz Tate). Meanwhile, a rich, racist white woman (Sandra Bullock) unfairly suspects a Latino locksmith (Michael Pena) of being a crook, but it's okay because her Latino maid (and best friend) takes care of her when she injures herself. And on and on and on through a "compassionate conservative" rainbow of cast members each with their own neatly moralistic (but totally individualized) racial melodramas. As with the well-awarded musical Avenue Q, the moral of Crash is: Don't worry, everyone's a little bit racist.

Anyway, my amateur film criticism aside, you'll find a good dissection of Crash by sometime Nation writer Jeff Chang and Sylvia Chan over at Alternet. LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas called it the worst film of the year. I agree.

Comments (75)

1. I think you missed the point too, though for different reasons. Crash doesn't present a neatly packaged moral message; rather it's about the complexities of human relationships and how they are affected by race. Perhaps its most important social message is that racism is still a huge factor in our society and in ourselves and still requires our attention. Your review suggests that the filmmakers were continually trying to justify the actions of the characters in the film or explain away their racism. This wasn't my take at all. The moral, which you so blithely attribute to the movie, is more subtle: human beings are more complex than mere caricatures. I think the Academy made a good choice this year.

   Posted by twocinc at 03/06/2006 @ 07:32am

2. Mr Kim is "shocked, shocked I tell you" to discover that Hollywood makes movies with simplistic messages!

   hehe

   Posted by Mask at 03/06/2006 @ 07:36am

3. Hollywood is extremely rich and extremely white. It's where celebrities live in gated mansions and bump into minorities only when they cut their grass or drive them to work. I guess "Crash" was Hollywood's view of what multi-cultural America must be like.

   Posted by Zeddmen at 03/06/2006 @ 08:16am

4. Relax, conservatives, it's about movie making. It's not a popularity contest. Sometimes social commentary dominates movies in a given year, sometimes it doesn't. I'd like to have a dime for every article on conservative websites/media about the Oscars and or Brokeback Mountain over the last week...what a divergence!

   To Mask's point, simple is actually good, in that simplicity in an art form proves universal. That is why Brokeback Mountain was appealing and a better choice in my opinion for Best Picture. It was not a gay love story, or a gay cowboy love story, it was simply a love story.

   Hollywood not choosing Brokeback Mountain doesn't make them anti-gay, just like not choosing The Passion didn't make them anti-Christian. I saw The Passion...it wasn't a great movie regardless of viewership...leaving poor Mel Gibson to cry all the way to the bank.

   Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 08:35am

5. Posted by MOD1 03/06/2006 @ 08:35am | ignore this person

   MOD, come on....a bit disengenuous there, I think.

   If "Ennis" and "Jack" had been "Edith" and "Jack"...or "Ennis" and "Jacqueline"....you think it would have gotten an Oscar nomination or the raves of the critics.

   "BBM" was a gay cowboy love story, and to try to play off the aspects of "gay" and "cowboy" from it, is like saying that "Do The Right Thing" was "just about ANYBODY who has ever worked at a pizza parlour".

   Posted by Mask at 03/06/2006 @ 08:42am

6. Piped in from the strange parallel universe in which he dwells --- where Canada is a "despotic tyranny" and GW Bush revels in 90% approval ratings --- RIO BRAVO convulsively gushes verbal diarrhea (above). He asserts that the Academy Awards is devoted to,

   celebrating movies that hardly anyone in America would spend even a DIME to go see while ignoring all the movies the majority of Americans deemed worth veiwing!

   Got that?

   Here are some of the academy's picks for best picture in the past 15 years: "Gladiator", "Beautiful Mind", Lord of the Rings, III", "Silence of the Lambs", Forrest Gump", "Braveheart", "American Beuaty" ... and, most obscure of all, the un-watched, un-loved epitome of a straight-to-video commercial turkey that (teeter, teeter) "hardly anyone in America would spend even a DIME to go see" (aside from America-hating Maoists) ... that would be: "Titanic". In case anyone has not noticed, the Academy tends to reward films that present the right combo of commerical succes garnished with something resembling artistic merit to flatter their "high brow" sensibilities.

   RIO BRAVO launches such shit-house bizarre commentary with such regularity that one suspects that someone has been sneaking brain-corroding chemicals into his mop bucket while he executes the closing shift at Burger King; perhaps a chemical that bonds with his cheesy nustache so that his frontal lobes are turning to a diarrhea mush all day long, with each breath. What other explanation could prevail?

   More substantively, I think Mr. Kim's appraisal of "Crash" is right on; it's loud and self-congratulatory as it attempts to pass off its retrograde politics as a form of post-racial enlightenment. Best film of 2005 was, in my appraisal, "Broken Flowers", firected by Jim Jarmusch ...

   Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 03/06/2006 @ 09:19am

7. ZEDDMEN - "extremely rich, white, living in gated mansions." I thought for a minute you were talking about the home of a Haliburton Executive or Christian Televangelist. Maybe Hollywood celebs go quail hunting on elite, private, VIP preserves, too.

   MASK - uncharacteristically a weak argument. "Edith or Jack?" The list of Hollywood heterosexual screen honorees (in movies of varying quality and popularity) is too numerous to type. I could start with Bogie and Bacall and be here all day. Not at all disengenuous. BBM was a fabulous love story and movie. Can you get past the surface...if you actually saw the movie? If "Tootsie" were released today, the Right would call it a cross-dressing movie.

   Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 10:03am

8. according to rio, the acadam shold just look at box office reciepts and choose solely on that criteria. think i want to see crash now...maybe...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/06/2006 @ 10:37am

9. Richard Kim wouldn't know a good movie if it bit him in the rear.

   Crash deserved this award.

   Posted by BlueTexan at 03/06/2006 @ 10:41am

10. i thought crash was one of the best movies ever. i don't think there's a moral message that racism is ok or you can redeem yourself from racism by loving your dad or being nice to a maid. it did begin to show the complexities of racism. it did address that racism is very much still alive today. it also showed, as with the young white cop, that someone can think they're not racist when they really are racist. i agree with bluetexan and twocinc.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 11:01am

11. Crash was a great movie. I didn't think "Best Picture" personally. But here's what I do like about the selection of Crash. I'd like to see a reporter ask George W. if he's seen Crash at at press conference and have him make a snide comment and get a cheap laugh like he did at the expense of Brokeback Mountain. The Right has spent months bashing Hollywood's embrace of gay themes. Do they dare be critical of Hollywood paying attention to Racism?

    Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 11:16am

12. "the moral of Crash is: Don't worry, everyone's a little bit racist. "

    I must have seen a different movie...despite ouir racism(not only white peoples racism), everyones racism towards everyone else,we are all connected and when examined under different situations, not everything is a it semms. I thought the movie was hopeful.

    I saw BBM and wasn't impressed. Saddened by the wdestruction of everyones life involved with ther "BOYS:...too large a debis trail. Capote was great in my opinion. Hven't seen thr rest yet.

    Besides, Oscars are just another word for Hollywood National Conventions where they award salesman of the year awards...no different that the shoe conventions or any other industry, except they televise theirs and convince many people that it is animportant event that should be watched. Not me.

    Its about the money. Period.

    Posted by john maasch at 03/06/2006 @ 11:26am

13. If we want to talk about bad winners, lets talk about the rap song that won. That was horrid. Of course, the other two nominees (only two...no other good songs this year?) were pretty bad as well. Dolly Parton is so large in the chest, and so skinny in the waist I'm surprised she didn't fall forward under the strain.

    Posted by BlueTexan at 03/06/2006 @ 11:28am

14. Dolly Parton is so large in the chest, and so skinny in the waist I'm surprised she didn't fall forward under the strain.

    Posted by BLUETEXAN 03/06/2006 @ 11:28am

    helium bra

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/06/2006 @ 11:43am

15. Richard - you definitely simplified the "message" of Crash. I didn't think Matt Dillon's character was redeemed by his heroism or caring for his father. He was a prick cop who abused his authority - period. But his act of bravery, and dealing with his father rounded him out and made him more than a cardboard character bad cop. Sandra Bullock was equally despicable and I only felt pity for her. And I think "irrelevant" is too tough to describe Ryan Phillipe. Like almost every other human I know he didn't walk it like he talked it. He was human and you're condeming the film for portraying people as people. Sure there were some convenient cooincidences, but didn't that have more to do with people "crashsing" into each other and crashing into real life (even Don Cheadle's compassionate character had to make his own deal with the devil).

    What I particularly enjoyed about it was that it made me feel. My stomach was in a knot for the first 20 minutes until Michael Pena came along showed a little love for his daughter against all the raging hate. At that point, I let out a verbal sigh of relief. It's rare when a film has a visceral impact on me, so just for that I find it hard to believe that Crash was the worst film of the year.

    Posted by webb at 03/06/2006 @ 11:46am

16. the film had a visceral impact for me as well webb. i cry about once every five years but that movie made me cry for a week.

    i think one of the moral questions the film asks, but does not answer, is why it is ok, for us as a society, that young black men die.

    i really enjoyed its chaotic, schizophrenic view of human beliefs and interactions.

    i haven't seen the other films yet. i didn't see the oscars. so i can't comment on the awards thing. but personally, i think crash is very important. i also liked his other movies.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 11:52am

17. It's not a moral question, it's an institutional question. And young black men continue to die victims of police violence because the same logic that polices the inner city now holds national leadership. The attack on Iraq, on the basis of what Saddam MIGHT HAVE DONE, was nothing more than the rationale of a selfish home culture that has for decades, rationalized the murder of inner city youth on the basis of the mayhem they MIGHT HAVE DONE writ large. Examine the record, and see if I'm wrong. Black folks who opposed this war have been listening to this sort of nonsense come out of politician's mouths for a very long time. We hear it every time some trigger happy cop perforates one of our kids. Then we get to hear all the moral anguish later. I'm tired of hearing about white people and their struggles to conquer racism on an individual basis. Let them tackle the tougher political questions, or let them be quiet. We've seen enough warm fuzzy films on this topic. It's way past time white folks got a lot more honest about how this thing works.

    Posted by Sweetdaddy at 03/06/2006 @ 12:11pm

18. I am so relieved to hear someone say it out loud. I actually did walk out of crash, then i had to watch it on pay per view with friends. (Seeing the ending did not improve my opinion.) It was lame from the first line. I am a black female living in Los Angeles, and let me say this: people here do not crash into each other because they are longing for contact. They crash into each other because they are bad drivers – distracted, aggressive, inconsiderate drivers. Also, for a move that was trying to reveal the "reality" of racism, that movie was beyond unrealistic on so many levels. First of all, I have never seen the same cop twice in LA and i drive the same route at the same time every day. Yet Thandie Newton has the amazing experience of having her life saved during the daytime in one part of town by the very same cop who molested her at night in another part of town. The coincidence criticism was right on the money. Next: if a cop did to me what Matt Dillon did, after i was let go i would have driven myself directly to the hospital and reported a sexual assault. they would do a rape kit in the hope of getting epithelial cells from the cop's fingers. Then an officer would be assigned to my case and I would tell her (most likely) exactly what happened so it would be officially documented. She would have no problem believing me because she knows what kind of a-holes she works with. Then I would identify the officers involved, and if my criminal case against him was not properly resolved, I would sue and I would win because THAT is what happens in LA. Moving on: people who are as biased as Sandra Bullock's character don't suddenly change because one person of color is nice to them, especially if it is an employee. Guys who are smuggling a van full of sex slaves or whatever don't wander out into the street while searching their pockets for the keys or however I am supposed to believe this guy ended up under an SUV. And I don't know what to say about Ryan Phillipe's character. I could go on and on. The whole thing was ridiculous.

    Posted by saurellia at 03/06/2006 @ 12:36pm

19. Richard, I just have to chime in with a number of other commenters that I think you missed the point of the film. The moral of Crash is not "Don't worry, everyone's a little bit racist." Instead it's "Everyone's a little bit racist, including you. So try not to be such an asshole." If you're accustomed to talking about issues in black and white extremes, then it might be easy for you to miss that. But Crash is all about the gray areas.

    Posted by jakkal at 03/06/2006 @ 12:40pm

20. saurellia, i don't think sandra bullock's character changed. and, as sweetdaddy pointed out with his discussion of police violence, i think you're a little naive about dealing with bad cops and deep problems in our institutions. i think it's great you would stand up to them though.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 12:50pm

21. Posted by MOD1 03/06/2006 @ 10:03am | ignore this person

    Sorry MOD....you had to go back to "Bogie and Bacall" to find an example of "heterosexual pairings". How about just THIS year, mindless little "angel" fluff movie with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo called "Just Like Heaven"?

    If "JLH" had had Reese and....Naomi Watts, as the love interest, I guarentee that it would have been praised as "groundbreakiing"....if it had been Mark Ruffalo and ...Eric Bana, it would have been nominated for an Oscar!

    I don't care about "BBM" and I'm pro-gay rights....but to divest the homosexual AND "cowboy" themes from the film and say "It would STILL be a 'great love story'", isn't being honest, with the intent of the filmmakers or its critical acclaim!

    Posted by Mask at 03/06/2006 @ 12:53pm

22. Richard Kim missed the point of crash entirely. Not by a little bit, but by an entire onion field! Nothing is tied up in the end - no one is let off the hook - yeah its a bit simplistic, but thats Hollywood. Get over it and see the film for what it is, a look at the way white people think and feel about people of color, but never say.... Not just a few white people, but most of them even the good ones!

    Posted by jwm1012 at 03/06/2006 @ 1:10pm

23. SAURELLIA, the crashes in Crash are not literal, its suppossed to be a symbolic reference. People don't really crash their cars into on another because the might be racist or whatever. What it is is that our lives are so isolated based on race (as we are isolated in our cars...rather than buses, or trains, etc.) that the only time we come in contact with other races is through dramatic events...i.e. the crash.

    I never thought so many would work so hard to hate such a great movie. Did the same people who hate Crash hate American Beauty (maybe the best film of the 1990s)?

    Posted by BlueTexan at 03/06/2006 @ 1:16pm

24. I'm sure also the African-American community had divided comments about Three 6 Mafia's performance and acceptance speech.

    Posted by BlueTexan at 03/06/2006 @ 1:26pm

25. A few thoughts here - Not to defend Crash at all, but this from someone who spent an hour staring at a Blue screen and "loved it"! Also, worst movie of the year? Kim clearly didn't see Wedding Crashers 2 - a little perspective, please

    Posted by coltraning at 03/06/2006 @ 1:42pm

26. Didn't see Crash or Broke-Back Mountain and have no desire to see either. I did see Jarhead and enjoyed the movie for the psychological look at what happens to those at war.

    Todd

    Posted by Oksportsguy at 03/06/2006 @ 2:02pm

27. KIM, I can't believe you are a student of the cinema and yet you don't understand the point of the movie at all: that life is complicated, appearances superficial, and that you can't just fit everything into black and white (no pun intended).

    Dillon's racist cop character is actually a good son and a good man who is redeemed when he risks his life to save the woman he attacked. The standard Hollywood role, instead, is to paint a racist as pure evil with no redeeming qualities. The real world is never that simple, as the movie makes clear. Understanding this contradiction requires empathy, however, which is why many may not "get" this movie. Likewise, the car-jacking kids, too, save the lives of a group of asian immigrants instead of looking the other way.

    The movie explores the other side of that coin, too. Sandra Bullock, the fatherly market owner, and the young cop (partner of Matt Dillon) are all seemingly "good people" who have their facades exposed and become monsters by the end of the moview.

    I liked the movie because it shows us, in a very clever way, how things are never as simple as they appear.

    Posted by pilch at 03/06/2006 @ 2:09pm

28. MASK, you must have missed Ang Lee's acceptance speech and my point about being here all day giving you heterosexual examples.

    But to your "point" about homosexual themes getting automatic critical acclaim and Oscar nods...Where's are Neve Campbell and Denise Richard's Oscars for Wild Things?

    Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 2:09pm

29. Mr. Kim would feel better if Matt Dillon's character were portrayed as Pure Evil? Look in your own heart, sir. People are complicated.

    In Los Angeles, as in cities all over the world, cultures crash into each other. Many times the result is misunderstanding. Crash is about misunderstanding.

    I do not mean the big power player string pulling & button pushing of politics and corporate greed.

    I mean the tiny interactions that take place between real people, moment by moment, in the real world. People crash into each other and misunderstand each other.

    Crash examines maybe a dozen small stories, and of course it is too simple; it's just a damn movie, knucklehead! But it is beautiful.

    Consider the two dark-eyed daughters, one looking like a grown-up version of the other. Like guardian angels, they protect their fathers against destruction, the older by buying blanks for her father's gun, and the younger wearing her imaginary bulletproof cape, flinging herself into her father's arms. However jaded you may be about the story of cultural misunderstanding about the broken shop door, it is an amazing story, beautifully told.

    Consider the victim, run down by thugs in his own stolen van: It's so easy to love an innocent victim. It's never that simple. Innocent victim and human trafficker.

    Consider the carjacker: Corrupt as he may be, he draws the line at slavery. Drives a vanload of people to Chinatown and turns them loose, giving them all the money in his wallet. It is hilariously oversimplified, and a jewel of a story.

    Consider the wife of the wealthy prosecutor: the most privileged, the most anxious and pathetic.

    Consider one man who gives a ride to a stranger, who understands him and his dashboard madonna, and the longing for safety that she represents. He misunderstands the gesture of his passenger, drawing something from his pocket, and soul-blinding fear overtakes him.

    Unlike the dark-eyed daughters in the other story, the plastic mother is no protection.

    As the characters misunderstand what crosses between them, the omniscient viewer does understand. They are only stories, but there is a reason why silly human creatures tell stories (and post blogs).

    Soon after the movie came out, then came the London bombings, and then one day cops shot an man in the London subway because he wore a heavy coat in the summer.

    He didn't stop because he was frightened, he didn't understand what the cops were shouting; perhaps he even believed they were shouting at someone else. They shot him dead because they were frightened that he didn't stop.

    Hate those cops, okay. I do. I want to shake them, berate them, lock them up. I cannot put myself above them. They are only people, surviving in a big nasty grinder of a world. Decent people, it seems, can do terrible things. Human beings, one at a time, are frail and frightened and complicated and stupid. I mean you. I mean me.

    Posted by kduv at 03/06/2006 @ 2:39pm

30. RIO, you do know Reese Witherspoon is a Hillary Clinton financial supporter, right? Does that ruin the "I love my grandma" stuff from the Oscars for you?

    Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 3:02pm

31. Posted by MOD1 03/06/2006 @ 2:09pm | ignore this person

    Actually MOD, Denise Richards deserves a Distinquished Service Cross for remaining married so long to Charlie Sheen, from what I hear.

    Obviously sex-ploitation films like "Wild Things" with female homosexuality would never qualify....but "Desert Hearts" would (Helen Shaver-1985) or "True Adventure of Two Girls In Love (1995) would.

    Again, my only point is...you cannot dismiss the aspects of "gay" and "cowboy" and claim that it would be "the same film" if it was a heterosexual couple. Clooney said it himself in his speech, Hollywood full-square in support of progressive causes, and a "straight" "Brokeback Mountain" wouldn't qualify, would it?

    Posted by Mask at 03/06/2006 @ 3:15pm

32. RIO, you really are full of it. You'd have to praise the Oscar winning "Dead Man Walking" that showed the true story of a Nun who ministers to convicted killers to get them to turn to God and repent. If Reese Witherspoon had played the part of Susan Sarandon, would that have been a good Oscar selection?

    Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 3:23pm

33. Crash is oversimplified. Everyone's a stereotype, and the stereotypes conveniently reveal their "humanity" when they crash together. Uh, really?

    I know racism is real, and racism exists today, but the real problem today comes from subtle racism. Crash doesn't even begin to address the real subtle racism that we embody everyday.

    And it was not entertaining. All the dialogue was wooden and stupid. Even when people revealed their human side, they said things that nobody really says.

    The reason Brokeback Mountain should have won is not because it is gay, but because it tells a heartbreaking story about how lovers have to overcome society's prejudice to be together, and sometimes that isn't possible within the roles we embody. The cowboy doesn't question his cowboy soul, his cowboy role, and so he must suffer a lifetime without love. He sees how easy it would be if he didn't love the person he loved - his daughter falls in love and gets married. Yet he can never have what she has - the chance to spend every day with the person she loves - because at heart he is a cowboy, and cowboys can't be gay.

    It's Romeo and Juliet redux: young lovers strive to be together, but society doesn't let them. Except in this story, Romeo gives up on Juliet, accepts his role as a Capulet, and suffers quietly. It was subtle and brilliant.

    Yeah, a lot of people are going to love Crash because it makes them feel smart. It has a simple message that everyone can agree with: we are not as simple as we seem. But nobody really acts like that. Nobody!!!

    Even if the audience suspends disbelief, and thinks maybe all these people meet each other in a car crash, they still don't think people act like that. People never talk like these idiots. People don't think like them. How can you like a movie populated by fake, unrealistic people?

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 03/06/2006 @ 3:32pm

34. I'm guessing Richard didn't see "Cheaper By The Dozen 2"

    Posted by pizzmoe at 03/06/2006 @ 3:33pm

35. MASK, we can respectfully disagree, that's cool. In my opinion, the closest heterosexual Brokeback Mountain comparison is "The Bridges of Madison County"...Streep had a secret affair with the one she really loved, she stayed with husband dishonestly although he was not the love of her life, she lead a life that was not her true destiny, then the children had to make sense of it. The characters of both movies tried to use the ashes after death as a way to solify their fate. Gay or straight, it's the same story. Unless you can't get past the gay part.

    Posted by mod1 at 03/06/2006 @ 3:35pm

36. I watched Crash last night and I agree with KDVU.

    However, RIO BRAVO doesn't know jack shit about Johnny Cash. Yeah, his faith was an important part of his life, but he was always a little more complicated than that. For instance, his last four records were produced in intimate collaboration with Rick Ruben (famous for resurrecting Johnny Cash's career and producing Slayer's South of Heaven). If you listen to the American records, it is fairly apparent that Johnny's Cash's faith was very different than that of your friends in the American Taliban.

    Posted by Greydon Clark at 03/06/2006 @ 3:37pm

37. no, nattiebumpo, people do act like that. i don't know what kind of intellectual paradise you live in, but in my reality, people do act like that and worse.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 3:39pm

38. Rio: telling us what Hollywood is 'about' is just as simplistic as Crash. You would deny all the evidence that doesn't fit your theory of the world.

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 03/06/2006 @ 3:45pm

39. No, love, they don't say the stupid stuff that these fools said. Black people may be shot by cops and cops may think about their racism, but nobody talks like that!

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 03/06/2006 @ 3:46pm

40. i don't really remember the dialogue in the movie. r u saying that the dialogue was so stupid that noone would use the particular words or r u saying that noone would openly talk in a racist way?

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 3:55pm

41. Love: I felt manipulated when I watched the movie. Of course, there are racists, but it's not like everyone in the world is openly racist. Yet, somehow, everyone in Crash can't wait to bash the race they see next.

    Here's a simple test I just came up with to tell whether a movie connects with the audience on a storytelling level: when you think of the characters in the movie, do you think of real people or of stereotypes? Crash gave us no real people, just stereotypes. Sure, the stereotypes end up acting in ways inconsistent with their types, but they still don't seem like real people. They still seem like cardboard cutouts of white people and black people and hispanic people. I hear a message coming from the writer, but I don't hear a story.

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 03/06/2006 @ 4:23pm

42. i see your point about the stereotypes. but coming from out here in hillibilly land, the stereotypes are all too often the reality.

    as far as suspending my disbelief, it is always quite the stretch with any of our pop culture movies. i'm amazed at the quality of some foreign films.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 5:11pm

43. i should've qualified my post of this morning and said, it is one of the best american pop culture movies i've seen. like bluetexan, i really liked american beauty too.

    Posted by loveloki at 03/06/2006 @ 5:15pm

44. Why Crash is great. I would love to use the cliched "I seriously doubt any of you have made a better movie" line, but that's too easy. Yes, Crash is over the top, in your face, raw, and perhaps hard to believe that all these people's lives fit together. Personally, I like the fact it shoves it's message down your throat, and doesn't dance around the concept that people are racist.

    I think some people missed the point - Crash isn't supposed to be subtle - it's supposed to jam the message down your throat...and I'm not sure how people can say the characters are cliched...all of the characters have a pretty thick layer of duality...which I think makes them more believeable.

    Posted by bowser7 at 03/06/2006 @ 5:18pm

45. I'm disappointed with Crash's Oscar for only one reason: It was a poorly written piece of moralistic melodrama. BBM and Capote are well-written, well-acted, and well-directed films. Racism is an important theme, but Crash ain't no Mockingbird. It ain't even Heat of the Night. Where's Spike Lee's Oscar? Huh?

    Posted by eyebrow at 03/06/2006 @ 5:49pm

46. Richard, so you find a need to get everyone into their "Good" or "Evil" roles and keep them there!?!? How Dubya-esque. Even Osama probably believes he is doing the right thing. Clearly stereotypes and racism are bad for the victims and society as a whole. That does not make the offenders evil and the messege of the movie null. I don't see anyone excused as you do. I see people who "Crash" into others and pick up the peices and learn that actions have consequences.

    Posted by frsteinb at 03/06/2006 @ 6:01pm

47. Maybe I'm overly, or too easily empathetic, like Doris Kearns Goodwin describes Lincoln as being in her current non-fiction bestseller "Team of Rivals," but I found the dramatic tension wholly riveting and the ensemble cast much more credible in their roles than Tarantino's celebrated post-modern chic, Pulp Fiction.

    At least it was an attempt, and again, I'd say a successful one, of eliciting sympathy for those "different" than us.

    And the scene with the female child jumping into her father's arms in front of a enraged and deranged potential killer is one of the best movie scenes I've witnessed.

    Happy to have enjoyed "Crash(ing),"

    LAWMAN

    Posted by lewwelge at 03/06/2006 @ 8:38pm

48. Earlier post got me thinking....

    If "Brokeback" had been "cheaper" and had had two female leads, instead of two male leads (lesbians instead of gay men)...

    wouldn't it have basically the same premise as about a dozen Cinemax sex-ploitation flicks?

    Posted by Mask at 03/06/2006 @ 10:13pm

49. Crash was by far one of the worst movies I sat through last year. So bad, I almost left halfway through it and would've if I hadn't made a friggin' mortgage payment for the ticket and refreshments.

    Wasn't anyone else reminded of Grand Canyon? (another simplistic, stereotypical slice of Americana)

    Posted by sean coon at 03/06/2006 @ 10:25pm

50. Whoa! You can say a lot of things about Crash, but it isn't moralistic or simplistic as another reader suggested. It's a story of redemption. Everyone in the movie is a "bad guy", but everyone redeems themselves as well. This may seem unrealistic at the personal level, but symbolically it's undeniably true. For every white cop who rapes a black woman with his finger, there's another white cop who risks his own life to save that woman. And yes, sometimes it's the same cop. People are complex like that.

    It reminds me of the old adage, There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

    I for one had Crash on my mental list as one of the top movies of the year. I found it refreshing that it didn't attempt to resolve all the ambiguities, but assumed an intelligent viewer who could deal with it.

    Posted by DaoudaW at 03/06/2006 @ 10:29pm

51. Wow, Mr. Kim. We really saw two different movies. How you could have this point of view is beyond me.

    Great movie? Maybe not. It was flawed. But the message you took away from it is really tragic.

    You don't really believe the message is "don't worry, everyone's a little racist", do you? You don't really believe anyone left the theater thinking the racist cop was an OK guy, do you? If so, that's really a warped sense of reality.

    There are no heroes in this movie -- just people who by sheer coincidence get the opportunity to examine themselves from another perspective. And they don't like what they see. Neither do the rest of us.

    I hope, perhaps, there's just something else in your life that's affected you or maybe you're just having a bad day. Not only does your review miss the point, it was really mean-spirited and couldn't be more simplistic.

    Posted by sidweaver at 03/07/2006 @ 12:18am

52. interesting comments. smart people with strong feelings of either hating it or loving it, which to me indicates a pretty good flick on the face of it. not the ordinary feel-good-happy-ending-little-escapism-fluff that predominates.

    seems the critical posters here fall into two opposing categories- 'too far' and 'not far enough'. i want to address both.

    for those of you who pick at "crash" because it makes 'race' MORE of a defining issue for people than it is in reality, the characters and scenes were obviously not intended to be viewed literally, as some here seemed to have done. (no, people don't really talk like that.) it struck me as similar to a play, making its point dramatically with its exaggerated dialogue and situations.

    and to the other group- those who think the movie didn't go nearly far ENOUGH into how 'race' remains a defining issue today- yes, 'race' is an institutional problem of massive proportion that is desperately in need of a solution, but this movie was not intended to propose that solution. which no mere movie could do, by the way.

    in sum, the movie was not intended to portray stupidity and hatred just for the sake of stupidity and hatred. and conversely, it was also not intended to make some grand statement of a 'race' solution.

    i personally saw "crash" as an interesting attempt to view systemic, institutional racism through the lens of everyday individual racism. note i say "view", not "solve". and since i feel that there will be no solution to systemic racism in america until our personal view of 'race' is altered, this movie is valid.

    "crash" is, at least, a nice piece of art, intended in its own way to inspire us to spend a moment considering 'race' and how it insidiously twines its way through each and every one of our lives.

    Posted by iloozyun at 03/07/2006 @ 12:46am

53. Heres one for thought..

    If the actors in BBM had been Michelle Williams and say, Jessica Simpson as th4e main characters....would the movie had sold more tickets and would it have won? The point is had the characters been atractive women the movie would have made millions more. And, you could have kept the cowboy theme in Wyoming. I think it lost because it was not that good of a movie and America is not celebrating gay lovers on the prairie.

    Posted by john maasch at 03/07/2006 @ 10:18am

54. I find it hard to believe that someone who could love staring at the Empire State Building for 8 hours would walk out on any movie.

    Posted by clashmore at 03/07/2006 @ 10:51am

55. Worst film of the year? Come on. That is lazy hyperbole.

    Richard Kim is a film studies major. His review opens with descriptions of two nearly unwatchable art-house movies, then gives us the kicker: "...incidentally, I loved both films...."

    In his clumsy haste to present himself as an expert, Mr. Kim has already destroyed his own credibility. Right from the beginning, he's proclaiming that his sense of taste is badly warped. It's like reading a restaurant review in which the writer's first sentence is, "I love to eat dog poo." (I suspect that in this case it was intended as, "I know way more than you do because I can appreciate this totally weird stuff, dude." But it really came across more the other way, the dog poo way.)

    But this is a minor quibble. Here's what I found really objectionable: The main thrust of Mr. Kim's piece is that the movie attempts to excuse racism (bad). Yet his second paragraph begins, "White critics like Roger Ebert, who proclaimed it the best film of the year, and David Denby of the New Yorker [sic] loved it."

    Yep, all white people (here's two!) love "Crash." Must be something in their white genetics, I suppose. Makes 'em all like the same stupid crap. So Mr. Kim's argument seems to be: Racism is bad, and white people are idiots.

    It doesn't help Mr. Kim's case that he only mentioned the movie's "white-on-colored" racism in his little rundown. Weren't some of the other characters a little bit prejudiced too? Or at least racially ignorant? Kind of like when Mr. Kim, in his review of this movie, refers to a female person as a "Latino?" Perhaps he can ask one of his stalwart companions what I'm talking about.

    Also irritating is the way Mr. Kim closes his review abruptly claiming to be only an "amateur" film critic, after regaling us with tales of his expertise. It reeks of false humility.

    Posted by XigXag at 03/07/2006 @ 11:08am

56. Nice deconstructions posters! Thanks for bolstering my confidence over my barely submerged sense of critical inadequacy when in conflict/disagreement with authoritative voices like anyone, even interns at The Nation. In fact, your counterarguments have once again lent (ha,ha) credence to post-modern "save the males" credo: be your own expert. What's Klawans say?

    LAWMAN

    Posted by lewwelge at 03/07/2006 @ 12:12pm

57. John Maasch, You made a statement about BBM selling more and winning more if two hot chicks replaced the male leads? Are you saying that's a good thing? Sexism and Homophobia. Why don't you go for the triple and comment on Crash.

    Posted by mod1 at 03/07/2006 @ 12:47pm

58. Mod,

    Read it again...in it you might find a question of whether or not if the lead roles were changed if the movie would have done better...or is there another secret message in my post that I missed?

    "Are you saying that's a good thing? " no.

    I am saying there was no audience for the movie all thought was one of the best ever films...the public voted with their wallets..

    Crash? I found it entertaining and it made me think...which is why I go to movies..to be entertained or to be provoked into thinking...Crash did for me and BBM did not...

    No judgement, just statement of fact for me..no homophobia, sexism or racism...just didn't like the movie...is this something you can't understand without putting a political face on it?

    Posted by john maasch at 03/07/2006 @ 12:56pm

59. I find it interesting that R. Kim absolutely hates a movie that deals with people and their reactions to complex situations, yet uses as examples of movies that he loves two films that have NO people in them whatsoever. One of the intriguing questions brought up by the movie is what makes a person "good" or "bad"? If someone is a good person, but does a bad thing (and vice versa), what does that make them in the end? Here in Chicago we recently wrestled with naming a street after former Black Panther Fred Hampton. He did a lot of good (creating a free breakfast program, working as an educator, many other things), yet his experiences with the police led him to suggest "offing the pigs" (I don't have the exact context of this quote). Does that one statement make him "bad", despite the good he did? How would you feel if you were the wife or child of a policeman killed in the line of duty? Or a child fed and educated by Fred Hampton's work in the community? It's already been said here, but the need to catagorize everything and everyone into good and bad is terribly detrimental. George Bush says that "you're either with us or against us." Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza (who is building his own Catholic town with no abortions, birth control, or pornography) says that "I think history is nothing but one big war between good and evil." What this creates are people without the ability to see nuances and shades of grey - what the world is made of. Instead of dialogue, we all draw our line in the sand, and if we don't get our way we just up and bomb some other country, bomb an abortion clinic, or (if we're rich enough) make our own town. Regardless of whether "Crash" should have won Best Picture (and calling it the worst movie of the year is just plain dumb - its tragic what blogs have done to journalism), it is clear that the dialogue it produced and is continuing to produce is needed.

    Posted by arw at 03/07/2006 @ 1:45pm

60. Saying "white film critics" is a bit redundant, isn't it? That'd be like saying "male film critics" or "bourgeois Nation writers." I can count the people of color among mainstream film critics on one hand (though they include two of my favorite contrarians -- Armond White and Elvis Mitchell). The fact is, white film critics also hated Crash. What Kim might have been getting at is that only white critics loved Crash. Critics and amateur critics of color (I love what Saurelia wrote in the early comments here) strongly tended to not feel Crash. At all.

    I did not care for the Alternet roundtable (a few good, disjointed observations, but way too much jargon, too much oversimplification, too much lazy thinking in general), but I loved Armond White's Crash review (with which I largely agree, and which paints Crash as one of the most odious films of the year). The opening salvo:

    Local critics praising Paul Haggis' Crash accidentally reveal racism so deeply hidden in their own privilege that they casually ignore it while expressing high-minded appreciation for this film's fake controversies. Nothing appeases a wounded culture more than a blanket condemnation of other people. Haggis' West Coast crazy quilt takes place so far away from reality that it has been greeted with an It-Couldn't-Happen-Here nonchalance.

    Word. Also, perhaps I'm revealing my East Coast bias, but I thought that many of Crash's problems were byproducts of Los Angeles myopia. Only in a pseudo-city like LA (a series of suburbs in search of a city) could white writers imagine that you have to accidentally crash into each other to notice one another. Could you imagine such a dumbass idea emerging from a real city where people interact with each other while walking on the streets every single day? Racism is epidemic in the U.S., but it looks and feels and sounds nothing like what's depicted in Crash.

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:00pm

61. Also, for a good (though flawed) movie dealing with racism, check out Cache by Michael Haneke. Or, even better, his previous film Code Inconnu (that one scene with Juliette Binoche getting harrassed by Franco-Arab teens on the Metro is like what Crash might have wanted to be, except depicted with complexity and with believable characters and dialogue).

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:03pm

62. JOHN MAASCH, very few "critics" have given a simple thumbs down to BBM based solely on artistic or entertainment value...I apologize if you did and I missed it (but most don't, right?) The "gay cowboy" thing is almost always mentioned in the criticism...which puts a political face on it. Conservatives for months have been rooting against this movie and drawing attention to the box office receipts as proof that it should not be Best Picture. Even the low Oscar program Nielsen Ratings are being used to hurl criticism at BBM. (The Olympics got low ratings, too.) There have been many movies with low viewership that have won Best Picture, without so much public concern about it ("The French Lieutennant's Woman" is one that comes to mind).

    Ang Lee's BBM was censored out of China among other countries. Many cinema's in the US refused to show it. West Virginia wanted to ban it. Isn't it great we can all argue about this? Let's hope we can continue to do so indefinitely. Who's optimistic about that?

    Posted by mod1 at 03/07/2006 @ 2:19pm

63. They aren't cowboys, they're sheep herders. There is a difference, and it's important.

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:37pm

64. Posted by LEFTBEHINDS 03/07/2006 @ 2:37pm

    Ah,,,now I see...

    Posted by john maasch at 03/07/2006 @ 2:40pm

65. It sounds pedantic, but having worked on a cattle ranch, I can tell you that no cowboy would want to be mistaken for a sheep herder. They're the wretched of the earth. Which was part of Proulx's whole point.

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:46pm

66. Wasn't there a movie that ran similar themes awhile back called "Magnolia"?

    Posted by Mando at 03/07/2006 @ 2:49pm

67. Here's where I first took up the bi shepherds charge, a few months ago (p.s. how annoying that The Notion breaks up URLs)

    http://leftbehinds.blogspot.com/2005/12/brokeback-bi-shepherds-not-gay-c owboys.html

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:49pm

68. Mando-

    Yeah, Magnolia was better, but it was still sort of grandiose and wrongheaded. Code Inconnu and Cache really were so much better done.

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 2:50pm

69. LEFTBEHINDS, I disagree that only white critics loved Crash. It was voted best movie of the year by the African-American Film Critics Association.

    Posted by arw at 03/07/2006 @ 3:23pm

70. Oh, I didn't know that (also, the very existence of the AAFCA belies what I said about white film critics being a redundant term -- though I think it's true there are only a handful of high profile critics of color). Film of the year, really? Blech, what were they thinking?

    Posted by leftbehinds at 03/07/2006 @ 3:45pm

71. Everytime someone is trying to deny the existence of racism as a system of opression, they start out by saying that "It's all very complicated". Then they show some examples personal sucesses and failures on the race issue. Then they end by saying that we need to be more "compassionate". "Crash" struck me as a perfect example right wing racial "sensitivity", including the usual gag inducing BS about how well intentioned white people suffer terribly because of "Black racism".

    Posted by jmnelson at 03/07/2006 @ 6:22pm

72. I also agree with Leftbehind that LA is a fake city and that the film's use of LA as an example of race relations in America is ridiculous. I live near San Francisco. Black people have been pushed out of that city quite systematically. Most big cities have large Black communities whose members interact in various ways with other racial and ethnic groups. California's cities are the most segregated I've ever seen. I suppose it's true that for the average white Californian to meet a Black Californian, they'd have to be in a car accident.

    Posted by jmnelson at 03/07/2006 @ 6:32pm

73. Wow. I have also studied film and I have to say that I am surprised by your assessment of Crash. To take issue with one of your specific statements (which reveals an overall misunderstanding of the themes and the execution of story in the film), the "racist cop"--as you erroneously put it, couching something in platitudes when the presentation is in fact much broader--is anything but a "good guy" in the end. Surely you can see the larger picture here.

    He is in fact, like nearly every character in the movie, round. If you've studied story craft you'll know this is the best and truest type of character: a round character reflects all of us, as no one is without moments of both selfish prejudice (in the broad sense) and genuine humanity. This is one of the strengths of Crash, that it is able to reflect humanity, its machinations and its miracles, with such effectiveness.

    Clearly, Crash is far from the worst movie of the year. Or have you not gotten around to seeing Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo? I think in fact both your post's title and your disgust are manufactured. If not, they are certainly hyperbolic.

    Posted by rjwoerheide at 03/07/2006 @ 7:08pm

74. Here is an excerpt from the December 16th, 2002 issue of Jet Magazine:

    Although Blacks experienced modest but consistent declines in residential segregation from 1980 to 2000, they remained the most highly segregated, according to a two-year analysis of census data by the U.S. Census Bureau. Based on the Census analysis, the top five most segregated metro areas were Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis and Newark, NJ, according to the Chicago Sun-Times...

    L.A. may be a "fake city" and therefore not representative of the rest of the U.S., but it certainly isn't because other cities are less segregated.

    Posted by arw at 03/07/2006 @ 8:03pm

75. Here's what I find most unfortunate about Mr. Richard Kim's review:

    Doesn't he realize the simple fact that this director/writer was trying to make a movie against racism, and that if it reached just one person (and judging by the reaction it reached many more) it was well worth the effort?

    What do you want, Mr. Kim? Can't you at least appreciate the effort? There could have been NO movies that addressed the issue of race this year. Is that what you'd prefer?

    Posted by sidweaver at 03/07/2006 @ 11:33pm