Crash

As part of our ongoing Oscar-nominated movie-watching binge, we just saw Crash. I was paradoxically riveted and underwhelmed. I couldn't stop watching for that same reason that you have to look when you come on a, er, car crash. And I was happy to be disappointed insofar as relatively few horrible things happpened to the more-or-less good people. Heck, if you assume that Ryan Phillippe's well-intentioned white cop is never punished for murdering the black carjacker, then I think all the "good guys" get off.

My discomfort with the movie begins with certain ludicrous (Ludacris?) directorial decisions, such as the snow at Christmastime, the onslaught of clever transitions (as Scene 1 ends, a car passes and turns into a car passing as Scene 2 starts), the over-the-top ending involving a black man redeeming slaves at Christmas, the enraged black man barely avoiding getting shot by the cops in front of Santa Claus, et cetera. Basically, any time Paul Haggis could have avoided a Christmas reference, he should have.

Beyond those matters, though, the movie bothers me by seeming to offer a message, but not actually doing so. I rather like amoral movies (a, not im) lacking denouements, with Lost in Translation being perhaps the best recent example. Setting to one side the (perhaps intentionally) unbelievably myriad coincidences, the sophomorish gist of the movie seems to be that no one can intentionally do either right or wrong - good things and bad things both happen mostly by accident. Fatalism isn't much of a point for any movie, much less the supposedly best one of 2005.