Monday, May 23, 2005

Crash, but not a spoiler

We saw an awesome movie yesterday afternoon. We drug L to it, not giving her the choice, as she always declines seeing movies with me. Ha! She loved it as much as we did. Just like she loves every other movie I pick out that she chooses to go with somebody else, namely her mom - and after the fact.

Crash is something like Tarantino's Pulp Fiction or Inarritu's 21 Grams. It is literally a collision of lives with some fairly tight writing by director, Haggis, even if a couple of the many collisions weren't exactly probable.

Very much of it is racially and class based. All is subject to change, interpretation, the moment.

"It asks tough questions, and lets its audience struggle with the answers," comments Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post.

Hunter kind of missed the point.

For all his long review (which, warning, is over-revealing in some places), he could have take a cue from P who explained Crash so succinctly through this single scene: Matt Dillon's crooked cop character tells the younger cop that he will be surprised what he finds himself doing in the future.

That's the deal - it's not what you've done or been in the past or how you might be labeled - nothing serves as a predictor for what you find yourself doing in the future. Good or bad, all unexpected. The plot is that complicatedly simple.

As much as you might react to someone else's stereotype of you, don't fall prey to stereotyping yourself, either.

It applies to a lot of things. Everything.

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