More Qualified to Comment...
Now that I've seen the film.
OK, it's been almost 24 hours since I've seen "Crash", and I still haven't completely recovered from the experience. Abusive, relentless, and, in the end, both marginally hopeful and hopeless -- all in all, an assault on the emotions around race. But it was so much bigger than that.
I left the theater feeling like I had been beaten, helped up by my oppressor, and then beaten again. I know that interpersonal conflict in America can't be all based on racism, but this film underscored the point that Cornel West (and others) have made over and over again -- race does matter. It matters a lot in a country where for centuries, skin color determined much of your lot in life. Not every Black man walking down the street should be feared -- we're not all looking to cheat, mug or carjack you, but, sometimes a cigar is a cigar. And sometimes, in another part of town, it's a White man or an Asian man or a Latin man who should be stepped away from.
Like any film about the human condition, more questions than answers abounded. But here's one that I struggle with still: Why did the Persian woman buy a gun for her father and load it with blanks? I know that the bullets are a pivotal plot point, and this is not a criticism of the film, but why blanks? We know that she requests 'a box of the red ones' when she purchases the gun, but didn't she notice they were blanks when she loaded them? What if the store had been robbed and her father thought he'd be defending himself with real bullets? Was this a metaphor for something else (yeah, yeah, of course it is).
I am sure that I will write about this again, this series of Crash Moments. If you haven't seen the film, I STRONGLY encourage you to find it and see it. But with all the known high-star-power talent in this movie, don't be tempted to take the whole family. This is not a kids film, nor one for the faint of heart or for those who can't take foul language or straight talk. Like the bully who tortured us as kids, this film pulls very few punches. It would suck if it held back.
Now that I've seen the film.
OK, it's been almost 24 hours since I've seen "Crash", and I still haven't completely recovered from the experience. Abusive, relentless, and, in the end, both marginally hopeful and hopeless -- all in all, an assault on the emotions around race. But it was so much bigger than that.
I left the theater feeling like I had been beaten, helped up by my oppressor, and then beaten again. I know that interpersonal conflict in America can't be all based on racism, but this film underscored the point that Cornel West (and others) have made over and over again -- race does matter. It matters a lot in a country where for centuries, skin color determined much of your lot in life. Not every Black man walking down the street should be feared -- we're not all looking to cheat, mug or carjack you, but, sometimes a cigar is a cigar. And sometimes, in another part of town, it's a White man or an Asian man or a Latin man who should be stepped away from.
Like any film about the human condition, more questions than answers abounded. But here's one that I struggle with still: Why did the Persian woman buy a gun for her father and load it with blanks? I know that the bullets are a pivotal plot point, and this is not a criticism of the film, but why blanks? We know that she requests 'a box of the red ones' when she purchases the gun, but didn't she notice they were blanks when she loaded them? What if the store had been robbed and her father thought he'd be defending himself with real bullets? Was this a metaphor for something else (yeah, yeah, of course it is).
I am sure that I will write about this again, this series of Crash Moments. If you haven't seen the film, I STRONGLY encourage you to find it and see it. But with all the known high-star-power talent in this movie, don't be tempted to take the whole family. This is not a kids film, nor one for the faint of heart or for those who can't take foul language or straight talk. Like the bully who tortured us as kids, this film pulls very few punches. It would suck if it held back.
posted by A. D. Thinker at 9:34 PM
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