So 'Crash' Wins 'best Picture'

[Meta Blog]

[spoiler warning]

Originally posted by Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason

So Crash, one of the most philosophically objectionable movies that I've seen in a long time, won yesterday's coveted Academy Award for "Best Picture." Crash has two major themes: everyone is a racist, doesn't know it, and no one is a hero, even if they perform heroic acts.

For example, when the Ryan Phillpe policeman character (after redeeming his earlier moral failure to act) kills the gang-banging hijacker-who was pulling out a religious trinket instead of a handgun: that was vicious depiction. When the Don Cheadle defective character is to blame for his brothers death by his strung out mother-that was vicious setup too.

Every part of Crash--every one of its intricate plot threads-was dedicated to portraying that mankind barely survives in the face of his omnipresent flawed perceptions. Yet if life were really like that, day in, day out, no matter what one does or how hard they strive to be just, we'd be paralyzed and forever rioting in the streets.

So what if Crash was stylishly filmed and well acted. All of it was in order to communicate an utterly corrupt Marxist view of how people think. The Marxist theory of racial conflict is that the races are utterly subjugated by the dominant race's power and there's nothing anyone can do about it save for blow things up. Why? Because we are all blinded by of our racial compositions-none of us can never hope to see beyond our myriad of prejudices.

So much for the rational faculty as man's only tool for survival.

From all this you get spectacles like when the cast made a guest appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show and members of the audience asked a Black studies professor if they were racists. If you have to ask someone if your everyday contempt for people of a different race actually makes you a racist, you have just achieved a new low in mental acuity.

The fact is we do have a free choice when dealing with others. We can either choose to judge people by relevant criteria, or by irrelevant criteria. We can either find a common bond with others, or reject any commonality that exists. This is a conscious choice. It may get automatized over time, but somewhere, each of us makes a deliberate choice that will shape our destiny: we either choose to think, or not to think.

Yet in Crash, we are all just victims of unconscious fate--a product of a racial composition we have no control over and utterly paralyzed by the fact we have judge and act.

Wicked. Where Jarhead sought merely to smear the United States Marine Corps, Crash seeks to smear all of the the United States.

[hunterrose]

Bah. It wasn't nearly that bad.

[FeatherFall]

Bah. It wasn't nearly that bad.

Care to tell us why you think so? Did any of the character's redeeming qualities overpower the omnipresent malevolent sense of life?

[shane]

Why did the producers make racism so apparent? I thought we were trying to eradicate it.

[gags]

Bah. It wasn't nearly that bad.

But is it worth seeing? Sounds like a piece of crap.

[hunterrose]

Care to tell us why you think so? Did any of the character's redeeming qualities overpower the omnipresent malevolent sense of life?

I don't think it had an "omnipresent malevolent" sense of live in the first place, but there are indeed great characters: the locksmith would probably be the most complete example.

IMO there is much good about this movie. Crash is not about the ubiquity of racism, but about the detrimental effects of racism (as an aspect of irrationality) in whomever it may exist. I thought it presented its theme quite well, and nowhere did the movie suggest that racism was either inevitable or unpreventable.

But is it worth seeing? Sounds like a piece of crap.

It is worth seeing, and it is not a piece of crap. I think the original poster misunderstood the movie a bit.

[FeatherFall]

Respectfully, I'd like to disagree. I think Nick Provenzo nailed it on the head.

The entire movie gave me a sick feeling. I get that way when I see horrible stuff happening to undeserving people, over and over again. Sure, the acting and cinematography were good. That's part of what left the pit in my stomach.

And that locksmith almost got his daughter killed with the story he told her -- another thing that made me want to puke.

-edit to close spaces.

Edited March 7, 2006 by FeatherFall

[MightierPen]

As I watched the movie I was liking it, because it seemed like everybody was becoming better people. But after it ended I hated the movie. It made me so depressed.

[Daedalus]

After reading Provenzo's review I have decided that I will not watch this movie in a theatre, on DVD, on cable TV or in any other medium. We Objectivists cannot control who gets Academy Awards, but we can determine when to withdraw our sanction. This is such a case.

[RationalBiker]

If the general description of the film interests me enough, I'm likely to see it despite what a reviewer might say. For my own purposes, I'm a far better judge of films than anyone else. I find that my sanction (or lack thereof) is most credible when I have more direct knowledge of something, which in this case means seeing the film before deciding whether it's trash.

Crash intrigues me enough to see it. Brokeback never intriqued me enough to see it.

[hunterrose]

So Crash, one of the most philosophically objectionable movies that I've seen in a long time, won yesterday's coveted Academy Award for "Best Picture." Crash has two major themes: everyone is a racist, doesn't know it, and no one is a hero, even if they perform heroic acts.

None of this is part of Crash's theme. Many people in it are not racists, the movie makes a point that whether racism is conscious or unconscious is irrelevant, and a bad person who performs one heroic act is indeed not a hero.

For example, when the Ryan Phillpe policeman character (after redeeming his earlier moral failure to act) kills the gang-banging hijacker-who was pulling out a religious trinket instead of a handgun: that was vicious depiction. When the Don Cheadle defective [sic]character is to blame for his brothers death by his strung out mother-that was vicious setup too.

Both of these examples are grossly inaccurate. Cheadle did something outright evil in order to protect his brother, and it was poetic justice that his mother (who wasn't "strung out" - that's a vicious setup) criticized him. Phillippe's error was a bit more complicated, so I'll simply say that his doing wrong and compensating, not with a correction of his values, but with weak goodwill gestures is not the act of a hero. He kills an unknown stranger due to his suspicions of a black man doing "non-black" things - not because he had any reason to believe the person he chose to help was a "gang-banging hijacker."

Every part of Crash--every one of its intricate plot threads-was dedicated to portraying that mankind barely survives in the face of his omnipresent flawed perceptions. Yet if life were really like that, day in, day out, no matter what one does or how hard they strive to be just, we'd be paralyzed and forever rioting in the streets.

I don't particularly care to dissect this, but I hate to think a good movie's being "viciously depicted" without any factual basis. Art is always a selective subset of reality, and simply because there is no first-handed genius/perfect man does not mean mankind barely survives. I don't even see how that conclusion [Marxism] could be reached, so I can't really deflate a nonexistent argument.

So what if Crash was stylishly filmed and well acted. All of it was in order to communicate an utterly corrupt Marxist view of how people think. The Marxist theory of racial conflict is that the races are utterly subjugated by the dominant race's power and there's nothing anyone can do about it save for blow things up. Why? Because we are all blinded by of our racial compositions-none of us can never hope to see beyond our myriad of prejudices.

Is there a fact to back up this theorized link to Marxism? Provenzo made mention of two (incorrectly interpreted) scenes, neither of which suggested that racism is inevitable or automatic.

From all this you get spectacles like when the cast made a guest appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show and members of the audience asked a Black studies professor if they were racists. If you have to ask someone if your everyday contempt for people of a different race actually makes you a racist, you have just achieved a new low in mental acuity.

...is it really proper to blame the moviemaker for things Oprah-ites said?? You can't insinuate that idiots in the Winfrey audience derived their idiocy from Crash simply by putting the two ideas in adjacent sentences.

The fact is we do have a free choice when dealing with others. We can either choose to judge people by relevant criteria, or by irrelevant criteria. We can either find a common bond with others, or reject any commonality that exists. This is a conscious choice. It may get automatized over time, but somewhere, each of us makes a deliberate choice that will shape our destiny: we either choose to think, or not to think.

That would have been a more correct interpretation of the theme. Unfortunately, he uses this as an attack.

Wicked. Where Jarhead sought merely to smear the United States Marine Corps, Crash seeks to smear all of the the United States.

I don't think Provenzo was being disingenuous, but regardless of his intentions, he is the one smearing here.

The entire movie gave me a sick feeling. I get that way when I see horrible stuff happening to undeserving people, over and over again.

I can understand that to a point. I hate books that are unceasingly dismal, but I don't think that is indicative of the movie. IMO.

And that locksmith almost got his daughter killed with the story he told her -- another thing that made me want to puke.

So you are saying the locksmith was wrong for what he did?

If the general description of the film interests me enough, I'm likely to see it despite what a reviewer might say. For my own purposes, I'm a far better judge of films than anyone else. I find that my sanction (or lack thereof) is most credible when I have more direct knowledge of something, which in this case means seeing the film before deciding whether it's trash.

I agree with that.

[FeatherFall]

So you are saying the locksmith was wrong for what he did?

He was trying to console his daughter. He wasn't being a bad person, but the way he did it was terrible. I never would have told my kid something like, "put on this hair clip and you'll be invincible." That's a recipe for a dead kid.

So, yeah, I think he did something wrong.

Edited March 7, 2006 by FeatherFall

[Qwertz]

This film is reviewed in my Oscar Roundup 2005.

Incidentally, every movie can be 'worth seeing,' no matter how pointless, offensive, evil or otherwise bad it may be, for several reasons. First, someone, somewhere thought it was worth making, and it is valuable to know what sort of effect it is going to have on others. Secondly, seeing a film gives you 'permission' to criticize it. You can't make a reasoned argument about a film without having seen it. You can argue about its marketing, about media attention, or the like, but you really can't say anything about the theme without seeing it for yourself.

Crash is, however, not worth spending money on, or time which you could spend in other ways. As RC suggests: if it interests you, for good or bad, see it. If it isn't worth two hours of your time, don't.

-Q

Edited March 8, 2006 by Qwertz

[hunterrose]

Crash is, however, not worth spending money on...

If you are going to make such a definitive statement, it is best to have some objective reasons for saying so.

I read your review, and I strongly disagree with some of your statements, as misinterpretations of the objective meaning of the movie (IMO.) "Malevolent Universe" is often used inappropriately, and in this case, I don't think it is a valid descriptor of the movie.

I've seen far too many false reviews of Rand's novels for me to want to see any good (or even decent) piece of art trashed for the wrong reasons.