While I'm at it, I'll drive another nail in my coffin...
I don't want to open up a can of worms here and hopefully this won't, but looking back now I feel sorry that what happened to Crash actually did. Lion's Gate may have bought their Oscar, but that film, about a year ago, seemed like a much better and pure experience. Sure, it has its share of heavy-handedness, no clear protaganist, peddles a theme and at times can seem contrived, but there's passion in there too. And good acting. And some pretty moving scenes. Unfortunately, the film is now considered an unworthy stinkbomb because of the political maneuvering of its own studio, and that doesn't seem right to me since it does reach for something profound and great, even if it doesn't always reach it.
I'm still hurt by our loss at the Oscars and that scarred me and most of us, and no, I'm not being melodramatic. I'm sure everyone knows where I'm coming from. And that really hurt, for implications that had little to do with a film (though BBM was the best quality film of the five and deserved to win on merit and not politics). But the assertion that Crash is "trash" just doesn't hold up for me. If the film had not been in contention for the Oscar and subsequently rode its way to the podium, it would not have been savaged as such through our lens of emotional upheaval, in my mind.
I too, during Oscar time, was colored by this and spoke candidly about my waning support for Crash because to me as to all of us, the idea of BBM losing was a personal attack, an affront to who I am and seemed like an unthinkable possibility (it was both of these things). And we all know that it was indeed the Best Picture beyond our own passion for it.
I think I'm ready to look at Crash again now than the dust as settled, and see it for what it is -- a good film with some big ideas that unfortunately got caught in a crossfire it probably didn't deserve.
rt
