Contrived and propagandistic

Rating: 1/10 (3 April 2006)

I love when Hollywood intentionally gives us a good contrivance. What else is it when you go see a movie like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Buckaroo Banzai?" These are films which are made to be extreme works of fiction and, as viewers, it is part of the experience to suspend disbelief.
Then, of course, there are films like "Crash." Films which are no less contrived, no less fictional, no less fantasy, yet dare us to suspend disbelief because they are meant to be perceived as some sort of Brechtian reality. As if a pastiche of LA; the very sediment of America as if it were reduced in some great crucible,is placed before us and we as audience, can participate in seeing (in almost a voyeuristic fashion) what REALLY GOES ON-- WHAT RACE RELATIONS IN America ARE REALLY ALL ABOUT.
No, I am not some right wing nut. Far FAR from it. But this movie is so surreptitious in the manner in which it portrays pure fiction as flesh and blood fact. It is, as I stated in the title, almost propagandistic. It is a big, unforgiving lie! No, I do doubt nor do I deny racial tensions and significant racial problems in America. But with "Crash" we get to be force fed Paul Haggis' world-view and we are meant to be shocked and disturbed at the cruel, unfair world we live in. But unlike being force-fed most things (like, ironically, Haggis), "Crash" can subvert you, and slyly make you a believer in this creation-as-truth (which is as real as Disneyland).
There is nothing new in his directorial style. It has been done before and more successfully in countless other films.
But I am not a believer. I have not been brainwashed. This is an ultra-contrived, overly-crafted, stylized work of fiction. And, as such, it is not very good.
I know many of you feel otherwise. But this is not the perspective of the black man, the Iranian man, the Korean women, etc. It is a white-man's dream of them. It's a film to be viewed from the comfortable suburbs, with a two-car garage and a hefty mortgage. It is from there that you can really feel the angst and oppression of those who are dispossessed. From that perspective you can be disturbed and see the hardness of this film. From there you can see it all really is true. Because what else is there in that environment to contradict the "facts" of the film?
"Crash" is a creative, formulaic, FICTIONAL film that stabs its ideology at the guilty white middle class who embraced it. Fiction presented as fact. One world view disguised as many.
It's contrived. It's artificial.
What's most disturbing about it is the middle-class masses who imbibed this nonsense and set it as dogma in their minds.
Oh, by the way, it's a bad movie too.
Peace