It’s the ABC Oscars: anything but ‘Crash’

Good Night, and Good Luck
If “Munich” raises uncertainty, “Good Night, and Good Luck” squashes it. Its point of view is as black and white as its cinematography; its wisdom is as contained as its claustrophobia-inducing sets. I don’t mean to imply that the film needed more “balance” — that awful, besmirched word.

Warner Independent Pictures Did George Clooney and David Strathairn tell you anything you didn't already know in "Good Night, and Good Luck"?

Several years ago in The New Yorker, biologist Richard Dawkins said, “I think it's important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

I agree with this — I quote it weekly — but I learned almost nothing watching “Good Night, and Good Luck.” I was in the choir and admired George Clooney’s sermon, but none of it was exactly news.

So what was it? A good reminder that in times of paranoia, bullies prosper.

Crash

Lions Gate Films In case you didn't know, racism is really, really bad according to "Crash."

Now this thing.

I want to like “Crash.” It’s a film about how race and class blend together — but mostly don’t blend together — in modern Los Angeles. That’s a great subject for a serious film. And while “Crash” sees itself as a very serious film, it’s not a good film because it’s false from the beginning.

What do we talk about when we talk about race? We don’t talk about race. I would argue that this is the big problem with race in America. Our tendency to ignore it. Our tendency to pretend otherwise. Our tendency, in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s words, to “wear the mask that grins and lies.”

What is the big problem with race in the Los Angeles of “Crash”? That everyone enunciates every racial thought they have. So the Asian woman complains that “Mexicans” don’t know how to drive and the “Mexican” mocks the Asian woman’s pronunciation (“blake” for “break”), and the white gun store owner calls the Persian man “Osama” and blames him for 9/11 and the white cop mocks the black woman’s name (“Shaniqua. Big f---ing surprise”) and the black cop calls his girlfriend “Mexican,” as the Asian woman did, even though — she informs him — her mother is from Puerto Rico and her father is from El Salvador, to which the black cop makes it up to her by asking her why all of her people park their cars on their lawns.

“Crash” is saying “How horrible that we're all this way” when most of us are not only not this way but the exact opposite of this way. We may think these thoughts but we rarely enunciate them. Sure, racism still exists, but at its most potent it's usually silent. It's opaque. It makes you wonder “Is this happening because of race?” You suspect but you have no evidence. “Crash” not only gives us evidence it manipulates the evidence.

“Crash” has another big problem. It assumes that by showing us the two extremes of a single character it’s giving us a full character. Don Cheadle’s character dismisses his mother and then cares for her; Matt Dillon’s character humiliates a black woman and then risks his life to save her; Ryan Phillippe’s character goes out of his way to rescue an armed black man and then shoots an unarmed black man because of a racial assumption. But two extremes are not a full character. They’re just extremes. “Crash” raises important issues but in the end it gives us no clarity; it just gives us more noise.

Sum up
All in all, though, 2005 was a good year for movies, and — “Crash” aside — it’s a strong line-up of best picture candidates.

Since “Munich” has no shot, I think I’ll be rooting for “Brokeback Mountain” on March 5. I don’t want advertising to win. I don’t want homophobia to win. I don’t want this to be another year, like 1952 (“The Greatest Show on Earth” over “High Noon”), 1968 (“Oliver!” over the unnominated “2001”) and 1989 (“Driving Miss Daisy” over the unnominated “Do the Right Thing”), when the Academy ignored the zeitgeist and got it completely wrong.

Erik Lundegaard wonders why you haven’t gotten off your duff to see “Munich” yet. He can be reached at:

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