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Crash 
Directed by: Paul Haggis
Written by: Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
Starring: Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Chris ‘Ludacris' Bridges, Larenz Tate, Terrence Howard, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, Michael Pena, Shaun Toub, William Fichtner, Jennifer Esposito, Keith David, Tony Danza.
Country: USA
 
Three and a half Xmas wreaths
The American Nightmare.
Don't go to Los Angeles. The whites hate the blacks. The blacks hate the whites. The whites hate the whites that hate the blacks. The blacks hate the blacks. The whites hate the Persians. The Persians hate the whites. The Persians hate the blacks. The blacks don't hate the Persians, because they think they're Arabs. (They hate Arabs.) This miffs the Persians since Arabs are lower than pond scum. The whites and blacks hate the Chicanos. The Chicanos hate the blacks, whites and Koreans. The Koreans hate the blacks, whites and the Cambodians. The Cambodians are trying to figure out just whom they hate. Give them time. So, everybody pretty well hates everybody else. Families are torn apart from hate. And if that ain't enough, there's a fair amount of self-loathing going on as well. Maybe it's because it's Xmas. That always brings out the worst in people. But like I said, don't go to Los Angeles.
This is the vision of Crash, a very good film directed and co-written by Paul Haggis, who didn't listen and went from London, Ontariario [sic] to L.A. those many moons ago. And isn't he glad he did. He recently scripted Million Dollar Baby.
Crash uses a now familiar story-telling style in film (e.g., most Robert Altman films, Magnolia, Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros) that follows a retrospective day or two in the lives of several disparate (and desperate) people who crash up against one another leaving their prejudices and vulnerabilities scattered about the screen.
In a skewed sense, this is a ‘relationship' movie. Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito, homicide cops, and sleeping together, have a superficial relationship. Her racism is more overt although this would be a surprise to her. His is a racism of ignorance and neglect. Chris ‘Ludacris' Bridges and Larenz Tate are car-jackers. Bridges has a ton of racist rationalizations for his behaviour and Tate is doubtful of their veracity, but goes along for the ride anyway. They mug an up-and-coming D.A. and his wife—Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock—which causes their relationship to implode as he's more interested in how this will play in the media than in how she's feeling. Matt Dillon is an angry, bigoted cop in uniform and Ryan Philippe is his partner, disgusted by his partner's conduct in rousting a black couple. For the black couple—Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard—this is a relationship defining moment that splits them apart, as well. Shaun Toub as a Persian small-shop owner and Michael Pena, as a young, black locksmith get bound up in a strange dance of cultural and linguistic misunderstanding.
This is all in the first ten minutes, mind you, and the antagonists will all meet again in various circumstances. Eventually, they all have to face their hypocrisies, and for those that have them, swallow their principles.
The ensemble movie is a writer's medium and more theatrical than cinematic in practice, which can be a problem. But generally, not here. The writing is first class and the camera-work is dynamic and fluid. The cast is well chosen and the acting exceptional. This a slick, professional job, and that's not meant in pejorative terms. Haggis, in his feature directorial debut, knew what he wanted and he got it in a tight 35-day shoot.
However, some of the elements that make this a good film, keep it from being outstanding. For instance, it's a written rule in screenwriting that ‘there are no coincidences'. Robert McKee is a real bore on this one, but it's actually good advice. An ill-timed coincidence can lose an audience in a film beat. Crash has not one, but several fortuitous happenstances that stretch the believability of the story. Gaddis, of course, knows he breaking the rule. He's a pro and the argument can be made it's acceptable for him to do so. But in places he goes too far. This thematic conceit becomes too cute in certain scenarios and reminds us we're watching an unseen hand at work.
Another distraction is his tendency to slip away from hard-edged dialogue and action and into melodrama complete with a treacley music score. We get what's happening on screen and don't need the extra help.
Since none of the characters are likeable—understandable perhaps, but not likeable—the redemptive ending (which I won't describe) is disappointing for me. I wasn't sure what Haggis was trying to say. He's already made the point that no matter how much his characters see life as black and white, they're fooling themselves. I think his insider Hollywood voice was telling him he better pay homage to the American dream which requires happy endings, or suffer at the box office. Pity.
D.H. Lawrence talked about Americans' fascination with horrific events. In illustration, he used a description of a bullfight, but it applies to watching ‘a car crash', as well. No matter how gruesome an event, Americans feel it's their duty to go and watch. After all, it's ‘Life' and should be experienced. Crash is a series of crashes, but there's hardly the suggestion of how to put on the brakes.
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Directed & Written by: Rebecca Miller
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Catherine Keener, Camilla Belle, Jason Lee, Jena Malone, Paul Dano, Ryan McDonald, Susanna Thompson.
Country: USA
 
Two and a Half Snakes
Eden Isn't What It's Cracked Up To Be.
Logline: A dying hippie gets frantic about what's going to happen to his cloistered daughter and commune as developers eat away at the doorstep.
The story: It's the mid ‘80s and Jack Slavin's idealist communal comrades have long decamped for the new world, leaving behind Jack to raise his beautiful and naïve daughter. How could she be anything but blissfully ignorant, stuck on an island off the New England coast? And now the world Jack despises has come to root him out: a developer is building cookie-cutter houses nearby and he wants to buy Jack out.
All sensible people will see that Jack's battle is a futile one. But, it's not just Jack's world that's dying. So is he. Not his calcifying brain, mind you, but a weak heart.
He invites an old flame to come and care for them. Actually, he bribes her with cold hard cash. She brings her two teen-age sons along, which is, as far as his daughter Rose's welfare is concerned, like inviting a snake into the besieged Eden. Rose is deflowered (symbolism abounds at every turn); Jack realizes his cause is lost and his love for Rose is a tiny bit skewed; and, well, there are some dramatics. ‘Nuf said.
There is enough here for two or three stories (or one good one), but Ballad misses the mark as screenwriter and director Rebecca Miller brushes up against the more interesting aspects of human quirks and foibles and slides right on by. For one, Jack—a rich man by inheritance—is self-centred and arrogant and will buy people off in the blink of an eye. When the developer tries to buy him out, there's no light that goes in Jack's head that this is exactly how he treats people. This alone might have saved the picture. For another, his sexual feelings for Rose, while coming out of left field, keep right on going in right. There's no examination of where it came from or what it might mean.
Daniel Day-Lewis (Mr. Rebecca Miller) is one of my favourite actors to the point where he can do no wrong—until now. In his defense, his character is left grasping at ideas that, upon Jack's reflection, either might make him whole or destroy him and make his a memorable role. It's just not there in the script and Day-Lewis doesn't seem committed to Jack because of it.
Camilla Belle, as Rose, doesn't have much depth either. Perhaps her inscrutable face holds her back and causes a believability gap for some of things she does—like offering herself up to the boys. Catherine Keener, as the mother of the two boys, should be as mad as hell with Jack's indifference to her, but she doesn't play it that way. Rick Dano, as the youngest son, is suitably punk-smarmy and is the snake in the house, but that's hardly fair as real innocence is not vulnerable to juvenile caprice. Jason Lee (a gardener) and Beau Bridges (the developer) give us hints of other interesting stories, but we don't get to see that developed. Complete kudos to Ryan McDonald as Rodney, the older, introverted gay son. His timing and intelligence shone through in his scenes with Rose.
One has to wonder if Miller meant Ballad as an indictment of the 60s' counter culture or an attempt to finally bury it. Whatever the ‘message', it wasn't written plainly enough.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Directed by: Garth Jennings
Written by: Douglas Adams & Karey Kirkpatrick
Starring: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Warwick Davis, Alan Rickman, John Malkovich, Bill Nighy, Thomas Lennon, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren.
Country: USA/UK
Two Earths
Space Balls Redux.
This is a flick you really want to love if you got caught up in Douglas Adams' literary classic of fun and ironic pathos across the galaxy and beyond. Yes, yes, of course, fiction and flicks are different mediums and shouldn't be compared too closely, but how much could they fuck The Guide up, eh? Apparently about a parsec's worth.
First the story: A congenial, thespian alien saves his quintessential pasty-faced, English birk of a pal from the end of the world as we know it. ‘They'—sentient beings much smarter, bigger or uglier than we—are putting in an intergalactic highway and Earth is an obstacle for its creation. No big deal, really, happens all the time. In fact, Arthur Dent, the Englishman, is lying down in front of a bulldozer as the local council has decided his house is in the way of a new bypass (you see, irony is cosmic) just before Ford Perfect, the alien, plucks him out of harm's way and aboard a Vorgon ship. The good news is that they're alive; the bad news is that the Vorgons are the ugliest, least poetic—they euthanize people by reading verse—and most bureaucratic beings in the universe. Kafka would probably be in awe. Of course, they escape and are off on an adventure to, to, well, we're really not quite sure and after awhile we don't really care.
There is something about finding the answer to the meaning of life and eventually they do have to save Arthur's love from back on Earth. (How did she get into space?—don't ask.) But haven't we seen all this before on Red Dwarf or something very close to it? Or even Monty Python? And wasn't it much funnier? And wasn't that 15 years ago? Yes it was.
What we have here is a very thin plot stuck together with slapstick and cute quasi-philosophical interrogatives cut-aways inventively done in live action and computer generation with narration by a droll Stephen Fry. When the ‘silly-bits-in-between' become more amusing and interesting than the narrative, it's a sign that story and character development have gone astray, or better yet, weren't thought of in the first place.
(Director Garth Jennings and Producer Nick Goldsmith have music videos and commercials on their credit sheet. No movies. Of any kind. Disney gave these guys $80m or $100m US—it depends on whom you talk to—for the project, based on the strength of a personal recommendation from Spike Jonze. That's Hollywood, folks.)
Martin Freeman (BBC's The Office) is suitably put upon with just the right amount of spunk as Arthur. Mos Def (Ford Perfect) mumbles. Zooey Deschanel (Trillian, Arthur's love) is as patchy as a Magrathean quilt. Sam Rockwell (Intergalactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox) takes his lame-brained character over the top and stays there. (I see a Razzie in his future and/or a call from The New Beverly Hillbillies.) Bill Nighy (the alcoholic ex-rock star in Love Actually) shines as planetary construction engineer Slartibartfast.
The climax of Hitchhiker, if we can call it that, ends with 20 minutes to go when Zooey is saved by forms stamped in triplicate. Then Earth gets rebuilt in a high-tech denouement so that we can all feel better about ourselves.
When trade journalists enthuse about the Vogons coming out of the Henson Creature Shop (and not being computer generated) as a main selling point of the movie, that tells you they need any edge they can get. That's not a good sign.
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