On "Crash"

No not that one with delicious James Spader (talking of whom, nice surprise to see Stargate on last night instead of Panorama... am I going mad though, or is there nothing about that change of schedule on the net? Or did I just get a different channel and not realise?)

ANYWAY.

Diversion aside.

Crash is written and directed by Paul Haggis, writer of the much lauded Million Dollar Baby. Cloud and I went to see it last week and to be honest, it may not have been competing with much, but it certainly felt like the best movie we had seen in a long while.

I'm sure that others will find ways to criticise it - and possibly with some legitimation - about its depiction of racial tensions and overlapping narratives. But for me it was carefully nuanced, well filmed and constructed with intricate attentiveness. Movie characterisations are always excessive in some way, but these felt complex and layered.

And it made me cry (and Cloud got very agitated as he tried to deny full blown tears himself). I know, I'm soft. But there it is. I'm a sucker for a good blub.

One wrong note though (and this will only make sense to those who have seen it so I'm spoiling nothing): you didn't need that utterly unnecessary 'explanatory' shot towards the end. We got it, we understood - and actually there was much greater poignancy and meaning in leaving it unclear, unspoken. Though I suspect those wretched focus groups and studio bosses insisted you drop in that damn shot since it so obviously didn't need to be there. It could have spoilt it completely; instead we were thankfully drawn in sufficiently to overlook this bum note.