
MCN draws our attention to the gathering storm that is the chasm of critical opinion on the race-drama Crash (as opposed to the sex-and-car-collision-spectacle of the same name).
The same day that the Chicago Film Critics named Crash the best film of 2005, most-famous-of-them-all Chicago critic Roger Ebert smacks down LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas. The beef? Ebert thinks Crash is the best film of the year. Foundas (and others have) named it the worst.
Writing in Slate's Annual Critics Roundtable, critic David Edelstein wrote:
"Did any of you like Crash, a movie with a structure
worthy of a bad 19th-century melodrama that proves
it's just as bogus to make race a relentless, all-defining
issue as it is to make it a non-issue?"
But it's Foundas' reply that really set Ebert off:
"David opened the floor to suggestions of the year's
worst movies, and Crash is certainly a good starting
point for me. Admittedly, Paul Haggis' directorial debut
wasn't one of those so-bad-it's-mesmerizing debacles,
like Town & Country or The Bonfire of the Vanities,
that Tony so lovingly remembered a few weeks back
in the Times—if it had been, it wouldn't have made my
blood boil nearly as much. No, Crash is an Important
Film About the Times in Which We Live, which is another
way of saying that it's one of those self-congratulatory
liberal jerk-off movies that rolls around every once in
a while to remind us of how white people suffer too,
how nobody is without his prejudices, and how, when
the going gets tough, even the white supremacist cop
who gets his kicks from sexually harassing innocent
black motorists is capable of rising to the occasion.
Recent Comments