"Crash"

Last night, Mosch and I watched the movie Crash.

I try not to read reviews of movies I plan to see soon, but I vaguely remember reading some reviews of Crash when it first came out. Probably Ebert loved it, and probably somebody at Slate or Salon thought its views of race in America were off-target.

I thought it was a great movie, by which I really mean, it does what a movie should do - it's gripping, entertaining, funny, painful, heart-warming, terrifying, tragic, and suspenseful, all in turns. I highly recommend watching it.

I don't want to address its "message" at all, really. It surely has one, or several, but it's really the movie qua movie that I thought was great. I enjoyed watching it. As for the race stuff - yes, I think the movie takes an exaggerated view of racial conflict, but it wasn't annoying or harmful. You don't have to imagine that the director of a movie means for the cast to be some kind of a representative sample of humanity.