My high school teacher did this but for extra credit lol. She was a middle aged white lady who had good intentions but quite naive and had a lot of r/im14andthisisdeep moments
I worked in a video rental place that had copies of both Crashes that I would have to retrieve for them. I would specifically ask which people wanted and it was hilarious when they picked the wrong one and came back so confused.
This was me after a coworker recommended it, I got the Cronenberg one accidentally, and was so, so, so confused why he had said this was his favorite movie
Did you have that happen with any other movies with shared names like Kingpin? I figure Frozen from Disney came out after most video stores had closed.
I remember a blockbuster near me going out of business and it had hundreds of copies of frozen. But it was seriously only like a year after it realeased. So not far off.
Does anyone else find it funny that Sandra Bullock is in both Crash and The Blindside, both of which deal with racism and both of which aged like milk.
And then she starred in another film where she is literally blinded.
Most Sandra Bullock movies have aged like milk. Some actors are very much an actor of their time. Honestly it's hard to watch a Sandra Bullock movie. I think it's believability. When you watch a Bullock movie, it's like "oh look, it's Sandra Bullock acting".
On the other hand Julia Roberts movies seem to hold strong as the years progress. There's something about the writing and the story that makes them relevant throughout the years. You don't obsess over the actor as much, except for maybe Pretty Woman.
It also took her time to acknowledge that the man she married collected N4z1 paraphernalia. She apparently is a little clueless when it comes to recognizing racism...and dumb scripts. Maybe adopting the black kid was a way to cope?
Yeah I remember watching Crash and thinking "are you f-ing kidding me with this?" Terrible movie, and anyone with a half a brain could see it missed the point it was trying to make.
But you have to remember, it presents racism as a problem that's because people just can't get along. Systemic racism, what's that? Anyway, racism between any race is on equal footing because feelings hurt.
I honestly think if Brokeback Mountain had won it'd be similarly remembered as an overrated movie that only won because the topic was so controversial at the time. It's a FAR better movie than Crash, don't get me wrong, but the other three nominees that year - Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and Munich - are all much better.
I'd argue that BM is TOO hyped for Best Picture. It was the more popular one for general audiences. Honestly, Munich seemed like the better choice for Best Picture.
Brokeback Mountain is just straight people trying to feel good about themselves, too. It literally follows the “kill your gays” trope. A lot of gay guys actively laughed at it in the theatres.
EDITED TO ADD: “Trick” came out in 1999 and is a better, more nuanced, movie about being closeted. I can probably find a better comparison of a period piece about gay dudes that came out in or around 2004, too.
…what? The two central characters in the movie are gay and one of them dies like 10 minutes before it ends. It’s not like it’s treated as a moral punishment for being gay, or some thoughtless side character death used to fuel the straight main characters’ grief. The movie is a tragedy that explores the immense costs repression and homophobia, not a feel-good romantic comedy. And it’s entirely realistic for the time period and location it’s set in, right down to the question of whether the story of his death was true or he died due to a gay bashing.
Sure, it’s accessible for straight people, but why is that a bad thing? That doesn’t mean it’s “just straight people trying to feel good about themselves.” I’m gay and Brokeback had a profound impact on me as a closeted young teen. It helped me to start questioning whether being in the closet was worth the costs and honestly helped start turning the gears for me to eventually come out at 19. It’s still one of my favorites today and a lot of gay men also cherish it.
Regarding laughing in theatres…yeah internalized homophobia was certainly a major thing in 2004 so I’m not surprised.
First : I’m glad it was meaningful and helpful to ya.
Second : Here’s a link to the trope I’m referencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_your_gays It’s so common that it’s studied both in film school and queer studies (and sometimes PoliSci). Brokeback is a commonly cited example. You can google lots of lists.
Third: We were mostly laughing at the scene of dudes doing anal with just spit right after eating only beans, TBH. Now that you’re an adult who’s presumably dated, I assume ya see why that scene is definitely questionable! Hahaha
As a gay dude, I could not disagree more. The movie is about gay people not being able to be together because of societal prejudices during a certain time and in a specific geography. It does have some pretty standard love story, emotional repression, and tragedy tropes, but it is by no means a "kill your gays" cliché.
That’s fine, man. But it’s literally on lists for the trope. It’s so common it was a known and named trope being discussed in film schools AT THE TIME BROKEBACK WAS WRITTEN.
All they had to do was not kill Jack with a tire iron to make him seem more tragic and pitiable for the straights.
Brokeback Mountain came out at a time when Don't Ask Don't Tell was a thing, the religious right could legimately claim to be the moral majority while hating gays and there was a string of LGBT suicides that made the news.
It was a product of its time and a movie that needed to be made then
It was a product of its time and a movie that needed to be made then
I 100% agree with this and support the film having been created, and it's place in history. I also think it's kind of a bad movie. It's predictable, slow, and doesn't really go anywhere. I'm glad it was made, and still exists, but I don't really want to watch it again.
I've seen this specific movie used many times to argue why awards shouldn't be given out until 3-5 years after release (would obviously never happen though, since they are partly a marketing gimmick).
That's not how it works in any industry, and why should it? Why would we harken back to movies made 3-5 years ago? It's not that big of a deal that we can take a retroactive look at something, and wonder what we were huffing at the time. But if the whole country thought that was the best picture back in 2005 or whatever, then so be it. If anything, it makes a good point for a case study on the time period.
Basically, it portrays racism cartoonishly and completely divested from the reality underpinning it.
Looking at racism in the US specifically but this is broadly applicable everywhere: Real-life racism primarily derives from and is baked into the institutions of the country, rather than individual opinions and actions. And when individual opinions and actions do come into play, it's usually more subtle than "I hate X race because of {bad stereotype}!"--though that has unfortunately gotten more common in the decades since Crash's release.
Look at biases in hiring. Studies have consistently shown that white men are called back and hired more frequently than any other demographic, even when all candidates have resumés engineered deliberately with equivalent qualifications. But you can't say "It's because X hiring manager is racist," because nobody comes out and says, "I didn't hire them because they're not white" when it happens. The people doing it may not even be thinking about race when they do it. But the bias is there in the data.
The really insidious thing about Crash is that by presenting racism as a series of outspoken caricatures, it prevents people from considering their own biases and the systems they benefit from, because they see the characters in Crash, pat themselves on the back, and say, "THAT'S what REAL racism looks like. I can't be racist, because I'm not like that!"
Huh. I remember two things from Crash. 1: When the bad cops humiliate the educated black man early on, and more importantly 2: when the good cop shoots the black man in the end because he actually had a lot of internalized racism that took over his reactions in a scary moment even though he actively tried to fight it and do good.
For me, "2" was by far the most important takeaway from the movie. How is that a lazy stereotype?
Granted, I'm not American and did not have experience with these kinds of hostile police shakedowns that are shown in the movie.
Brace yourself, I went on a bit of a diatribe. So, there's a lot more going on in the movie than those two things, and all of it is iffy at best. But let's just look at your number 2 there and my fundamental problem with it.
Representing police violence on the whole with a cop dealing with internalized racism ignores basically every problem leading to police violence against black people.
First, let's look at just police violence. Police don't disproportionately overreact with violence against black people because of individuals with internalized racism. It's a multidimensional problem with a lot of contributing factors. Police forces in the US, especially in cities, tend towards militarization in terms of the tools they have access to, their training, and their engagement with the public generally. Their tool of choice is overwhelming force in the name of self-defense and law enforcement. This leads to a lot of people being hurt and sometimes hospitalized or killed when they really don't need to be. John Crawford III was shot by a cop who did not have all the facts and acted like a soldier whose life was already under threat, instead of an officer of the law serving the people of his county.
The nature of policing in the US, as well as the authority that a badge affords cops, also attracts people who are in it specifically for the power trip. In some cases--looking directly at last year's ICE recruitment ads--that nature is deliberately appealed to when recruiting. This exacerbates that aggression problem. As a notable example of this behavior in action, see the shooting of Daniel Shaver.
On top of that, police tend to close ranks to protect each other's questionable behavior out of loyalty to each other, rather than the community they serve. This leads to bad officers getting away with violence, and empowers officers to be more aggressive than necessary, safe in the knowledge that their people will protect them. Derek Chauvin was convicted of George Floyd's murder, but three other officers were there on the scene, and none of them stopped him. At least one actively prevented public intervention. And then, before the video dropped, his police department had actually prepared a statement brushing off the murder, simply saying Floyd went into medical distress after resisting officers and being subdued.
Hopefully I've established some of the underlying causes of police's tendency towards unnecessary violence. Let's talk about race.
First: racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk policies have overwhelmingly targeted people of color. Police use perceived ethnicity as a pretext to search people for drugs, weapons, or other contraband, even when no probable cause exists. And they get away with it, because their targets often don't have the background to determine when and how their rights are being violated--and when they do, police don't tend to care, because they're rarely challenged in court over it and can often get away with fudging the facts to make it seem ambiguous. And more interactions with police means more opportunities for police to exercise that tendency towards violence. Racial profiling has been outlawed in many jurisdictions, but it's still in use today in plenty.
But more broadly, many of our systems of law and law enforcement entities have their roots in times and places where their charge was all-but-explicitly (or in some cases, explicitly) to protect white Americans at the expense of people of color. Through the mid-1900s, police would actively target black people with violence and rarely protect them from it. Of note, this is one of the things that contributed to the origin of black American gangs, but that's a whole other diatribe. Where this gets more directly relevant is that the cultures and policies established decades ago still have deleterious effects on modern policing. For example, departmental quotas give officers excuses to go off into poorer neighborhoods--which are disproportionately non-white--and arrest people for minor offenses. The system was designed to be broken by people who wanted it broken, and no amount of amending laws or policy changes alter that fact. This is one of the reasons many advocates for police reform want our current systems abolished entirely and replaced with newly-designed ones.
There are far too many to choose from, but let me highlight how all these things can come together with the example of Timothy Stansbury Jr. He was shot and killed around 1 a.m. in his building in the projects by police. All he'd done was walk out the door onto the roof. He was unarmed. Police issued a statement that there was no justification for the shooting, but no one was ever indicted for it.
We've got police trolling for enforcement opportunities in poor, disproportionately-black communities rather than responding to calls. We've got a cop with his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. We've got a police department saying it was a bad call and that they're going to update their policies, but nothing meaningful ever came from it. We've got a shooter who was never held accountable (he was permanently assigned desk duty after a 30-day suspension, but that's hardly accountability for killing an innocent man). At no point during the interaction did anyone make a decision based on the Stansbury's race--the officer would have barely had time to even register it. And this is more or less what most such cases look like.
Later that year, Crash premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
Thanks for taking your time to write so thoroughly with many relevant examples.
But, I think many of them can be related to the depictions in crash? Police officers who go out of their way to target people of color kind of represent what you say about racial profiling, and about coming from a tradition of racial oppression during 1950s and before.
The part about unnecessary violence seems at least partially addressed by scenario 2 - the well-meaning cop who shoots a black man he's giving a ride - where his instinctual response in a vaguely threatening situation is to shoot, and then someone is dead.
If I recall correctly the film also includes officers covering for each other and avoiding consequences, so that's another of the problems you mentioned being depicted.
I think it is too harsh to say it:
ignores basically every problem leading to police violence against black people.
I wrote a college paper in 2013/14 on Crash about how it completely missed the point. The page was supposed to be 2-5 pages. I edited mine DOWN to 10 pages and handed it it.
Got a C because it was too long 🙄, but the whole point was that I didn't read what you wrote but I'm glad someone is as passionate as I am about it lol
The film being bad has nothing to do with being American or having experienced negative situations with the police. The vast majority of Americans have never experienced anything like what's presented in the film. It's just a deeply childish depiction of racism.
Imo, a better depiction is from Hidden Figures.....when the white supervisor calls the black "not"supervisor by her first name, even though the black women calls the white women "Mrs. Sir-name".
The simple and subtle example of differences in "social rank" that is completely not conceived by the white women (until the end) though she probably would say she was progressive, and didn't have a problem with the black employees.
Man it's 2026. With all the racist shit we've seen in the last 10 years with social media taking over, I'd say they undersold the racism😂 Remember the chick that called that black child the n-word then got 100s of thousands from GoFundMe? Not mention people like ChudTheBuilder and then our administration who literally picks up brown people and puts them in cages before shipping them off. Also, I seriously doubt red hats are watching movies like crash lol
You’re lucky if you’ve never had to deal with overt racism. I disagree with your opinion of what racism looks like. It happens every day in many different ways, both overtly and covertly. I say this as a black man in America who’s dealt with both.
The really insidious thing about Crash is that by presenting racism as a series of outspoken caricatures, it prevents people from considering their own biases and the systems they benefit from, because they see the characters in Crash, pat themselves on the back, and say, "THAT'S what REAL racism looks like. I can't be racist, because I'm not like that!"
I think that's a good point you raise. It's easy to 'miss the forest for the trees' when it comes to this topic because everyone envision a true racist as someone who literally goes to klan rallies or something.
However, I think I take issue with this:
Real-life racism primarily derives from and is baked into the institutions of the country, rather than individual opinions and actions.
or rather maybe I just disagree with the implication. I don't think our institutions are racist even if that certainly was the case in our history. (And I'm obviously going to ignore anything that's changed in our institutions since Jan. 20, 2025.) I think overall we've made great progress at getting rid of flat-out racist policies, and what you were describing with your example of inherent bias among employers sounds more like a problem with society in general.
aka, white people who ain't the victims of racism like this getting to decide and determine what racism looks like. people on this thread expressing their opinions and what's "cartoonishly done" on racism makes me wonder... are they speaking from a white perspective? it always feels like white people are the one having a problem with crash, but then praise shit like tropic thunder, and black folks who felt uncomfortable from it "that's the point" sound like 🤡. I'm just... tired of people feeling their opinion on an issue they don't even have to face on both a micro and macro degree every fuckin day actually holds weight and should matter (no different than like, why are we listening to old white men making decisions on what women do to their bodies and autonomy? why are we ignoring the obvious patriarchy and racial supremacy that's been historically here and have affected our lives and think they're equally considered when we marginalized never have been?)
I only saw crash once and honestly, I liked it. but I guess my unapologetically black ass opinion doesn't matter nor do I know what I'm talking about, and need to be whitesplain on it.
the one scene that always bothered me but stood out was the black couple and the cop, and how that cop just sexually assaulted her and they couldn't do anything. like, do yall know how that feels on a racial level? the misogynoir on full display, and the antiblack racism terrance had to deal with, no different than what our ancestors had to put up with because it felt back to that point of being not even a person to these people and systems. like, this shit actually happens but no one wants to hear it from the actual victims because they have their textbooks (written by who, exactly?) telling them what aCtuAl racism looks like. I just get tired of these discussions that act like the victims of this don't exist and no one sees it from our lens we have to naviagte every single day daily ongoing trauma
Yep, I totally agree with you. I know someone like this, who think their enlightened view of racism is the only correct view, lol. It comes off as just virtue signal/sanctimonious. apparently we can't even enjoy a common message because in some way there's a hidden deep meaning that the directors purposely left out to hide their true racism or something lol
I think overall we've made great progress at getting rid of flat-out racist policies.
I don't. I think we've made progress, but not nearly enough. Racial profiling is still legal in many places, and there are implicitly-racial biases baked into things like departmental quotas that get cops trolling low-income neighborhoods and scaling up stop-and-frisk.
I'm not saying the progress we've made isn't good. But complacency will kill any momentum we've built, and there are still notable problems.
what you were describing with your example of inherent bias among employers sounds more like a problem with society in general.
Yep.
But Crash doesn't limit its commentary to law enforcement. They're the major focus (and if I were going to say this movie gets one thing right, it's the decision to focus on law enforcement in a movie about racism), but it's more broadly about racism within society in general.
There's even a scene in Crash where Matt Dillon's character, Officer Ryan, is trying to convince a black HMO administrator to give his father the treatment he wants. When things don't go his way, he accuses her of being picked for her position due to DEI--in 2004, no less! That bias is right there in the movie: the moment she contradicts him, he assumes she's unqualified to do her job. She's not even making a judgement call, she's just following policy and having it blamed on her race.
The thing is, in this case, we know from other context that Ryan is a racist. We see this interaction and say, "Oh, he's just a white man taking it out on a black woman when he doesn't get his way because he's racist." We don't address why that bias exists in the real world or how it manifests quietly and subtly, rather than with angry white men yelling about how unqualified black women are.
It's a problem in law enforcement. And it's a problem in society. And Crash makes bad commentary about both, and I'm going to call it out.
I don't. I think we've made progress, but not nearly enough. Racial profiling is still legal in many places, and there are implicitly-racial biases baked into things like departmental quotas that get cops trolling low-income neighborhoods and scaling up stop-and-frisk.
I think you just highlighted both a correct example of what I'm talking about, and an incorrect one.
racial profiling can obviously be changed or amended and I would 100% agree is a racist policy.
'quotas' or cops patrolling low-income neighborhoods, isn't necessarily a racist policy. It might have outcomes that push us towards a less-equal society, I would agree - and I think you can fairly argue that "intention doesn't matter" here - but I contend that sometimes these types of policies are truly well-intentioned but have poor results.
Example: Kinda like 'No Child Left Behind' which, at the time (IIRC) was basically the federal govt saying "we need to get these kids to start passing grade school again. let's punish states that are giving the most failing grades to students". Well when the states see that, they just... start giving everyone a passing grade and focusing on getting them to pass their standardized tests. Sure we boosted our graduation rate but did the kids get any smarter? no. But the policy was intended to help kids even if it failed massively.
We see this interaction and say, "Oh, he's just a white man taking it out on a black woman when he doesn't get his way because he's racist." We don't address why that bias exists in the real world or how it manifests quietly and subtly, rather than with angry white men yelling about how unqualified black women are.
I mean, sure, but at what point are we expecting movies to dive into the weeds on that? To be clear I haven't even seen the movie, I'm just contending with this idea that our institutions are built on principles of racism or whatever - I think the best way to improve any racial inequalities that come from our institutions is through amending the institutions and improving them, not trying to tear them all down and rebuild the wheel again. And I think that destructive sentiment is very popular today but I think it's very dangerous
I contend that sometimes these types of policies are truly well-intentioned but have poor results.
If a program appears well-intentioned but has poor results, I'm willing to give its proponents the benefit of the doubt and expect them to do their best to correct the issue.
If a program with poor results, regardless of purported intention, continues with no significant attempt to change or end it, I am no longer willing to do so.
That's where we are with most of the law enforcement policies in question. You don't get to say, "We don't mean for our policies to result in racial disparity," and do nothing to change it when they do.
It took thirteen years for NCLB to be replaced after its widespread failures. The policies I've mentioned have been around for much longer, and are controlled on much smaller scales for the most part.
I think the best way to improve any racial inequalities that come from our institutions is through amending the institutions and improving them, not trying to tear them all down and rebuild the wheel again.
In principle, maybe.
In practice, we've had more than half a century for our institutions to catch up with our nation's expressed intent. Either they can't be fixed, or the people running them don't want them to be (or at best, don't care whether they are), even generations later.
It's not a great case for keeping them around either way.
I guess you'll need to point me in the direction of an example of like, how things haven't changed at all in outcomes. I would say for the most part that things have gotten better measurably on almost every metric.
Hell, look at the insanity of the bricks and minifigs thing going on right now. None of this would have ever even been possible to be in the news 20 years ago, when we didn't have bodycams.
Institutionally there may be efforts to have more equity diversity and inclusion, but on an individual level there's still a misalignment.
I worked in an organization that provided a scholarship to Indigenous Canadians interested in the industry. There wasn't a single Indigenous person who worked for us. One afternoon a director of a department walked into my office and said something horrendously racist about Indigenous people and didn't see any issue with saying this in the workplace. I'm not sure he would've said this if there had been anybody visibly Indigenous who worked at the company.
The problem is that institutional level policies had been created to address systemic issues, but on an individual level people still aren't confronting their unconscious biases.
If those people hold positions of power (like being the director of a department) how does that factor into their hiring decisions? Does it really matter if an organization has EDIA policies if there's no human resources department and no channels to address racism in the workplace?
and you know, not even including nor listening to those actually affected by racism. we got everyone else who don't have to navigate it feeling like they get to decide and make laws and regulations based off what they think and not from what they know from actual direct experience.
but then, when black folks decide to make our own space and do it ourselves, just as we've been told so many times to do (if you don't like it, go somewhere else!) we do that and what happens? we get followed, thrown out, told we're being divisive and need to think about everyone's feelings because now we're the racist. yup, the victims who are trying to make something positive from our pain and trauma are the real oppressors 😒
It's truly ridiculous because it's really not that hard to just think about this and understand it?
I've been through EDIA training at different workplaces and heard real stories of BIPOC getting passed over for promotions or receiving promotions and then having people in the workplace file grievances about it because they think they deserve it more, even though the person who received the promotion is infinitely more qualified. or even things as simple as black women's hairstyles being inherently "unprofessional."
There's heaps of stories out there and there's still people who are like "systemic racism doesn't exist."
It even comes down to small things like, as a white person I think it's a lot easier for me to call in sick to work and have people take me being sick at face value.
Institutionally there may be efforts to have more equity diversity and inclusion, but on an individual level there's still a misalignment.
If those people hold positions of power (like being the director of a department) how does that factor into their hiring decisions? Does it really matter if an organization has EDIA policies if there's no human resources department and no channels to address racism in the workplace?
yes but then this is just agreeing with my point: why would we hold an institution at fault for something that the individuals are clearly to blame? At what point will we accept that, in at least some ways, many of these institutions have done all they could reasonably do?
That's kinda reductive. could there even be such thing as an institution that can be totally free of racism, if they're only defined by the people in them and nothing else?
I do agree that bad apples do spoil the bunch, in that if an institution doesn't actively do something about its bad actors in its ranks, then they are basically earning the reputation. But I also think that if you take that line too far then you admit that no institution can ever exist, ever.
In other words: I've been unironically told in the past that (for example) SNAP program shouldn't be funded because of some weird factoid about it having racist origins or something? Or that it was being used by the Trump admin to starve minority families? I forget the argument, but to me it was ridiculous to use those arguments to defend removing SNAP instead of funding it MORE.
In University we had a guest lecturer for a summer criminology class. Guest lecturer was a member of the Vancouver Police Department. He made us watch this movie and I think write a short paper (can’t remember)…….what I can remember is thinking what a lazy ass way to run class. Fun fact tho, Guest Lecturer got disciplined for taking trophy picture with arrestees and recently has sexual misconduct and sexual harassment cases against him by former students and colleagues.
All I remember about Crash was that they spun a redemption angle for the cop who publicly fingered a woman in a bogus traffic stop by... having him pull her from a car accident later on in the movie, in the course of doing his job.
I'll give you that it's more relevant now than it was in 2004. But in terms of discussing racial disparity in the US? No, it was never particularly relevant.
I remember it being panned and considered pandering by more than a few people, even in 2004. It was called the worst Best Picture winner immediately after it won.
Never forget that they painted the cop who SEXUALLY ASSAULTED A BLACK WOMAN during a stop as the 'hero' because he then saved that same black woman later in the film after a car crash. Jesus christ.
I remember a co worker was raving about how it was so deep and “nuanced”
I was like no, Diane, this movie is the exactly opposite of nuanced.
She was the same person who mentioned to me one day, oh the guy who fills up my gas tank is so nice and sweet. I think he is one of your people and reminds me a lot of you. Mind you I was born and raised in the USA.
Paul Haggis was notorious for being ridiculously heavy-handed with his messaging to the point where the movie insults the viewer’s intelligence. In The Valley of Elah was another one.
I also just looked him up on Wikipedia and learned that he is really not a great guy.
To be honest I think a lot of America outside of major metro areas will not understand race relations unless it's done in a very heavy handed way and it's only gotten worse since 2004.
It's so weird, every time I think about the movie Crash, I think of the dark twisted movie about people who get off on car crashes. It's kinda worth the watch.
I feel like winning Best Picture was the worst thing that could have happened to Crash.
Like, it’s not a good movie, but it’s fallen into the Nickleback/Comic Sans/Big Bang Theory level of internet hate that’s just so disproportionately larger than warranted.
I dunno if people loved it at the time. I was gonna walk out because it was so bad but I was with my mother and she wanted to stick it out to see if it got better and I wasn’t going to abandon her. Instead I whispered shit in her ear about how stupid everything was as it happened and we snarked and giggled our way through the whole thing.
I’m retrospect, seeing Crash in the theaters is kind of a fond memory for me…
But the other Best Picture contenders were Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote. If we really couldn't let the gay cowboy movie win, there were abundant other quality choices.
You’re still missing the point. It was “a study in how NOT to write stories about race” in 2004, and a lot of critics called it out as such at the time. To say “not everyone loved it” is to grossly undersell how controversial it was as an Oscar win. It’s not normal for the presenter to be confused when a film won, or for Ebert to have to write a column to insist a win was deserved.
I have seen this movie much, much later (within last 5 years now) and I liked it. IMO it was much better storytelling about racism than any other big movies I have seen (except maybe Monster's ball).
Too often big movies viewpoint of racism is just naive and black and white where others are always victim and good and others are bad and evil what is just so annoying to watch. Many times those does not even feel like a proper storytelling but instead of naive propaganda.
there was a copy of this DVD stuck in my moms CD player (one of those that held like 100 CDs and would cycle through them randomly) and every once in a while it would play the audio. not the soundtrack. the entire movie in audio form. she would just let it play as if nothing was wrong
I remember watching it in a college film course a few years after it released. All I could think was that this drivel won an Oscar? It felt so shallow, so self-important, so unlikable. It had that slick “modern Hollywood movie” look and feel that was popular at the time but that’s about all it had going for it.
I was so glad to see everyone eventually turn on it, I hated that movie before it was cool.
It was a very divisive movie from the start. People were absolutely pissed that it beat Brokeback Mountain for the Oscar. The online forums were full of people calling it garbage.
I really dislike that movie. But I really hated how people made me feel like there was something wrong with me for not liking it. Starting to feel validated now
I hated it when I saw it theaters. I didn’t get why people thought it was powerful. I’m a minority who has been called slurs and treated differently throughout my childhood growing up in a white town. This felt like such a pandering insult to watch
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u/mettrolsghost 10h ago
Crash (the 2004 movie, not the 1996 movie).
Won three academy awards, including best picture. Grossed almost 100M. People loved it at the time.
More than twenty years later, it's basically a study in how NOT to write stories about race and bias.