February 01, 2006

Film Critic Quote of the Week

Ross Douthat finally saw "Crash" and, well, it seems like he liked it even less than I did:

I complain a lot about agitprop and the politics of art on this site, but it's usually because I feel like a movie like The Constant Gardener or Syriana represents a squandered opportunity, a case of talented people using their gifts in the service of thin ideas and simplistic worldviews. A movie like Crash, though, is objectionable on an entirely different level. It's a message movie with nothing to say, an allegory that only refers to itself, a numbing exercise in bad faith set in a world where everyone spews implausible dialogue about race and gets involved in improbable racially-charged incidents all the time because . . . well, that's what the movie's about. The result is a self-serious propaganda film that browbeats the audience to advance the most banal ideas imaginable, or no ideas at all - like Triumph of the Will for Unitarians.
I agree with one of Ross' commenters- "Crash" made the same point, much more longwindedly and less convincingly- as the "Avenue Q" song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist."

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 1, 2006 04:07 PM
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