Cynics Unlimited

In perhaps cinematic the upset of the year, Race-relations movie Crash won the Oscar for best picture at the 78th academy awards. Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” was the favorite to win for best picture and had been nominated heavily in every award show up to and including the Oscars.

This is a pat on the back for Canadians, as Crash was written by London native Paul Haggis. While Canadian actors have generally been acknowledged for their contributions to the movie world, Canadians are not as celebrated for their efforts behind the camera. Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call to both the Canadian Government (who has cut quite of bit of funding for Canadian moviemakers and TV producers over the past few years) and the Canadian public (who has consistently failed to support Canadian productions, thus leading to the need for government funding in the first place).

Still, I sense a bit of cowardice on the part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for not giving the award to the gay cowboy epic Brokeback. No doubt Hollywood, already under fire from various media pundits and the general public for being “out of touch” with mainstream America, probably figures that a film about bad race relations is a little less risqué than a film showing homosexuals assuming the lifestyle of one of America’s most treasured frontier figures – the cowboy. Granted, it was not much of a decision, as mainstream America also loathes directly confronting its racial past/present; however, gay cowboys are the larger taboo so Hollywood seemingly played it safe.

Now did Crash actually deserve to win? The general consensus of movie buffs I’ve talked to and/or read is decisively no. One of the harshest responses so far has ironically come from hometown writer Dan Brown. In a column for the London Free Press he dared to criticize:

The main problem with Crash is that it’s based on an entirely unoriginal premise … repainting the same horse ridden by previous directors is not the mark of a strong storyteller … As if to prove he has a hard time coming up with his own ideas, he stole the name from David Cronenberg’s 1996 flick about sexual deviants who are turned on by car accidents. Cronenberg has condemned Haggis for the intellectual theft, and rightly so … The truth is that Crash is a perfect selection for the Academy because it’s the type of film that makes white Americans feel guilty, but not too guilty, about that country’s racial divide … You can now feel free to send in those e-mails. But just remember — you won’t be able to change my mind.

Well Dan, brace yourself …