TFT Doesn't Go To The Oscars: 'Crash' Redux

And the award for Best Film goes to... 'Crash'. What else could it have been but this masterwork from a writer-director at the top of his game, with a rare instinct for portraying the subtleties, horrors and redeeming features of human nature? Let's take a look...

Don Cheadle - Racism... is *bad*.

Sandra Bullock - I didn't think so at first, but by the end I started to realise that yes, racism *is* bad.

George of the Jungle - It's very complex and not as simple as, y'know, black and white, but yes, racism is bad.

Ludacris - I think I might be the best thing about this film.

Thandie Newton - Actually that'll be me. I might even be wasted here. And I have a very interesting point to make about racism.

Ludacris - So do I, but yes, you are indeed quite luminous, and also you really make it clear that racism is bad.

Don Cheadle - This is why we make hamfisted metaphors about crashing into each other... just to *feel* something. And inexplicably and inexcusably use Stereophonics songs just to ram the point home at the end. I mean, the *end* end, not the five other endings that led up to it.

Ryan Phillippe - I wish I was at home with Reese Witherspoon. Racism bad. Can I go now?

Matt Dillon - I was so much better in 'Factotum' but no one's seen it. Hell. Anyway, I may not realise it because I'm a hard-ass cop drawn in the kind of broad strokes you can only achieve with a paint-roller, but I guess on some level I understand the inherent badness of racism. Sigh.

Paul Haggis, writer/director - I'm so incredibly surprised and pleased to win Best Film. I mean, I wasn't sure we'd even be in the running, since we half-inched the title from a film that's less than ten years old and thought they might have got confused. But moreover, I just didn't think the Academy would be able to grasp the whisper-soft-subtle message of 'Crash' - I mean, it just isn't obvious that the underlying theme is that racism is really, really ba(orchestra starts up with an almighty crump)

It's easier to fully understand why this cinematic colossus righteously trounced the comparatively feeble 'Munich' and the laughable Sunday-afternoon frippery of 'Brokeback Mountain' to take Best Film via a closer examination of just one of the many moving and meaningful scenes in isolation. Roll tape.

Black guy (suddenly acting like crackhead for no apparent reason) - Tee hee, I've seen your Patron Saint of Travellers on the dash and I'm going to reach into my jacket to pull my own version of it out while laughing maniacally like a big crackhead.

Cop - Hey, hey, hey, that really looks like you're going to pull a gun on me, and I'm understandably pretty paranoid, especially as the writers are contriving to have you act like a crazy person. Quit it.

Black guy - I'm upset by the implication that you think I'm going to get violent, just because I'm laughing maniacally and am refusing to tell you what I'm doing and now getting a bit defensive. I suppose I could just tell you that I'm going to show you my Patron Saint of Travellers, just like the one you have, and then you'd understand as the audience already do that really we're All The Same, but it's more important that you shoot me and then burn the car. So hurry up and do it. Come on. The tension is just too lumpen to sustain.

Cop - Get your hand outta there! This is just ridiculous. The bit with the car crash with Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton was in fact remarkably moving but now I don't know what the hell they think they're getting away with.

Black guy - I've still got my hand in my jacket, I've really been caused to lose all sense of reason by the writer who is blinded by the dazzle of his own REMARKABLE INSIGHT, am acting completely and suddenly out of relatively mild-mannered character, and apparently really want you to shoot me. If they keep up with this for much longer, the audience is going to go away with the message not that 'racism is bad' but 'black people are bit stupid'. Which would be appalling. Anyway, come on, get with it. Even the deliberate and permissable sense of artifice about this film is wearing thin right now.

Cop - Oh, alright then. *Blam*

Black guy - *Thank* you.