"Crash"

Amazingly, I've only just seen the movie "Crash", yesterday on DVD. This year was an odd one for me, movie-wise, in that I haven't seen most of the films that won (or even were nominated for) the major Academy Award categories. And so I've only now gotten around to seeing "Crash", the Best Picture winner.

What a good movie! I can see why it won "Best Picture". I love the interconnections between the characters and the situations, and it's all so well acted. It's wonderful to see how some of the situations resolve. It's a good story, a good screenplay, well directed and well acted.

It's also disturbing, but not in the way that many movies are. It's disturbing to realize that, while this is fiction, people do behave the way they're depicted in the movie. People do have these sorts of prejudices, they do make these assumptions, and they are intolerant and ignorant as is shown there. And that is very disturbing.

Martin Luther King, Jr, said it 42 and a half years ago:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
[...]
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi - from every mountainside. Let freedom ring.