Network

By and large, and I'm also echoing the thoughts of Roger Ebert and Stanley Kubrick here, I think the primary purpose of film should not be to get some sort of message across. Messages are important, and there are a couple films that can convey them well, but what should come first is character (not just people talking) and story (not plot).

I watched this movie last night called Network. It was released in 1976, directed by Sidney Lumet (who may be better known for Serpico) and written by Paddy Chayefsky (who sadly pretty much had this one story in him). It's about a network dwindling in the ratings trying to reinvent itself with sensationalist television. Watching it, most of it seems commonplace now, but for its time it was almost prophetic.

Anyway, it's a hell of a picture, and it got me thinking about how, by and large, I could give less a crap what a film is trying to say.

But every now and again a film comes along that IS trying to say something, and something WORTHWHILE at that. Network did it phenomonally by telling the story of a television network, and the people involved with its rise to the top. Good Night, and Good Luck worked as a commentary on journalistic integrity (and it was NOT trying to compare McCarthyism with anything the Bush administration is doing) because in the middle of its own true, compelling story there were interesting characters with their own separate lives.

And yes, it all comes back to Crash, and why for me it ultimately failed. Crash had a lot to say, but without a shread of interest in its characters or any real story to tell. And you can tell this not just because of the fact that the characters didn't talk or mostly act like people, but also because no one can name even half the characters without hitting IMDb. Give it a shot. And none of their subplots, their own lives, were in there for the character.

Matt Dillon's father was sick and needed further health care...so Matt Dillon's a racist. Terrence Howard is a TV director...so someone can talk about racism in television. Ludacris and that other guy steal cars...and talk about why white people are afraid of them (not the least of which could do with the fact that they're stealing their car...of course). Don Cheadle's mom...okay, I'll give you that, that was a genuinely well-done subplot, and would've made me appreciate the film that much more if his brother didn't turn out to be one of the carjackers. That's when the script's other problem of completely random, improbable coincidences takes hold (never mind when the carjacker steps into Ryan Phillipe's car).

And if Crash had just been a film that came and went (which, eventually, it will be), I wouldn't be talking about it nearly as much. But the fact that it was named as the best picture of 2005 is what keeps me thinking about it. And it worries me. Look, I think it's great that people want to rexamine how they look at the world around them. But the minute we stray away from the importance of character, story, emotion, and mood in a film, that's the wrong step to take.

Also, despite the number of times I've brought Crash up in conversation, I haven't heard a really solid defense of why it's such an amazing film. So if anyone has anything, I'm all about the dialogue.