crisp_morning_2004

Christof, the omnipotent, authoritative, media-savvy producer-director in The Truman Show, is identified with Christian. Everything, from sunrise-sunset to each passer-by in the Utopian town named Seahaven, is in his charge, without mentioning Truman, the leading role in this show. Since the day he was born, Truman has been taken good care of by a crop of actors and actresses and functioned as the protagonist of an international televised, 24-hour-a-day series called The Truman Show. 5,000 hidden cameras follow Truman everywhere he goes, chronicling every trivia of his growth. Unknown to him is the trick known to all.

Until someday, from nowhere falls a light equipment. Later, he is soaked in his own rainstorm. When he moves, the rain moves after him. Then, through an oversight, his lost-at-sea father is rearranged into the show again, appearing like a transient in the street. Truman is puzzled by all these inconsistencies. What's worse, on his way to work one day, the radio gets adrift to report his trace in every detail due to a slip of technique. It's paradoxical to call these inconsistencies deliberate coincidences. Because that's what Christof hates but Peter Weif and Andrew Niccol expects.

We have no doubt carelessness beyond control is here and there in Truman's life. It's only a matter of time before Truman to piece out the loopholes together and find out the truth. He is determined to leave the counterfeit world when he is exposed, mercilessly, to the fact that this so-called perfect life he leads is no more than a show-biz illusion where only he is true while others exit merely as walk-ons. Since all other transport doesn't serve him, he chooses sea. (In order to keep him from leaving Seahaven, he has been inculcated with a fear of water. He has expectedly developed a phobia of water since the night his father lost at sea, a catastrophe designed to frighten him.) Having survived all weird rainstorms under Christof's control, he sails cheerfully to his dream world, only to find the sky, the clouds looking so beautiful in distance are pictures in a wall and the horizon itself leads nowhere.

Jim Carrey plays Truman. He is so likable an actor that you cannot refuse any film he takes part in. Most of his films are characteristic of his hilarious performances. But his role in this one is, I should say, light year away from the antics he used to do. He is quite controlled and convincing.

As a sharp-witted, intriguing and offbeat piece of entertainment, the film can be dissected from different angles. And it inevitably raises some questions. To me, the end is hallucination. I admit the end is hopeful to most audience. It seems to reach to consummate when Truman opens the door in the wall and strides out. We are about to applause. Wait a second, where will he go? Into a world full of new lies, leaving former lies behind? So I'd rather have a hateful end.

The film "Crash" is more like an apocalypse. It might be subtitled as racists' redemption, more actually, human's redemption. Hapless and underestimated as the blacks might are, prejudice and racism exists in every culture, without mentioning in the USA, the melting pot of different cultures. In such a white-dominated society, any other races are vulnerable. According to the law of the jungle, these minorities must work twice harder than their white counterparts to get recognized.

Mistrust comes from misunderstanding, rooted prejudice from thinking in stereotype. Should we lay the blame on the whites for our embarrassing situation? A passage from John William, author of " Enough" throws a silver lining. "Who will tell you that if you want to get a job you have to stay in school and spend more money on education than on disposable consumer goods? …who are willing to stand tall and say that any black man who wants to be a success has to speak proper English? Isn't that obvious? It would be a bonus if anyone dared to say to teenagers hungering for authentic black identity that dressing like a convict, whose pants are hanging off his ass because the jail prison guards took away his belt, is not the way to rise up and be a success." Anthony is very self-conscious about his role as a black thief. He complains that the blacks aren't well treated in cafes and even black waitresses are snobs. He harangues that the whites are oppressors and swears to rob the whites only. He takes a white woman's suspicious glances and wariness as the racism and an insult to him. His anger is obvious. Subconsciously, he tries to change, but goes to the other extreme by robbing, a way he thinks that can demonstrate the African-Americans are not the weak, only to end up in being devalued and embarrassing his own race. It's quite out of date to think oneself a victim and defend negative and dysfunctional behavior.

The race relationships are more labyrinthine than the L.A. streets. There are Koreans, Hispanics apart from Afro-Americans and the locals. They crash into each other. Those collisions are logical steps to an understanding of each other.

People in this film are multi dimensional. The L.A. cop Ryan is a good son. After being rejected by a supervisor of African origin to find a better doctor for his father, he takes it out on a black couple. He pulls over their SUV, humiliates the husband, Cameron, and sexually abuses the wife, Christine. He is a bigoted racist. When it comes to the car accident scene where the director decides to go soft before it gets too downbeat, he takes his life and saves Christine, trapped in an upside-down car. He is a nameless hero.

Coincidences make the edgy film consistent and dramatic and enable Crash to cover the serious subject "Racism" from many facets and levels. It rates A.