crash vs wonderland

Whitebait finally managed to watch Crash a couple of weekends ago. He was going to post something lengthy on it (yeah, sure!) but frankly the film doesn't deserve it. Formally the film it is very good, technically well-executed and it has a number of good performances, but overall  it leaves this viewer feeling Siberian. The much earlier Falling Down, despite its conservative sentiments, does the LA racially divided thing much better (Crash tries to historically update in a sense by finally including Iranians--mistaken for Arabs--in the LA racial/ethnic panopoly post-9/11, whereas Falling Down's defining historical moment was the city's 1992 post-Rodney King uprising). Short Cuts and Magnolia are in another league in terms of the multiple characters and intersecting narratives form. Crash doesn't really move on or offer anything different to these films: it could have easily have taken an Oscar for soulless, calculated liberalism.  Disappointing.

Luckily Whitebait also got out Michael WInterbottom's Wonderland (definitely not the one with Val Kilmer in it) for a rerun that same weekend. Resolutely lo-fi  and partially improvised it is still brilliant and deserves the comment I gave on my earlier holiday screenings list (possibly the most effort Whitebait has put into a single post). And -- sorry but this could be considered a spoiler -- it makes one of the cleverest moves re the old 'strangers in the city - how are they connected?' device. It only very slowly unfolds that these are all members of the same family. The irony, the brilliance!