Monday, February 27, 2006

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and Crash

Each of these movies deserves its own full-length review, but I think it is interesting to compare them to on another instead. I saw Three Burials on Friday night, and then Crash on Saturday night. Although the settings and styles of these films are completely different, there is a common theme: Growth. All of the main characters in both films start out at a certain point in their lives, and over the course of their respective stories they go through some pretty dramatic personal growth. I find this interesting because most movies don’t seem to have time for growth. Usually the characters are already established and exist only to further the story. In Three Burials I was surprised to see both the protagonist and antagonist grow, and definitely in directions I didn’t foresee. Then in Crash, there are nine different main characters, each of whom grows personally during the course of the film. I really enjoyed the fact that the film began with a cast of stereotypes and through some tough situations it dashed those stereotypes to pieces.
Independent films are supposed to be fresh, entertaining and thought-provoking. Instead they have merely become cheap, recycled, Hollywood, formula crap. Three Burials and Crash break away from that sad trend. Hopefully with the evolution of the media, with the immense variety and simplification of production, the cream will rise to the top.

P.S. Crash contains the biggest example of a director flat-out messing with his audience. It was my favorite part, after it was all over.

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