The LA Times has an excellent short piece on why Crash pulled a surprise win over Brokeback Mountain at the Academy Awards a couple of hours ago.
IMHO, it's hard to shake the feeling that Crash, as the only possible spoiler in the race, must have collected the votes of all those who didn't want to see Brokeback Mountain win. On purely artistic merits, I think Crash is the lesser movie. Don't get me wrong: it's clever, has some very powerful scenes, and overall is more than ok --but unlike Brokeback, or even Capote or Good Night and Good Luck, Crash was uneven and rich in cliches, a few too many of the parts felt like sterotypes rather than full-fledged characters, and some of its storylines were not particularly credible or compelling. Not to mention the fact that we've seen Crash before (Grand Canyon, Short Cuts or Magnolia come immediately to mind) whereas Brokeback Mountain is pathbreaking in more ways than one.
In a few years, I wouldn't be surprised if people looked back and recognized this as the year when Hollywood overlooked a lasting classic (that perhaps too many people were simply not ready to embrace just yet) for a movie that I suspect will not have aged so well.
