I found the joy!

My friends are very sick of hearing me complain about how people have lost a sense of joy. My latest rant was against this year's Oscar nominees. When the nominations were first announced, I threw a hissy fit (that most people wisely ignored) about how Crash took the nomination that rightly belonged to Walk the Line in order to guarantee a win for Brokeback Mountain. At the time I was spouting this, I had only seen Good Night and Good Luck which is a very good movie. In black and white (which is kind of cool) and cigarette smoke (which should not be as cool as it was in the movie). However, it was rather joyless. I mean, at the end of film, they overcome evil and...two people get fired. For being married. To each other. What?

Then, as I was the only person left on the planet who had not seen Brokeback Mountain, I finally went to see that one. Maybe I'm missing something but that movie really wasn't that good! It was about 2 men who cheat on their wives. True, it was with each other, but I really didn't buy the whole "the world won't let us be together" crap. It was set in the 1960's and 1970's. Get in your pickup and drive to San Francisco. Really, it was just a long movie about 2 guys whining about how unbearable their lives were but they weren't willing to do anything to find the happiness they said they wanted.

Last weekend I watch Capote. Great film...although I still firmly believe that Joaquin was robbed. However, it ends with an execution! I'm sorry, is that supposed to give me warm fuzzies?

So here are 3 movies that are, well, depressing. And joyless. I mean think about some of the other movies that have won:
Chicago -- Singing and dancing! You can't get more joyful than that!
The Lord of the Rings -- All the geeks and nerds I know say it was a joyful movie (I fell asleep, so I can't comment)
A Beautiful Mind -- A man with severe psychosis saves the world. Okay, so it left out all the bad stuff about John Nash, but it was a happy movie.
Gladiator -- Russell Crowe. In a skirt. Need I say more?

Now, it's true that there were also the films that made me want to slit my wrists (Million Dollar Baby) but even Million Dollar Baby was countered by Finding Neverland. Yes, I know that I sobbed through that movie, but it was still uplifting! Yes, their mother died, but she was immortalized in Peter Pan. And it starred Johnny Depp!

Anyway, I was left with 2 movies. The first being Munich. I haven't seen this movie and I doubt that I ever will. Sorry, but I know it does not end well.

But I just finished watching Crash. I now have to eat my words that I said back in February.

Crash is a phenomenal film and I heartily recommend it! Now, I'm not saying it's all singing and dancing. It's a pretty tough movie....but it finds the joy. It doesn't find the joy in laughter, but in tears and the revelations of true, human characters. It has no true heroes and, of the main characters, there are no true villains (some of the secondary characters do fall firmly in the evil category). I cried...I laughed (in one scene where Don Cheadle utters the best line of the movie...I won't ruin it for you, but you can't miss it when you watch the movie) and I was deeply moved.

It has been a long time since I've seen a movie with this power and, judging from the crap currently in the theaters, I think it will be a long time before it's like shows up again.