Traffic (2000)

Nominee

Here we have a movie that really is not intricate enough to be interesting or simple/poetic enough to be poignant. It walked the center line and for me it came up empty for its efforts.  I really think this whole movie can be summed up in a sentence: This is a story about drugs in three different contexts.

With the drug industry there is inherent complexity, however this film seemed to overstate the obvious and understate portions of the narration that needed to be accentuated. For instance, in the Mexico Plot line I found myself sometimes clinging to small scraps of previous information and feeling at a loss for what was going on at times. If the narration had spent more time exploring this system I would have been more grounded in the content.  Yet when we returned to the DC/Ohio plot lines I felt entirely annoyed up the hippie hoopla that kept ensuing, and the amount of time they spent on it.  I never felt that there was a true confrontation of the father and daughter, and although I am sure they thought they were being groundbreaking, all I could think of was "Where are the emotions?". There was some realism lacking in that whole section, and to much lesson teaching.   The only story I enjoyed was Catherine Zeta-Jone's plot line because I felt it was the only one where I was surprised by the turn of events. I did not see her character developing the way it did and it provided a nice revelation.

So I didn't like the story. However I can give this film a nod in how it was put together. The editing and cinematography completely overpower the narration. This is a problem in and of itself because when you put two mediocre things next to each other they remain compatible. When you put something phenomenal against something mediocre? The contradiction is distracting. Yet the saturation choices were visually interesting, although I must admit bothersome at times when they were inconsistent.  The editing, on the other hand, was the best component of the film, creating the seamless transitions between worlds that realized the interconnectivity of the stories.

Overall: The story was not as deep as it was being treated, and because of that I ended up wishing that this artisitc vision went with a different story. I felt like there are better versions of this film, like Babel (2006), or perhaps Crash (2005). For me this is a film that can be looked over.