Collaterally Thinking
collateral: adj. Situated or running side by side; parallel. Coinciding in tendency or effect; concomitant or accompanying.
While watching Collateral last night, the question of what exactly the title had to do with the picture came up, though only now after looking up the proper definition, can I see the connection. The action of the film takes place over a relatively short period of time and within that short time, the assorted lives of the film’s characters come together, influencing each other in ways large and small, intertwined in their parallel existences.
The depth of this film surprised me somewhat when I first saw it at the cinema, both in character complexity and in the underlying themes and ideas presented, a welcome departure from many typical mind-numbing action flicks. I hired the dvd the other day, watched it by myself Friday, then with others last night and am currently listening along to the director’s commentary while it plays in the background on my computer.
When you think about it, we’re all living in collateral here on this large sphere of rock, billions of lives striving forward through time in this big cosmic coincidence. “Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one, in a blink, that’s us lost in space … the cop, you, me … who notices?”
