When you think of "Escape to Witch Mountain" and "Return from Witch Mountain," do you think of Thomas Pynchon and Thomas Mann? Then you'd better read this PopMatters article by Michael Ward. It's the most surprising piece of autobiographically-fueled criticism I've come across in a while. Fun, too.
I'm not so enthused about Jonathan Rosenbaum's year-end wrapup declaring "The World" the best film of the last two years. Rosenbaum's in my pantheon of major film critics, but his what-the-fuck unpredictability sometimes verges on M. Night Shyamalan country. I admired "The World" and saw what it was trying to do, but thought it would have worked better as either a documentary or a Robert Altman picture (which it clearly aspired to be). Less a coherent statement or even a coherent tale than a series of tableaus illustrating a political/economic thesis; great for folks who wrote dissertations on simulacra, I guess, but in the end, more heady than artful, more ambitious than fullfilling. Good but overrated. Definitely a Village Voice movie.
That said, I am amused by the fact that when I posted this item, Rosenbaum's web page was sponsored by Mancow.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Whassup, witch?
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42 comments:
Matt, I quote Rosenbaum's capsule review of New World:
"No important American filmmaker in recent years has been better at dividing audiences than writer-director Terrence Malick, and his fourth feature in 35 years pushed me for the first time into the skeptics' corner. The subject matter is partly to blame: after four centuries of Anglo denial about the genocidal conquest of America, I was hoping for something a little more grown-up and educational about John Smith and Pocahontas. Malick still has an eye for landscapes, but since Badlands his storytelling skill has atrophied, and he's now given to transcendental reveries, discontinuous editing, offscreen monologues, and a pie eyed sense of awe. All these things can be defended, even celebrated, but I couldn't find my bearings."
Elsewhere, I've read Rosenbaum comment that he didn't even feel prepared to discuss the film as its challenges were too immense to take in immediately. That I certainly agree with but the above review suggests that he isn't allotting much space for a future reappraisal.
I value Rosenbaum for his work on Kiarostami and Tarr especially and I appreciate most of what he says about Manoel de Oliveira (who I consider a genius) but he does on occasion put forth odd readings that seem to imply way too much credit has been given (as in The World) or not nearly enough (as in Munich or Last Days). Still he's one of the few critics still struggling to put forth a dialogue with art as an ever evolving medium. His appreciation for Tropical Malady--though overly tentative in my opinion--is proof of that.
Interestingly, at NYPress I ended up pairing THE WORLD with TROPICAL MALADY during the same week, and favoring the latter. It took me two viewings to truly appreciate it and give myself over to it, and man am I glad I made the effort. It took me back to Maya Deren and mid-60s Antonioni. Astounding, utterly original and quite immune to the I-went-to-graduate-school-and-here's-my-bibliography school of modern film criticism that predominates these days. You have to grapple with it on its own terms, find a new personal language with which to communicate its specialness. All movies should be so difficult.
"[H]e does on occasion put forth odd readings that seem to imply way too much credit has been given (as in The World) or not nearly enough (as in Munich or Last Days)."
But who's to say that your readings aren't the ones giving too much credit or not enough? This sounds very much like anything that's not on par with your own opinion is the result of an odd or mistaken reading. (I'm not saying that's what you think, of course, Nathaniel, just that it reads that way.)
Translation: everyone's crazy but me. I think all critics have to believe that on some level, otherwise we couldn't puff our chests out and proclaim the truth. But yeah, I take your point. The more you allow the question of personal, subjective coloration to enter this discussion, the more likely it is that all of our proclamations will disintegrate like sand castles.
The truth, Matt? Whose truth? ;)
No, you're right, it's all a matter of walking that tricky line between objectivity and subjectivity, to be sure. For the most part I try to write from as subjective-objective a position as possible, dealing with the film as an objective fact (it exists in this or that form, or a few of them), but realising that what I notice about that objective fact, and how I feel about it, is a highly subjective reaction. Basically, I think subjectivity and objectivity inform one another and that anyone who claims otherwise is a boob...
Not that I've seen The New World yet; and when I saw The World I was experiencing festival fatigue. So we'll see.
This is one of my favorite discussions, precisely because it turns one's attention to a central conundrum of criticism: we must have standards, preferably strict and consistent ones, yet the more carefully we parse those standards, the more likely that our enthusiasm and certainty wil come across as as so much smoke and mirrors.
Forgive the shameless self-promotion, Matt, but check out these two posts (and more importantly, the comments that ensue):
Reading, Closely
Missionaries and Sceptics
They might be of interest to you.
Actually, I read your MISSIONARIES AND SCEPTICS post many weeks ago, and it made an impression. I am either a missionary or a sceptic depending on the film and the personal circumstances. But I adored THE NEW WORLD so much that I felt the missionary side of me rising up. I didn't think of myself in those terms until I read this particular post.
I would say that this blog exists partly because of the following factors: Terrence Malick, Edward Copeland on Film's criticisms of Malick, my e-mailed arguments/discussions with Odie Henderson and Sean Burns, your Missionaries & Sceptics post, and my younger brother Jeremy's continual urging that I start a blog, the better to directly engage with moviegoers.
So thanks!
I think there's a lot in THE WORLD besides Jia's grad-school theses, but then I pretty much feel about it like you feel about THE NEW WORLD. People have called some of the ideas in it obvious (although that doesn't make them untrue), but what I think matters about the movie is how it gets into how the changes in the way the world works effect actualy people -- or, more pointedly, don't. Plus, so many of the images still take my breath away after three viewings (soon to be four). Since you've opened to door to grandiose statements on the nature of criticism (for which I humbly thank you), I'll say as As A Critic, I feel that much of what you're doing comes down to exploring (and, sometimes, rationalizing) your emotional response to a work of art. You can try to step away from that part of it, but you do so at your peril. (Incidentally, that's a generic "you," not "you, Matt," since I'm pretty sure you already know this.) The first time I saw THE WORLD (18 months ago now), I fell deeply, hopelessly in love, and that continues to be that. I think I have pretty good reasons for feeling so, but at base there's no argument I can make that will convince someone who considers the work cold and theoretical that they ought to feel something they don't.
Matt 1: This sounds very much like anything that's not on par with your own opinion is the result of an odd or mistaken reading.
Matt 2: Translation: everyone's crazy but me.
Admit it MZS, you're having a schizophrenic dialogue with yourself. ;-) I could agree with both these points of view depending on my mood.
As to Rosenbaum, I really feel like he misses the boat on a hell of a lot recently. I made a blanket statement to a friend a few weeks back, saying that JR hadn't written anything of real lasting value since his A.I. review. In truth, I'm probably not looking hard enough. JR really lost me with his disdain for Demme's Manchurian Candidate. His capsule review style (which reads kind of like an SAT test: "I know this is crap, but if you like this kind of thing...") is also quite typically contemptuous and condescending. I don't like to think of him losing it as he's done a lot for cinema, but he really seems to have thrown up his hands and given up of late. The sense of perpetual discovery is gone, and if a critic loses that I think he's effectively lost his soul.
Sam: I didn't mean to imply that I found no value in THE WORLD or that I was totally unmoved by it, just that it was not the masterpiece other critics had primed me to expect. (See my NYPress review, linked to in the post above -- it's positive but definitely tempered by skepticism.)
But then, I am sure that a good many people feel exactly the same way about THE NEW WORLD after reading my various articles about it. I know I risk overselling it, but as I said elsewhere, I also think that to tamp down my enthusiasm over the greatest film I've seen in 15 years as a professional critic would be untrue to the spirit of Malick's art.
Keith: Incredible as it may seem, the two Matts on this thread are not a Gollum-esque manifestation of a warring consciousness, but two different critics who happen to be named Matt. Really!
As for Rosenbaum, you never know exactly what he's going to like or dislike, or what comparisons or contrasts he will draw between two different, often seemingly unrelated works, and that keeps him interesting for me even when, as you note, he risks disappearing into malaise or disdain. That's why I continue to read him even though these days he is more likely to amuse and educate me than to provoke and challenge me.
The body of work can't be denied, though, particularly the work that fuses autobiographical and aesthetic inquiry -- precisely the subjective/objective tightrope so many of us walk in our own criticism. One of these days I'll add another sidebar to this blog, a pantheon of critics and other essayists whose voices lodged in my head and never left. Rosenbaum, hit and miss as he can be, is surely among the strongest of those voices.
we must have standards, preferably strict and consistent ones, yet the more carefully we parse those standards, the more likely that our enthusiasm and certainty will come across as so much smoke and mirrors. -Matt Zoller Smeagol, I mean Seitz.
Or pomp and circumstance. :)
Confidentially, I think every other critic is sane, and I'm the guest of honor at the Bellevue Hospital Friar's Club Roast. But if I know I'm crazy...doesn't that make me sane? Paging Joseph Heller!
I hate being told how to think, and far too many critics, especially the art-house rag ones, are forever trying to impress their opinions into my head as if they were the word of God. I call them "Fundamentalist Critics" because they remind me of the fundamentalist Christians I grew up around in church. I was always a "bad Christian en route to Hell," because I disagreed with them. Where do critics who have sinned against the standard critical voice go?
I am a compulsive reader of others' criticism, because I'm always looking for other perspectives on films I've seen, and on the medium in general. I am always learning, even when I disagree with what I'm reading. I just wish that I did not have to wallow in so much condescension, especially from something that, at day's end, is just someone's opinion.
When I was more disciplined at keeping my site updated (and I shall soon return to that level of discipline), I developed a complex because I didn't take a lecturing tone. I opted to play, for my readers, the smartass best buddy whose self-censoring mechanism was broken (this is exactly the person I am, too). Which leads me to the questions:
Does one have to approach criticism with respectful humility and a holier-than-thou attitude?
...and...
Does this make for critical legitimacy?
I doubt my inconsequential queries will ever reach a bigger audience of respectable critics than they will here, so here they are.
As for Rosenbaum, he goes on my list with folks like Armond White. I love reading them, and also how pissed off they make me.
One last note: It took me three tries to get through Tropical Malady. I saw it on an Asian DVD before it even got a release here. I think it warrants another viewing before I could write a review, but I'm glad I saw it.
Well, I was going to respond to matt's post but then I considered better of it since everything I was going to say has now already been said, then I decided to anyway. Basically I can just add this: your point is taken but I don't know how far I can take it. I have considered this issue many times before (and, yes, I too have read the piece on missionaries and sceptics) but I have never really known how to meet this line of reasoning. Everything said about the whole subjective/objective slipstream is true but I guess I always just assumed we all already knew that. I have to confess a couple things here that may make sense of my position. First, I am perhaps unduly irritated by posts I read online in which the opinion of the author is constantly qualified by adding IMO to every statement. Yes, I know it's just your opinion. Also, I am and have been for many years an enthusiastic devotee of Armond White's criticism. What I respond to with him is the very fact that he exists so unapologetically in the other camp (which contains few members to begin with) and delivers points of view which are marked by passion, intense seriousness and steadfast conviction. Of course, I disagree with him half the time but I deeply appreciate the fact that he has the guts to put forth critiques that are supported by such singular logic. Given that, however, I do think his older pieces in Film Comment, in which he had more room to fully expand on his ideas, were probably the most successful pieces of writing he has done. Anyway, I certainly don't hold fast to any concrete opinion and am more than willing to consider everyone else's but that shouldn't have to be said. I think when we engage each other in a dialogue it's almost unavoidable that we are going to have confrontations that seem unyielding initially but will, hopefully, yield some profitable fruit. So, I get your point but I will probably be reminded of it again--if not by you, then by someone else.
And it is interesting that you mention AI, Keith. Over the last five years that is probably the film I've spent the most time ardently defending against what I perceive strongly to be "misinterpretations". Well, AI and the work of Zalman King. Thankfully I have Brad Stevens to get my back on that one.
Nathaniel: Wow, another living person who will publically admit to thinking that Zalman King is worth discussing? I might have to dig up an interview/critical appraisal of King's erotica that ran last year in the Star-Ledger. Of course some of my friends asked if I'd written it with one hand. Inevitable!
Aha. I did read your review when it came out but neglected to go back to it this time -- strangely enough, I disagree with almost nothing in the review, even though we don't feel the same way about the movie as a whole. It's funny, though: as you point out, the movie is, clinically speaking, "long, slow [and] repetitious" (I'd take issue with "cold," and sooner haul out a comparison to Tati than Kubrick), but I'd go further than to say that those qualities are strengths: I'd say I don't actually experience it as any of those things when I watch it. Much as I love TROPICAL MALADY (which clocked in on my 2005 Top Whatever, albeit several slots further down than THE WORLD), it just doesn't hit me where I live in the same way.
To return to the overt subject of this entry, I find Rosenbaum's criticisms of THE NEW WORLD to be almost totally impenetrable, especially those he's made apart from his review, when he accused Malick of employing a "silent film aesthetic" (surely a term someone as well versed in the diversity of silent style as JR should know is virtually meaningless) and said something along the lines of "Innocence isn't what we need right now." I suppose all critics bring their own political agendas to the table (I know I do), and I suppose JR is at least honest about his, but I am baffled sometimes at the particular agenda he brings to bear. This is especially true of films about war; his dismissal of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN as "a recruiting film" is a colossal overstatement at best.
This post has been brought to you by the Y100 Zoo Crew.
Nathaniel, I wasn't really trying to inject a lecture on relativism into the discussion. I was just saying that your Rosenbaum comment just seemed a little bitter because he liked one film more than the other.
I would argue, mind you, that the objective-subjective line is not something that everyone knows about, and that it's not wise to assume that they do. This is a day and age of absolute, objective facts. Though all your points are well taken.
For the record, my linking to the 'Missionaries and Sceptics' post wasn't me saying, "This post is my answer to the discussion," but "Here are some more conundrums of criticism."
Sam: I'll say as As A Critic, I feel that much of what you're doing comes down to exploring (and, sometimes, rationalizing) your emotional response to a work of art.
Amen!
I go to the movies with my Dad a lot, and I always try to keep his voice in the back of my mind when I'm writing a review - sort of as a way to remind myself that not everybody went to film school and sees three hundred films a year.
It's hard to phrase without sounding like a condescending dick - but I've always thought that one of a critic's most important jobs is to take a film that's perhaps a bit of a challenge for audiences and provide something like a roadmap.
However past his prime he is now, growing up on Ebert's books helped frame a lot of film experiences for me that I probably wouldn't have properly appreciated at the time. (Ditto for discovering Pauline Kael, and of course MZS when I was in college.)
Which I guess is why I never really got much out of reading the more academic-type crowd. (Rosenbaum always struck me as writing with his pants down and a ruler in hand, measuring his own erudition.)
Putting on my populist hat for a moment, the greatest thing about movies is that they're cheap and available to everybody. And if I can get my dad to dig Malick, Jarmusch and flicks that the other guys in his office or at the boatyard would never even think of watching, then I feel like I'm doing my job.
And as for Mr. White... well my friends and I always had the fantasy that Matt and Armond had to work together all day at the NY PRESS - we pictured them as the movie critic version of Tim and Gareth in THE OFFICE.
Yeah, but who's who, Sean? Eh?
Oh just admit it, you've hidden Armond's stapler inside a Jell-o mold, haven't you?
Actually, although I have never discussed "The Office" with Mr. White, I suspect that each of us suspects the other of being David Brent.
I like to think of Matt and Mssr. White as the stars of Lethal Weapon 5. Or 48 Hours 3. Or The Defiant Crix.
Mr. Burns says: Putting on my populist hat for a moment, the greatest thing about movies is that they're cheap and available to everybody.
Cheap?! Ha! Not here they aren't!
I'm about to drop (let's see...$21.00 for tickets, $15.80 for popcorn/snacks, and $12 in train fare) damn near $50 to go to the movies with my date this evening. God is punishing me: I have to sit through Big Momma's House 2. Obviously, I did not pick the movie.
I'm going to have to wear an eyepatch over my right eye (MZS will get that joke) if I am to survive Inside the Actors Studio interviewee Martin Lawrence. (What did he teach them? What not to do?)
I'd better get lucky after this.
Shaun: "It's hard to phrase without sounding like a condescending dick - but I've always thought that one of a critic's most important jobs is to take a film that's perhaps a bit of a challenge for audiences and provide something like a roadmap."
Sam:
I hope it's not too condescending, since I think I agree. What strikes me a lot of the time is how simple some "difficult" movies really are. Sure, the form of TROPICAL MALADY is unconventional, but the emotional story underneath it couldn't possibly be more simple (or elemental, if the former has negative connotations for you). Ditto 2046: "I fell in love with someone. After a while, she wasn't there." Strip away the multiple narratives and the temporal back and forth, and that's the movie in a nutshell. Of course there's incredible artistry in how it's put together, but these shouldn't be things that are hard for people to understand.
I try to shy away from pronouncements about critics en masse (largely because you can pretty much follow the phrase "critics say" with anything you damn well please), but I do think (some) critics get so caught up in surface issues they forget to talk about what's going on under the skin. This happens a lot to so-called "stylists" like Wong, or the Coens, or Sam Peckinpah (to choose from a wide assortment of people I like); in a more irate mien, I sometimes describe it as akin to the reaction of small children to shiny objects. It's either "oooh, look! tracking shots!" or "stop with the tracking shots!" without thinking "why so many tracking shots?"
To wrest this back remotely on topic, I do think that's partly what's happened to THE NEW WORLD. Malick gets blamed (mostly explicitly by Dave Kehr, but implicitly by tons of others) for essentially tossing nature shots into the picture at random, seduced by the evil god AVID into turning in a shapless mass of footage. (Giving the amazing beauty of that footage, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but it's still wrong.) The emotional logic of the picture, especially in the recut, is crystal clear -- it's about a passionate pair of lovers who don't see each other clearly, and a less heated pair who do. It's funny how many of the movie's detractors end up espousing views they'd never be caught dead holding to in the abstract: since when is Rosenbaum a priori opposed to "discontinuous editing" and "offscreen monologues"? (I'm pretty sure I can think of a Kiarostami movie or seven that employ them.) At least he's honest enough to admit he "couldn't get [his] bearings." Still, "grown-up and educational"? Please, god, no.
Sam writes: "I do think (some) critics get so caught up in surface issues they forget to talk about what's going on under the skin. This happens a lot to so-called "stylists" like Wong, or the Coens, or Sam Peckinpah (to choose from a wide assortment of people I like); in a more irate mien, I sometimes describe it as akin to the reaction of small children to shiny objects. It's either "oooh, look! tracking shots!" or "stop with the tracking shots!" without thinking "why so many tracking shots?"
That comes pretty close to summarizing my particular idea of criticism, which admittedly is not everyone's cup of tea. I am less interested in approving/disapproving of a film's politics, or assessing whether or not it wins high marks as a "believable" (???) or perfectly shaped linear narrative, etc. etc. , than in assessing (1) what the film is trying to do and say, (2) how it goes about trying to do and say it, (3) my own reaction to the film, and (4) the intricate aesthetic equation by which (1) and (2) combine to produce (3).
That's considered a fairly primitive way to analyze movies, at least if your idea is the Mr. Spock metacritic approach, which seems to be mainly about political correctness and dropping obscure references. (No names yet, I'm not drunk enough.)
But I'm in Sean's camp here . A critic really is just a viewer with a byline, albiet one who sees more movies than the average person. We have a responsibility to our readers, ourselves and our medium to write not for other critics, but for people who, like us, love movies but spend their entire lives trying to figure out why they like them and how those emotions were produced.
I think one of the reasons criticism has become irrelevant to mainstream opinion is because the post-Kael wave of critics -- mostly university educated in the 70s, 80s and 90s -- are so concerned with analyzing the culture (a necessary and vital part of criticism) and planting their ideological flag and earning snickers and snaps from colleagues by being clever that they drive all the non-geniuses, the regular filmgoers, away.
And now, a word in defense of Roger Ebert, who's on a lot of people's shit list for a variety of reasons, some of them justified.
A lot of people think Ebert has lost it, or that he never had it to begin with, but I'll always adore and defend him because he has long epitomized so many of the qualities outlined above, qualities I strive (but only infrequently succeed) in bringing to my own stabs at this profession. Almost everyone else who considers him or herself a "serious" critic is essentially writing for a handful of his or her fellow geniuses, whether they care to admit it or not. Ebert writes, first and foremost, for his readers. And we can rib him all we want for grading on a curve, and for taking a gourmand rather than gourmet approach to the medium. But give the devil his due. No working critic has done a better job of bringing pecular and distinctive and often pop art into the lives of people who might otherwise never seek it out, then helping them wrestle with their own often startling and off-putting feelings towards that work, and recognize that contradictory emotions and unfamiliar sensations are part of the package when you engage with popular art. That you don't have to love it as long as it holds your attention and hopefully even challenges you.
Vital lessons -- lessons critics take for granted because we live in a bubble surrounded by other buffs.
Sure, his methods and opinions can be wonky -- four stars for THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE? Say what??? -- but really now. Over the course of nealry 40 years, championing filmmakers from Peckinpah and Scorsese through Spike Lee and Mike Leigh, he's surely done more good than harm to movies, particularly tp indies and documentaries.
People love Ebert because he eliminates the psychic distance between the artists, the critics and the audience. For all his idiosyncrasies and increasingly frequent forehead-slapping blunders and his schlocky empire of merchandise, he's a hero of American film criticism.
Too many of us, I fear, are content to mock self-styled populists like Ebert for being, well, popular, for meeting the audience at some semblance of a simple level and profiting handsomely from it. But let's never forget that while many of us (myself included) spend much of our professional lives sitting on the sidelines in our folding metal chairs, sipping mint juleps and critiquing Ebert's form, he's out there with a fucking shovel and pickaxe, breaking ground on behalf of filmmakers we haven't even heard of yet, and making it possible for them to find an audience and help keep the cinema vital.
Odie: Cheap?! Ha! Not here they aren't! I'm about to drop... damn near $50 to go to the movies with my date this evening.
Been to any rock concerts lately? How 'bout enjoying a seven dollar beer at a ballgame? (And don't get me started how much those friggin tickets go for... I grew up in the days of $5 bleacher seats at Fenway. Now you can barely get a hot dog for that.)
When you consider how astronomically the price of everything else (theater, music, sports, even comedy clubs) has risen, I'd bet that movies are still your cheapest option for a night out.
It's just plain damn expensive to leave the house these days (which is probably as good an excuse as any for why I'm spending my night off holed up with a 12-pack, listening to Howard Stern.)
Enjoy BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2... and we're all wishing you luck tonight - but if you can't get at least a thank-you-stroke after that movie, you're probably with the wrong gal (...or my ex.)
Mad respect to Big Rog: Of all the people capable of holding down the position he's currently in (and which, lest we forget, he single-handedly invented), he's the one I'd want there. Personally, I think you'd have to be out of your gourd to think Bubble's a four-star movie, but better that than dismissing it out of hand. (It's a good long-take movie for 45 minutes until the little red flag pops up that says "Plot! We need plot!" I actually think it's in the non-actors' favor that they mostly can't cope with the movie's second half -- only pros can handle that level of contrivance.)
His meat-and-potatoes style doesn't get my juices flowing the way certain critics for certain NY weeklies (both of them) do, but when I'm getting ready to explain to 75 college freshman why they should like some Masterpiece of World Cinema and not get stared at like a dog that's just been shown a card trick, Ebert's "Great Movies" essays are my go-to crib sheet.
Plus (and here's the part where *I'd* better stop drinking) I know that growing up in the cultural wilds of Connecticut, it was Ebert's syndicated reviews in the local paper who helped the teenage me figure out what this movie stuff was all about. Maslin and Canby had their place, and I had my romance with Pauline like everyone else, but Ebert was there at square one.
Well, Matt, we finally found something we can disagree on and it's a Mike Figgis film, of all things. I used to be a vocal Figgis fan. I am less so now because much of his work over the last five years has been a disappointment to me--nothing since Timecode has worked at all and Cold Creek Manor is one of the worst films I have ever seen.
Having said that, The Loss of Sexual Innocence was my favorite film for the year it premiered. I haven't seen it in several years so it may not hold up, but I remember it as a particularly powerful experience, interlaced with moments of real subtlety and observation that help communicate its point. I am surprised Ebert liked it so much. He certainly didn't like Liebestraum, which I see as the finest work Figgis has done.
In respect to Ebert, I do not dismiss his critiques out of hand but I have to admit that they often seem to completely miss the mark. If you want to read one that is totally wrong (IMO), search his site for his review of Visconti's Ludwig. If you've seen the movie it's hard to imagine how he came up with this reading, but he misses so much of what makes it great that it is no wonder he views it as a write off.
Rosenbaum is fine, though he pontificates too much. (I sometimes feel that the Chicago Reader gives him too much space)Reading "Essential Cinema" his attempt at canon-forming, I realized just how little of a sense of humor this guy has. One critic who really gets under his skin is Howard Hampton (he reviewed his Movies as Politics, not so favorably in Bookforum awhile back) who claimed in an Artforum letter that Rosenbaum is tone-deaf on American culture. Hampton was defending Lynch's Straight Story, which Rosenbaum knee-jerkingly defined as "propaganda," calling him and Kent Jones "movie mullahs." Both the origianal piece and the subsequent replies are worth reading.
Matt: Too many of us, I fear, are content to mock self-styled populists like Ebert for being, well, popular, for meeting the audience at some semblance of a simple level and profiting handsomely from it.
Roger Ebert is the reason I wanted to become a film critic. While I sometimes think he's gone nanners over the years, I was hooked after seeing Siskel and Ebert's PBS show. Sure, I read the critics available to me here in the NYC area back then (Canby, Winsten, Rex Reed, Pauline Kael) but something about Ebert's way of making film criticism fun AND a learning experience worked for me. He had a profound influence on me, much like you, O Leader of the Zollerites. (Aside: you can find me in three places in Ebert's Questions for the Movie Answer Man book.)
As far as mocking the successful and popular, I have a saying that goes "there's a reason why starving artists starve. I don't know about you, but I like eating." To translate that into Ebonics: Don't hate da playa, hate da game.
As for Big Momma and his sequeled house, I used some of the street smarts beaten into me while growing up in the 'hood, and showed up at my date's house with Chinese food and a bootleg copy of Big Momma's House 2 that I bought off the street for $5. I think Kramer from Seinfeld did the off-the-screen recording--it was damn good. The movie, on the other hand, was horrible, and I am stunned that she liked it.
Mr Sean Burns: The smile on my face indicates that I am not dating your ex. Thank you, Colt 45! It works...every time.
Plus, on a good day, Ebert's no mere reviewer. He's a critic/teacher/philosopher in the manner of James Agee. What a lot of smarty-pants critics consider simpleminded or mundane about Ebert's writing is actually evidence of his uncanny ability to connect movies to daily life, a talent Ebert's detractors don't have and never will. Check out this closing graf from Ebert's chapter on "Mr. Hulot's Holiday," from "The Great Movies."
"When has a film so subtly and yet so completely captured nostalgia for past happiness? The movie is about the simplest of human pleasures: the desire to get away for a few days, to play instead of work, to breathe in the sea air, and maybe meet someone nice. It is about the hope that underlies all vacations and the sadness that ends them. And it is amused, too, that we go about our days so intently while the sea and the sky go about theirs."
Wow, Odie took "Zollerite" and ran with it. I'm flattered. I wonder how Matt feels about the term.
It sounds like the name of a race of monsters in a Sid & Marty Krofft show.
Is that good or bad?
As someone whom Sid and Marty Kroft taught one of the best lessons I learned in childhood (LSD is bad bad bad...) I had to ask. :)
Great quote from "Rog." My favorite of his (and one I admittedly have paraphrased) was where he said "if you liked this movie, I'll never let you read my reviews again." I know he's kidding, but the visual image of Ebert coming out of the web page, slapping me upside the head and then closing my browser whenever I went to his site was delectable.
Odie: I don't know how I feel about that Kroftian appellation. The idea of having an actual audience, as opposed to pepole who happen to read me now and again, is a fairly new idea, and I need some time to get used to it.
Yeah Ebert is great.
Well, this is a huge discussion. I just came on to say that, contrary to what MZS said, that Rosenbaum picking THE WORLD as his #1 of the year was completely predictable. It hits all of his sweet spots: a foreign film about the local impact of globalization told in a deliberately distanced manner, oh yeah, and it's about globalization.
Humorless is certainly a term I must apply to him, although I think it need also apply to MZS's colleague Mr. White, who only has two modes of criticism: Rapturous Adoration or Full-Bore Contempt. Bemusement and wonder don't fit in there.
Jeff: I agree that Armond pushes toward the extreme ends of the spectrum much of the time, but he does it for a strategic reason: to get people mad enough or excited enough to start thinking about and arguing about movies. Pauline Kael was accused of doing the same thing, a pretty good precedent. I also disagree that Armond's not funny. He often makes me laugh out loud, like when he said "Charlie's Angels" is the sort of movie that should be given out free with copies of "Entertainment Weekly."
Admittedly I have a soft spot for the guy because I've written alongside him and sat with him at the occasional screening for eight years, and he's a powerful influence on his peers, particularly younger critics. But I just think you're wrong on this point.
Rosenbaum, on the other hand, is not a barrel of laughs, you're right. However, I don't think he makes any pretense of being entertaining. He's more of a science officer or a geologist or the chief curator of the museum of film culture. I've probably gotten more raw knowledge -- historical and philosophical asides, surprising yet relevant connections between eras and movies, recommendations for further viewing -- from Rosenbaum than from any critic ever. I had a professor like that in college. Nobody liked his classes because he just fed them information and showed them clips and demanded that they analyze it. It wasn't fun. But that professor helped me understand how movies are put together, how they say what they say, better than anyone I've ever had the privilege to know.
I wrote a NYPress piece a couple of years back saying that I long ago gave up on expecting any one critic or one film to satisfy every need or want that I have. I think a person has to avail himself of a mix of influences. To do otherwise invites stagnation. Do you know what I mean? You can't make do with Spielberg or Kubrick; you need both, or at least I do.
Wow, maybe Mr. White's strategically aggressive tactics are rubbing off on me, because I didn't really mean my post to sound as cranky as it did. Nonetheless, however funny he might be in person, it only rarely comes through in his writings, which have a certain fanatical quality to them. Don't get me wrong, I think that both White and Rosenbaum are great writers and critics. I also think that given the choice over who to hang out with on a Friday night, I'd pick Ebert and his Steak-and-Shake.
Anyway, I can't have been the only one who walked out of THE WORLD and thought it had Rosenbaum written all over it, right?
Point taken, and I hope I didn't sound too much like a scold. Armond does have a fanatical quality -- some might prefer the word "visionary" -- but I guess what I mean is I'd rather have that, with all the downsides, than a critic who makes no impression on me at all. Or Anthony Lane, who is capable of insights now and then, but who leans too heavily on patter and often seems to be writing for an audience circa 1932, when most English-language critics had not quite come to a consensus about whether this moving picture medium was good for anything besides a fun night out.
And yeah, I had a pretty good idea Rosenbaum would love THE WORLD before anyone in America had really gotten the chance to see it. Some movies are just tailor made for particular sensibilities. But you won't see me throwing stones for that reason, because particular directors and movies tend to hit my "rave" button almost every time as well. (Except, for some reason, David Cronenberg; I've liked or loved almost everything he's made, yet I had an allergic reaction to A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. But that's a whole other thread.)
But the best film of the last two years? Come on. That's like saying THE NEW WORLD is the greatest movie a critic has seen since he started writing about movies.
Oh, wait, that was me.
I understand what you say about a filmmaker pressing buttons I'm a sucker for Lynch and Cronenberg, and by now it's a given that THE BLACK DAHLIA will be somewhere on Armond White's top ten for this coming year. I think there's a fine line to be walked between a critic being overly predictable, and completely loony. Armond manages to tie both of these together by loving everything Spielberg does, and then every so often, out of the blue, he loves TORQUE. Whereas I can't say I'm ever as dumbstruck by Rosenbaum's tastes in the same way, although his love of Von Sternberg and Kiarostami has been nothing but enlightening.
Timing is important, too.
If I recall correctly, TORQUE was a January release, arriving on the heels of three solid months of earnest, artsy, eat-your-spinach-and-give-me-my-Oscar movies. So was the eccentric, funny, non-pretentious TRAVELLERS AND MAGICIANS, which I flipped for in January, 2005.
I've also written about the phenomenon of the Septemer or other early fall release (AMERICAN BEAUTY, LOST IN TRANSLATION, LA CONFIDENTIAL) that appears right when critics are fatigued by summer stupidity and deeply grateful for anything reasonably adult.
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