Film critics are the spotted owls of journalism. They can
only survive where people respect subtlety, art, depth, meaning, originality
and tradition in movies. The steady progress of million dollar studio marketing
machines and the decline in audience taste and patience -- call it Global
Dumbing -- have wiped out most such environments. The most recent to succumb
was the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution," where veteran critic Eleanor Ringel Gillespie opted for a buy-out. As for the last
few artificially maintained refuges for genuine criticism, they will soon be a
memory too. Like hapless, toothless polar bears on melting ice floes, film
critics are sinking, without comprehension or much resistance, into extinction.
Good riddance, most will say. They deserve it if only for
such inexcusable extended metaphors as the one above. One person who will shed
few tears will be Peter Bart, erstwhile Hollywood
producer and studio head and current editor of “Variety.” A couple of months ago, noting that films
like “300” have made tons of money despite critics saying they sucked, he
suggested that the latter “find a new line of work.”
Apparently the line of work he was thinking of was shilling
for studio PR departments, as he goes on to say that they should “attempt to
tune in to pop culture,” ie, echo the advertising compelling the masses to
mindless consumption of movie product. An appreciation for films like “300”, or
such memorable Bart productions as “Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise.”
But critics won’t go without a struggle. Take Ronald Bergen’s
manifesto in “The Guardian,” “What Every Movie Critic Should Know.” It’s a long
list. Here’s a sample:
“They should have seen Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire du Cinema,
and every film by Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir, Luis Buñuel
and Ingmar
Bergman, as well as those of Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet,
and at least one by Germaine Dulac, Marcel L'Herbier, Mrinal Sen, Marguerite
Duras, Mikio Naruse, Jean Eustache and Stan Brakhage. They should be well
versed in Russian constructivism, German expressionism, Italian neo-realism,
Cinema Novo, La Nouvelle Vague and the Dziga Vertov
group.”
So much for Hollywood;
I would have at least included Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, if not “The Three Amigos.” And
though I can sympathize with Bergen’s
impulse to counter growing irrelevance with intensified erudition, I also
suspect Bart might have paid him off to write what sounds like the perfect
parody of a pointy-headed critic.
Somewhere between Bart and Bergen, perhaps, lies a happy medium. The
“Boston Globe”’s Ty Burr 
has some useful insights on his movie blog on the
subject. What should every critic know? he asks. “How to engage readers. How to
make them see the thing afresh, whatever it may, and even more than that the
world that contains it.” Or as James Agee wrote about 65 years ago in his first
column for “The Nation,” “It is my business to conduct one end of a
conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics. And I will be of use
and of interest only in so far as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating, or
illuminating.”
A conversation, is it? Obviously Agee didn’t have to deal
with e-mail (“Dear Splashhead…”). But I get the point. I think the key
function for critics is to spur audiences beyond the “white knuckle thrill
ride” level of enjoyment, the mindless Pavlovian conditioned response. Maybe
get them to watch movies a little more like critics themselves (believe me, it
is far more rewarding), and maybe even apply such critical thinking to less
important matters, like the upcoming presidential election.
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