Cinematic Morals
Dear David,.
As to whether Pauline Kael, you and I, or anyone, should support a film
simply because it might do humanity some good, my argument is: All good films
do humanity some good, and no bad films do. So I will not give a movie a pass
because its heart is in the right place, and voted thumbs down on such as A
Soldier's Story , Besieged , Buena Vista Social Club (great
music, bad direction, terrible story sense, too much Ry Cooder), Jakob the
Liar , and The Other Sister .
In writing approvingly about The Green Mile , I was not endorsing it
for political reasons but for personal ones. Aware although I was of the
broadness of the John Coffey character, I genuinely liked the movie--found it
absorbing, careful storytelling. Reports from theaters indicate audiences, by
and large, love it and are moved by it; it may emerge as the season's biggest
hit.
If I have "saddled myself with political responsibilities," it has not been
consciously, but I don't think that would be a bad thing for any critic to do,
at least when a film makes it appropriate. My intense dislike for Very Bad
Things and the second half of Fight Club reflected political or
moral outrage, among other things. And should have. Anyone who can find racism
in The Green Mile but not fascism in Fight Club is looking
through a very specialized filter.
But I hope you don't believe I would praise or attack a movie I didn't
actually like/hate, just because of a political agenda. As for the "damn
Jar-Jar picture," that one is an excellent example of a film so quickly
dismissed by fast-draw gossip that many critics (I am not including you) may
have been ashamed to say they liked it. It could have been the lost footage
from Magnificent Ambersons and if presented by George Lucas in that
climate would have been shot down. It is always a little sad when critics tune
their strings with "Page Six." When Janet Maslin announced she was leaving the
times, the New York Observer headline said (quoting from memory) "Liked
Phantom Menace , Hated Gummo ." As if, 'nuff said. My thought
was, So?
As for Jar-Jar, what was the matter with him? Didn't like his accent?
Thought his movements were too alien, or not alien enough? Aliens in movies are
routinely made understandable, likable, comprehensible. Or monsters. Can they
not also be goofy and very odd?
Are the "common man and woman" capable of responding to works of complexity?
Sometimes. Depends on the work. But you cite Being John Malkovich ,
Three Kings , and South Park as your examples, and I can only
observe that the first did disappointingly at the box office, the second only
fairly well, and while South Park made piles of money, my own guess,
having attended a public screening, is that its fans did not respond to it with
complexity but embraced its vulgarity while the irony whizzed right
overhead.
Some of the reviews of that film were hilarious in the way they praised it
for accomplishments that had no remote connection, I suspect, to the way it was
seen, perceived, enjoyed, and understood by most audiences. They liked the
dirty jokes, the homophobia, and racism and the shit jokes, period. The
function of that material as liberating irony and reverse criticism, etc., was
limited to an elite minority within the audience. I believe I was too hard on
the movie in my original review, and doubled back a little in a later TV
program on animation, but the notion that most audience members picked up in
its complexities strikes me as optimistic.
South Park 's cheerfully blatant racism was praised as satirical
anti-racism by some of the same critics who found racism in The Green
Mile , a film its makers intended to be anti-racist. My best guess is: A
large majority of the audience for South Park processed the racism on
its primary level and missed the irony, and a large majority of the audience
for The Green Mile will see no racism, and if their attitudes are
influenced by the movie, it will make them less racist, not more. The critical
discussion of the racial content of those two movies has been too clever by
half.
Best,
R
