Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Criticizing Criticism: I Don't Know Art But I Know What I Don't Like...Usually Without Having To See It

 

 

“Several people have told me dubiously they heard that the movie was fictionalized. Well, of course it was. Those who seek the truth about a man from the film of his life might as well seek it from his loving grandmother. Most biopics, like most grandmothers, see the good in a man and demonize his enemies. In dramatizing his victories, they simplify them. And they provide the best roles to the most interesting characters. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t pay to see them.”

Roger Ebert his 1999 review of The Hurricane

 

I have always considered Roger Ebert my north star when it came to criticism of any kind. Ebert was not merely a great writer and critic; he had that great ability that so few of us – particularly critics – have the ability to do; admit when they have made a mistake.

You can find this level of nuance in particular when you read his series of reviews in his Great Movies collection. In the four volumes that were published, you constantly see how his positions have evolved over time, particularly when it came to movies years after the fact. He thought less of Cool Hand Luke after forty years even though he admitted it was still well done; he acknowledged that Steven Spielberg’s A.I.,  which he had just thought was fair in 2001 was an unqualified masterpiece a decade later. He was also will acknowledge that some films that were groundbreaking at their inception were problematic decades later: he acknowledged  that both Birth of A Nation and Gone With The Wind were horribly racist films and that after seeing Triumph of the Will years later after calling it the greatest documentary in history that it would only be seen as such if you were already a Nazi.

Because he not only showed great wisdom and because he believed that film criticism was something that should not be studied only by critics, he was regarded with hostility by many of his peers throughout his career, and it no doubt didn’t help his cause when he was willing to acknowledge that blockbuster films like those of Phase One of the MCU and the Daniel Craig Bond movies were among the best films of the years they were in. And while his personal politics were fundamentally Democratic, he did not think all Republicans were evil and would not fundamentally dismiss a movie that had a conservative message out of hand.

When The Passion of the Christ came out in 2005, he might very well have been the only critic I know of who was willing to give the movie a review on its artistic merits as much as the religious message. He gave it four stars and his only real problem was that it was a sign that the MPAA was never going to give an NC-17 to a film based on violence alone. “I think if anyone other than Christ had been the subject of the film, the NC-17 would have been automatic,” he wrote. Other than that, he had no problem with the films message or how Mel Gibson had told it. Perhaps we should not be shocked by that, considering that he later consider Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ ­ - a film that in 1988 was so controversial Scorsese would face death threats – another of the greatest films ever made. Similarly when the first part of Atlas Shrugged came out not long before he died that while he disagreed with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, he gave it a one star review because it was an incoherent mess that made no sense to him in the stand point in terms of narrative or character development.

What I remember most about Ebert was that this was a man who believed all movies should be seen by the general public before they are judged and was in favor of restoration and never censorship. I imagine he would be appalled that so many on the left would want Gone With The Wind taken out of cable services in the last few years. I imagine he would have written a long essay to that very point, explaining why this was wrong. That’s the other great thing about Ebert: even when he virulently disagreed with you, he would at least hear you out. One finds that not only in his criticism and essays but in the letters he would exchange with his fans up until the day he passed.

Perhaps most importantly Ebert never judged a film without seeing it. In the busy life of a critic, there are many films that you just can’t see over the course of a year or even your life. He made it very clear when he argued about the merits of certain films and that he hadn’t seen some of their earlier works, even if they had been box office hits or critically acclaimed. The idea of making a judgment on any work of art, sight unseen or based on your political beliefs, was abhorrent to him. As it is to me.

I have found this increasingly clear as the summer has progressed and two very different box office smashes have been held to high regard by one side and utter loathing by the other, usually without having even seen the film. So let’s discuss two summer blockbusters.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been one of those movies that has been held with immense anticipation from filmgoers since the trailer was dropped last year. (I’ll admit, given the natural order of things, Roger Ebert would probably have seen Oppenheimer first but because he would have respected a filmmaker like Greta Gerwig he would have given her a fair shake.) For the last several months, the right wing media has been excoriating the film, sight unseen because of the messages they have no doubt sensed from the trailers and the cast. Most of them have to do with what they consider the emasculation of male figures (I don’t think anyone would consider Ken such a thing, but still) the idea that this movie regards men with utter hostility and the fact that it has transgender performer Hari Nef in a brief role. This is the kind of ridiculous prejudgment of any artwork that I loathe anybody making, no matter what who you vote for.

Naturally, leftist newsletters delighting in sending up just how ridiculous the right-wing sounded in their screeds, deifying what the film stood for, and were joyous when the film broke office records. It did not particularly shock me when I learned in some of them that none of them had seen Barbie either. (One actually closed their column by saying not that the right’s latest cancellation effort had failed, they were going to see Barbie.) Considering how much the left says that they loathe everything that corporations stand for and that Barbie is by definition a product placement movie (albeit one that takes nothing the product stands for seriously) you’d think that would factor into their thinking before deciding to revere it, sight unseen. But of course, in the political world of outrage and counter-outrage, the cinematic merit of Barbie is not the point, so much as that one side has decided to destroy it.

Now consider a more unlikely box office success from earlier in the summer: Sound of Freedom. The movie tells the story of Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) a government agent and how he quit his job to help break a vital child trafficking ring. Critics, by and large, have hated this movie but it has become a huge box office success that to date has grossed over $127 million in a little more than two weeks.

Now because Caviezel is known for his conservative beliefs (he has been a loyal Trump supporter) and because many believe the message is not a true picture of child trafficking, the left has been just as determined to tear down the success of the film. They have said that it is essentially a fantasy designed by QAnon, that the story is heavily fictionalized and that it plays into a major right-wing conspiracy theory. Most of them, to be clear, also haven’t seen the movie but at least the people on the right have.

In both of these box offices smashes case, the artistic merit of the film does not truly matter to either side but rather the message of the film. The right no doubt does like Freedom, but I imagine the fact that it is a box office success plays into the message of ‘owning the libs’, which to be clear Sound of Freedom clearly does considering how much the left berates it. They choose to repudiate Caviezel (and in many of their critiques, choose to trash Passion of the Christ because they didn’t like what it stood for either), argue that the film is heavily fictionalized (a trope that, sadly, so many people seem to genuinely think is more important to a biopic or historical film these days than its artistic message) and that it is a box office smash because it plays to what conservatives want to believe rather than anything else.

Now I haven’t seen Sound of Freedom and may not for a while, but it seems to me that the hatred on the left for the movie comes more from their hatred of conservatives in general. In a bubble where it is increasingly becoming clear that the left does not think conservatives are entitled to the same rights that they are, the judgment against Sound of Freedom is actually doubly hypocritical. If you seem to believe that conservatives live in their own world, you’d think they’d be entitled to at least have movies designed for their audiences. But the hatred for this film sight unseen belies that concept and is yet another argument that the left doesn’t think that, when it comes to right,  separate but equal is good enough. Or perhaps they can’t accept the idea that since the movie has been released nationwide, some people from blue states must have been going to it – and worse liking it.

As to the right’s narrative against Barbie I truly think that this is just another example of neither side being able to take a joke. Every aspect of Barbie (again, I haven’t seen it, but I’m basing it on the trailers and reviews) makes it very clear that it is a complete and utter satire of a toy that, politely speaking, has been one of the most problematic toys over the last forty years. I actually am inclined to give credit to Gerwig that she was able to get all of this in what was, basically a film that is supposed to be a product relaunch for a company that is having major financial problems and turn it into an utter lampoon of every single thing that product had claimed to stand for. From the moment the movie was pitched, everyone thought it would be just another one in a long line of celebrations of children’s products such as G.I. Joe and Transformers. Instead, at first glance, it looks like she has completely revolutionized what these films could be the same way The Lego Movie managed to do.

But because neither side can grasp nuance, the right has decided that this is a film that is an example of ‘toxic femininity’ while the left argues that it’s a celebration of the toppling of the patriarchy. I think both sides have clearly overshot. Barbie is a movie for kids. Like the best movies for children, it is clearly layered with so many deep and telling reference that the parents will have a blast and probably laugh harder at the jokes that the children who want to see it with them. But it is still a children’s movie first and everything else second.

What would Roger Ebert think of either film if he were to see them? I honestly can’t say about Sound of Freedom. I imagine he try to keep an open mind about it, using the same detachment he managed to do his entire career, and view the film as an artistic work first. Because he was a human being, his politics might have affected his judgment, but he would do his best not to let his critical opinions overreach.

With Barbie he might actually have a higher standard. This was, for the record, a man who did not like when filmmakers he truly loved seemed to be slumming in what he considered lesser films. (The only Phase One Marvel Film he truly hated was Thor and I’m inclined to think he didn’t like it because Kenneth Branagh, who he adored, was slumming it.) That said, if it managed to outdo the preconceptions he had about a film (like he thought with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series) he might admit that he found the film brilliant and charming. And considering that this was a man who sometimes found merits in movies that were truly terrible (he is the only critic I know who gave a positive review of The Happening) and underestimated movies that were classics (he gave a purely negative review of The Usual Suspects) his review would be imperfect. I imagine that it might come along the lines of ‘Better Than It Has Any Right to Be.”

And as all the noise and ‘controversy’ surrounding both films, I imagine he would urge them all to at least see the movie before they hated it.  He would urge in both cases to his readers to disregard the noise and judge for yourselves. And I’m pretty sure at the end of both reviews, he would tell his audiences to do what I’m going to do this weekend: see Oppenheimer first.

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