Criticizing Criticism: A Prominent Music Critic Said Movies Portraying Musicians Aren't Realistic. Another Reason Critics Need To Stay In Their Lane

 

A brief anecdote before we get started. Late in his life Arthur Sullivan was in the final phases of his partnership with William Gilbert. Sullivan famously wanted to do serious music and often resented Gilbert for his frothiness. So he finally composed his one serious opera: Ivanhoe.

It was not particularly successful critically or financially. At one point while it was still running a friend of Sullivan's said that he'd seen Ivanhoe and quite liked it. Sullivan's response was very honest: "That's more than I did. A cobbler should stick to his last." It was as close as Sullivan could get to acknowledging that for all the problems he and Gilbert had working together, they couldn't survive apart.

I was reminded of that quote when a prominent music critic for Variety panned David Lowery's most recent film Mother Mary not because of its quality as a movie but because it was an unrealistic version of the pop music business. He then went on a rant about many recent films and TV shows which in his mind have utterly failed to give an accurate portrayal of the music business, whether they were based on fact or fiction. These ranged from the songs that were written for the film to the fans in the concerts to the lack of staff.

I'm not sure how good a music critic this man is but I question his ability because he can't seem to grasp how either movie or TV shows work in regard to reality. This is a basic concept that even most teenagers get when they go to the most recent Fast & Furious movie or watch Euphoria: they realized that this is a heavily fictionalized version of reality. Furthermore considering that Mother Mary, the film that began this review, was a horror film first and a music movie second this is a case of missing the forest for the trees. That he then proceeded to argue that so many of these films were unrealistic because the star had only one representative when in reality they have many again seems to miss the point of films that were ostensibly horror: does he really think that there is a substance Demi Moore could take to turn in Margaret Qualley when he says it's not an accurate portrayal of Hollywood?

This is the kind of 'think piece' that shows just how little thinking is involved: it really does seem like the kind of thing a critic does to show how smart they are compared to the people in the industry their reviewing. In the case of this critic it's the kind of thing that you wonder why it was published in the first place as it makes not just this critic look foolish but Variety by comparison. This is an industry that's already plagued by the most toxic form on nitpickers when it comes to sexism and racism in the comic book industry. Somehow this critics work is worse: it's like if Neil DeGrasse Tyson were to pan Guardians of The Galaxy because the ships Chris Pratt travels in had an unrealistic depiction of how engines work.

Now I have absolutely no doubt that movies like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and A Complete Unknown are all heavily fictionalized stories of Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Bob Dylan. They might be more historically accurate then some of those that focused on musicians of the past, such as Yankee Doodle Dandy, Funny Girl and The 7 Little Foys but I know the first goal of all these films was to entertain the audience, not portray an accurate version of the performers life. As Roger Ebert once wrote: "Those who expect the true version of a man from the movie of his life might as well expect from his loving grandmother." This was true when he wrote it in 1999 and it's still true today. The fact Michael is the most highly fictionalized version of its title character has done nothing to stop millions from going to see it. People want to be entertained not shown how the sausage is made. If this critic believes that the documentaries of rock concerts and musicians either today or at their peak in the 1970s and 1980s were 'the truth' of the subjects involved I question how he can put sentences together to form his article trashing Hollywood for being inaccurate.

I can't speak personally on this mainly because I have no interest in pop music. But as my readers know I have an interest in history and have written my share of reviews about movies and TV about American as well as British history over my career and long before that watched many series that looked at those periods. And I've never been one of those people who picks nits at the discrepancies unless they detract enormously from the entertainment of the film or TV show in question.

Last September I wrote a piece about how 21^st century film and TV's depiction of journalism in regard to how it affected history and politics was completely unrealistic and gave examples of such classic movies as Good Night & Good Luck and All The President's Men as failing that test. However I made it clear that despite that I was able to recognize that they were still cinematic masterpieces on every level. (I won't say the same for Truth and The Newsroom.)

Over the years some of the greatest dramas on TV have been inspired by historic events with significant characters from Deadwood to Boardwalk Empire to Masters of Sex to The Crown. Some of them were more based in historical accuracy then others but all of them were clearly fictionalized for the benefit of great TV. I didn't think Deadwood  was a masterpiece because Seth Bullock or Calamity Jane were true to life, nor did I care whether the real-life Masters and Johnson experienced the real-life difficulties in their research and while I knew much of what happened during Elizabeth II's reign was based on real life British history I was more than aware there was dramatic license involved with her interactions with Margaret Thatcher and John Major, just as much as I knew that Charles and Diana's relationship was more accurate then some previous versions but still had been adjusted for dramatic power.

Indeed I watched the latter series with my father who lived through many of the events during the second half of the series and while some of it he admitted may have been historically accurate he acknowledged most of the stories behind the scenes were done purely for dramatic contrasts and conflict. My father is a prominent historian himself, particularly in American history and we've seen our share of historical films and TV shows over the years. And while we acknowledge some of them are clearly more accurate in their retellings we also know that some of them are done for other purposes.

Some films, to be sure, to give a more realistic version of history such as Steven Spielberg's Lincoln which more or less gives an accurate portrayal of the work of the passage of the 13^th Amendment and accurate depicts many of the major figures both in Lincoln's cabinet and some of the Republican politicians involved such as Francis Blair and Thaddeus Stevens in terms of what they were like in real life. Both of us have enormous regard for Stephen Frears' The Queen which depicts the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the newly elected Tony Blair in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana.  And we also had tremendous regard for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and how it tells a compelling story of both the design of the atom bomb and Oppenheimer's attempt to regulate it after the war ended.

But if you were ask either of us as to why we admired these films, it would be because of the strength of the writing, directing and acting and the craft of the filmmakers first and second. The historical accuracy is a nice bonus but the fact that some events were exaggerated would be far from a dealbreaker for either of us. We watch films and TV like this to be entertained and to escape from reality not to point out all of the flaws in history.

And just to be clear we are the kind of people who according to the theory of this ill-gotten music critic should care the most whether details are horribly wrong and it doesn't bother us one bit. The idea that millions of people  watched a film like Lawrence of Arabia and be terrified its getting a historically inaccurate depiction of T.E. Lawrence would be laughable to either of us. We both know quite a bit about the real life Mozart and Salieri so we know that Amadeus is a work of complete fiction by Peter Shaffer. We both think that films is a  masterpiece even though we know Mozart was nothing like this in real life. In both cases critics and the Oscars are in complete agreement.

At a certain point caring about accuracy to reality is laughable. We know that Shakespeare's versions of British royalty contained countless historical inaccuracies. To mention just one Hotspur is posed as a romantic rival to Henry V when in reality he was older than Hal's father at the time and so much of Richard III is based purely on conjecture and rumor then any reality. Macbeth existed, so did Duncan but that's about it. There might be a few British historians who will write footnotes in journals but that's not going to stop them from enjoying Kenneth Branagh's versions of it.

Now some might argue that historical accuracy has less importance to stories then those involving those who create art. Well, then let's look at a different kind of creative forces: writers. It is very difficult to make a great film or TV show about a great writer mainly because the creative process in writing isn't always interesting unless the process was interesting.

I was reminded of that yet again when I saw Capote. Bennett Miller chose to only film a small section of Capote's life story: the period that led to his eventually writing In Cold Blood. This was the correct choice because the story behind both the work and its effect on the author is far more riveting then trying to make a film about Capote's entire life story, just as Capote Vs. The Swans is more interesting because it's about the author's relationship with his Swans then any novel he might have written. And its also why The Rebel in The Rye a film which tried to tell the story of how J.D. Salinger made history by writing Catcher in the Rye was a creative failure. No matter how hard you try you can't make the process of how Salinger made literary history into a good film, no matter the level of actors involved.

This is true when it comes to Hollywood's own writers. David Fincher's Mank was well received by critics and was nominated for Best Picture and multiple awards a few years back. But the fact is while Herman Mankiewicz was a very prolific screenwriter that doesn't necessarily make him worth writing about. Yes he was in Hollywood at the start of the era but quantity doesn't mean quality. Were it not for the fact that he was the screenwriter of Citizen Kane we would have no reason to remember him at all.

The fact is Orson Welles accomplished more before he was 24 then Mankiewicz in his entire life to that period. Even if you argue Mank deserves more credit for the film then Welles does, the fact remains Welles directed and starred in the film, supervised the entire production and had to fight all of the battles to get it released. In truth Mankiewicz gets all the credit he deserves for it in the HBO film RKO 281 which tells how Citizen Kane got made and how William Randolph Hearst did everything in his power to kill it. That is the more interesting story and that movie did a better job telling it. Mankiewicz would be a footnote without his work for Citizen Kane in Hollywood. Welles is anything but.

Have I strayed from the point? Less then you'd think. I've read more than a few reviews of movies or TV shows of real-life stories or personality where more than a few of my professional brethren have gone out of their way to point out the real-life inaccuracies as part of their reasons to pan these works. Sometimes as with Oliver Stone's oeuvre they have a point, sometimes when the New York Times excoriated The Hurricane for historical inaccuracies it’s the kind of pedantic behavior I find ridiculous. At a certain point I think all of these critics and indeed quite a few others have forgotten one of the most iconic lines in film history from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

If we wanted to see the real-life version of history, writers or music then PBS would be the most watched network and documentaries would be the highest grossing films ever year. That has never been the case and I think we're all fine with that. We do come to the movies for magic, not to see real-life accurately depicted. It is true the professionals might hem and haw about how their professions are depicted onscreen but the majority of us just want to be entertained and I count myself among them.

By the way to tie this into where I began I've written about how much I enjoyed Topsy-Turvy Mike Leigh's brilliant drama about how Gilbert and Sullivan came up with The Mikado. I know this film is accurate in many ways, both when it comes to the composers as well as many of the singers and performers involved. I give fair points to Mike Leigh for historical accuracy. But while that's a bonus for why I enjoyed it, I love the movie because of the performances, the writing and of course that wonderful music. It is very much an accurate portrayal of 19^th century London and the stage at the time but even if you knew nothing about it I think many would still enjoy it. And if there were some details wrong Leigh is right about many things – including the final caption where he points out that Ivanhoe is not as much fun as The Mikado.

So to this music critic who wrote this ill-defined review I'd give him the same advice Sullivan did: stick to your last. And since you might not know what a cobbler is (or for that matter who Gilbert and Sullivan are) stick to criticizing music. Because as a film critic you make all of us look bad.