Best Critics Keep All of Us Honest

By Craig D. Lindsey, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Jul. 13–In case you haven’t heard, criticism is under attack. And so far, the body count among film critics is high.

Between 2006 and now, more than 30 film critics of all types all over the country have quit, retired, been laid off, accepted buyouts or been reassigned. With the myriad reports of print journalism going through an Internet-induced, ad revenue-depleted, downward spiral, critics of all forms of arts and leisure — movies, books, music, dance — have been among the first to get the ax.

So far this year, film critics have been exiting at an alarming rate. In March, veteran Newsweek critic David Ansen and New York Newsday critics Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour accepted buyouts, while the independent Village Voice’s Nathan Lee was laid off. In May, The Washington Post’s head critics, Stephen Hunter and Desson Thomson, accepted buyouts and left their positions.

It’s gotten so bad that Matt Zoller Seitz, respected critic for The New York Times and the man behind the online film-discussion blog “The House Next Door,” took himself out of the criticism game in April, opting to focus full-time on filmmaking. (His position at the Times has now been filled by Nathan Lee.)

Since I am, too, a film critic, this is an issue I treat with great concern. But not only because there’s a possibility I could lose my job. I’m also concerned that if print film critics are relieved of their duties — by those who think our opinions aren’t that important or are easily replaceable by another, less expensive writer somewhere else — the lack of serious discourse about film in the media will disappear as well.

At this point, some of you are probably saying, “So what? I can form my own opinion about a movie. I don’t need film critics to form one for me. Good riddance.” I know there have been people who’ve read my work over the years who’ve bluntly let me know, through e-mail or (often anonymous) phone calls, that they don’t need me to dictate their cinematic tastes.

Let me just say that it’s not my intention to do so.

It’s a film critic’s job to form his own opinion about a movie, not yours. If you see a movie a critic has reviewed and you agree with that critic’s opinion, great. If you don’t, even better. Because that is truly the goal of criticism: to get the ball rolling.

Arts criticism has been an essential component in print (and society), going back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when writers such as Denis Diderot, Emile Zola and Charles Baudelaire acted as art critics, writing essays that dispensed analysis, insight, understanding and, every so often, enlightenment.

As for film critics, they’ve been around since the creation of film print. Revered Midwestern poets Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg did time as silent movie-era critics, churning out reviews and essays in the early 20th century. Esteemed novelists Graham Greene and James Agee began writing movie reviews in periodicals in the ’30s and ’40s. Former Winston-Salem resident Bosley Crowther was at one point the country’s most-known newspaper critic, filing reviews for The New York Times from the ’40s to the ’60s.

Several critics would go on to shape cinema. Before making revolutionary silent foreign films such as “The Battleship Potemkin,” Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was a noted film theorist in the ’20s. In the ’50s, the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema, co-founded by renowned critic/theorist Andre Bazin, had a masthead that included the men who would form the French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, etc.

But it was Pauline Kael who became the most influential critic. Her witty, incisive and highly influential New Yorker magazine reviews during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s influenced both future film critics (once infamously dubbed by writer James Wolcott as “Paulettes”) and filmmakers (Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson are fans). This was someone who took a critically polarizing film such as “Bonnie and Clyde” (a film Crowther notoriously reviled) and wrote a piece that dispensed such a fresh, engaging take that audiences — and critics — were willing to give it another look.

In the past two decades, there has been such an abundance of film criticism that even a Web movie-review haven such as Rotten Tomatoes had to put a kibosh on accepting new critics. This boom not only has given us writers and commentators who can offer a valid opinion on a flick but also hype machines with feet. They don’t review movies so much as cheerlead for them, penning enthusiastically hacky write-ups just to appease movie studios so they can get invited to future press junkets.

With so many people ready to voice their opinions on movies — some not fully qualified to do it in the first place — it’s no wonder that publications don’t mind thinning the herd.

Brooklyn-based movie-lover Andrew Grant recently has been writing about the dismal state of film criticism (under the name “Filmbrain”) on his film blog “Like Anna Karina’s Sweater.” He worries that critics have lost the passion and drive to critique movies, opting to give films so-so reviews rather than truly deconstruct them.

“I’d say what’s more dangerous than an outright pan or rave is the sort of ‘Eh’ review,” says Grant, who also co-runs indie-movie DVD distributor Benten Films. “… Maybe they don’t want to be perceived as so negative, so they’ll say, ‘Eh, nicely shot. Good acting.’ Well, that’s what I think is real dangerous because, in a way, that’s just sort of encouraging filmmakers to continue making those types of movies.”

One-time New York Times film scribe Elvis Mitchell remembers those glory days when print critics did what they did to keep the integrity of cinema intact — back when cinema had integrity.

“We all think about that world of 30 years ago, when it was The New York Times and The New Yorker and Time magazine. And they could really, if not dictate policy, then keep a film director working. A great review could get somebody another movie, and those days have sadly disappeared. But the world of that kind of filmmaking has disappeared too. I mean, I think we have to bemoan that more than this demise of film criticism.”

As film critics become an endangered species — often forced to review films that aren’t even worth two words, let alone a thousand (when studios actually allow screenings, that is) — it’s easy to see how those who once dreamed of being the next Siskel or Ebert could be discouraged or, even worse, unmotivated.

Jim Ridley, film critic and senior writer for the alt-weekly Nashville scene, says critics have to overcome their despair.

“It’s a challenge that we’ve gotta figure out,” he says. “How do we make people care about what we write? And it has to start with us caring about it.”

Grant has been re-reading reviews by Dwight Macdonald, Otis Ferguson and Charles Burr for inspiration. He says the challenge is convincing publishers that criticism still plays a vital role.

“I think movie companies and publicists are much happier with just the young critic who’s making $125 to write a capsule review who is just thrilled to be invited to a screening and, you know, maybe get a hat and a T-shirt and just write 250 words of praise,” Grant says.

In a 1942 column for The Nation, James Agee summed up a critic’s place in the world: “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 insofar as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating or illuminating.”

Yes, a film critic must present an argument that is sound, stimulating or illuminating as well as insightful, intelligent and, of course, valid. Such criticism not only makes the case for why a movie was loved or hated; it reminds readers that film is an art form. And, like all art forms, it must be discussed, debated and deconstructed.

Without critics to remind people that cinema is more than just entertainment used to pass the time, but a visual medium that can challenge and inform as well as excite and be enjoyed, moviegoing will become as automatic and artificial an experience as reading the wire reviews often patched into your local paper.

We are necessary not just because we start the conversation, but because we keep the conversation going.

And everyone — from the movie industry to moviegoers to the print media to critics ourselves — need to be reminded of that.

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