It’s become trendy these days to knock The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, as well as draw unfavorable comparisons to its immediate predecessor, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King—with the underlying suggestion that the era of taking these fantasy films seriously is over. We’ve grown out of that, right? We’d rather watch important flicks such as Lincoln from now on, no?
Perhaps some critics might. But I don’t. I thought Peter Jackson’s Hobbit was brilliantly done and see no reason to dismiss it because of its genre, length or resemblance to his cinematic adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s LOTR trilogy, which I adore as well. And I’m looking forward to the next hobbity installment, The Desolation of Smaug, which I’m sure will be much more entertaining than any prestigey part of Lincoln—and less pretentious to boot. I’ll venture to guess that any picture with a talking, fire-breathing dragon in it won’t be in the same “for your consideration” pool come Academy Awards time.
But that’s the problem. Return of the King set a precedent for CGI-filled fantasy films … and the awards folks have been reluctant to dip into that well since. Look at Guillermo del Toro’s spellbinding Pan’s Labyrinth, as great a movie as any that has appeared in the last two decades, yet it was stepped over at the Oscars some years ago for The Lives of Others. I gotta think the special effects were the deciding factor. They’re components that everyone wants to see at the movies—as long as no one thinks they can help create a work of art.
I don’t believe in that balderdash. It’s based on the idea that popular entertainment can’t be important, which has remained pervasive despite centuries of being disproven by everyone from Charles Dickens to Aaron Copland. Art isn’t restricted to any particular theme or genre; it’s restricted to quality. And I think The Hobbit makes that grade.
Do I think it’s the most fabulous film? Nope; it’s got script issues like almost every movie, and it does feel padded in parts. But by and large, it channels the stirring spirit of Jackson’s previous LOTR flicks, and that’s a worthy breed. I’d rather watch that any day of the week over Lincoln and won’t convince myself not to because it’s based on a fantasy novel.
“What does your heart tell you?” Aragorn asks Gandalf in Jackson’s Return of the King.
Not what Lincoln tells me, that’s for sure. And boy am I glad about that.
Raise your hand if you thought The Artist would usher in a new era of silent, black-and-white movies.
OK, I didn’t, either. But I can’t say I wasn’t hoping. We need a little dose of the past to get us schlepping toward the future, and a retro attitude toward the cinema wouldn’t hurt. It certainly didn’t for M. Truffaut and other members of la Nouvelle Vague.
True, The Artist was a standout—not perfect, but clever and entertaining … like some of the best silent movies. The worst, however, are akin to any other lousy film: awful. Just because something’s silent doesn’t mean it’s good. Or vice versa.
Still, the film showed that the genre could be revitalized for a new audience, with a novelty value transcended by a smart script and direction. The question is, will a few more irises and wipes make for self-conscious cinema? They’d have to be incorporated organically to avoid affectation, and that’s a tall order. Skilled directors need apply.
I’d suggest starting a dialogue about this, but I think I need a title card.
Back in the day, when I still thought good taste had nothing to do with opinion, I sat down with a dear friend of mine to watch the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera on video. Ed adored classical music, especially Puccini, and had such elevated sensibilities that he often preferred singers who were just a smidgen flat to more on-pitch, yet less idiosyncratic performers. He was so erudite that I thought he’d go ga-ga over Night, one of my favorite comedies and, in my opinion, an affectionate look at the opera world. If anything, he’d get the joke and, like me, want to see it over again in the future.
Once we got to the scene, however, where Harpo and Chico switch the sheet music for Il Trovatore with that of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” I knew my choice was ill-conceived.
“This is a travesty,” Ed said as the brothers tossed a baseball in the orchestra pit.
The takeaway: Not everyone likes the Marx Brothers. But there’s another takeaway, and it’s less definite. It’s the question of what’s good and what’s not, and how do we know if something’s art or junk?
Tommy Chong answered that hilariously in the movie After Hours as his character steals a statue containing Griffin Dunne’s hapless yuppie: “Art sure is ugly.”
It would be easier to assess if it always were.
The problem is, it’s not always anything. You can’t say: Art has this quality and this quality, so therefore it’s what it is. And it’s not always known at first sight, either; plenty of works are pooh-poohed when they first debut and only obtain recognition years later. The lexicon has no deadline.
To a certain extent, art should affect you greatly, as A Night at the Opera does to me; it makes me laugh, and I never get tired of watching it. Yet what of those who prefer other comedies—or those who like slightly off-pitch singers? Their opinions matter as much as mine … if not more.
I once attended an event where basketball legend Michael Jordan was asked by movie critic Gene Siskel what his favorite film was. “Friday,” Jordan ultimately said, to Siskel’s visible dismay.
I saw Friday. Some of it was amusing. Some of it was junky. Is that personal taste, or can I say with authority that it doesn’t hold a candle to Night? After all, Jordan liked it. Who am I to dispute him?
We live in a world where the word “genius” is applied indiscriminately, where a man can break bottles pointlessly on the street and attract a curious audience—as I observed with bemusement one day during a trip to Paris. Can anything be called art as long as there’s someone backing the claim? Is it just a popularity contest?
I don’t think so. But I can’t figure out why. All I know is that some people love the Marx Brothers, and some people don’t. I don’t understand their perspective, but I’m not them.
If I knew how to sing just a little bit flat, maybe I’d get the idea.
I wish The Terminator were an enjoyable film.
Sure, it’s kinetic. Action-packed. Exciting. But enjoyable?
Frankly, I find flat, warm cream soda more appealing.
These ruminations popped up while I was watching the film recently on TV. And yes, I sat through the entire flick … which I hadn’t done in ages. I admired the snappy editing, the fierce car chases. Even the crisp dialogue seems tailored to speed things along. It’s a fast-moving, zippy movie.
But again: not enjoyable. Downbeat. Unpleasant. I guess that’s the point—it does, after all, concern the possibility of a post-apocalyptic future where unstoppable machines roam the earth killing humans. Yet there’s something dreary about the whole thing, even when you factor in the idea that it’s not completely hopeless … that those terminators can be beat. I don’t get that feeling while watching another seminal, dark sci-fi picture, Blade Runner, which has a more positive outlook. In that film, machines have a human side. They seek life, while the construct in The Terminator wants death.
That, in my opinion, is a big reason why I enjoy watching Blade Runner. The characters are more complex, and the antagonist isn’t evil. He, like Pinocchio, has humanity. The terminator doesn’t.
It’s easier, I think, to create film villains without nuance. You can drop sneering, classical music and other standard ingredients into the blender and mix. A three-dimensional villain, however, is a lot more difficult … but can add more flavor. Yes, that’s beside the point in The Terminator, but this missing ingredient makes it less entertaining.
And I just think of replicant Roy Batty’s final speech in Blade Runner to prove it.
The best scene, I think, in Whit Stillman’s arch but amusing movie Metropolitan is when the youthful, Marxist-leaning protagonist assuredly tells the girl he’s interested in that he only reads criticism—not the actual works being criticized.
What a kohlrabihead, right? The film even suggests he’s misguided … and, if I remember correctly, he goes against his own mantra later on in the movie to read a classic, non-criticism book.
We can learn something from this character. Though it’s not that great literature’s more important than great criticism (which we already know it is).
It’s that we have the freedom and ability to talk about works of art without experiencing them—just based on commentary, hearsay or whatever’s in the air. Expert criticism can prevent you from wasting time at a bad movie. Or from reading a horrible book. It’s preemptive … and you don’t have to feel guilty about not taking in something you know you’ll dislike.
Is there a chance you’ll miss something you would’ve enjoyed because the review indicated it’s bad? Sure. All reviewers have different perspectives, varying tastes. Yet our capacity to evaluate criticism means we can gravitate toward the ones who fit our own sensibilities best, giving us a framework for opinions without the burden of assessing the experiences in person.
Laziness? Nope. It’s a necessity–especially when it could prevent you from spending 15 bucks on a lousy film … and get you instead to drop that amount on a great one.
And yes, we can still think for ourselves. Critics aren’t mirror images. They are, however, useful when you want to familiarize yourself with something before you try it. It’s like a background check for entertainment. I don’t think we could do without it.
Perhaps the young protagonist in Metropolitan learned the error of his ways. We do need art in our lives, and criticism alone can’t fulfill that requirement. But it can help you avoid stuff that isn’t entertainment, and if that comes with the price of being opinionated about works you don’t see, I’m not gonna quibble. There’s so much in the world to experience these days, it’s helpful to pare things down to the necessities.
And I give props to the critics for that.
No film is perfect, and even great movies have scenes or lines that could be better.
I was thinking about this recently while watching Ghostbusters on TV. It’s hardly a masterpiece, yet it remains a terrific comedy and has held up well nearly 30 years after its debut. Still, despite a sharp, hilarious script, it contains a line toward the end that disappoints me to this day: “I love this town,” shouted by Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore after the ‘busters save New York City from a supernatural catastrophe.
Blah. Surely there was a funnier way to express triumph than a maudlin acknowledgement of Gotham’s greatness.
Of course, it’s not a movie-breaker, but it brings to mind other frustrating lines from the cinema’s greatest flicks. For instance: the immortal “leave me alone” in Lawrence of Arabia, spoken with great self-pity by Peter O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence in a dialogue with Jack Hawkins’ General Allenby—who, as if in recognition of this pathetic order, notes that it’s a “feeble thing to say.” I guess it’s hard to count this in the annals of bad lines completely, as it’s followed up in an organic way, though it still rings overdone. So does a much-revered scene in the otherwise extraordinary film The Seven Samurai where Toshiro Mifune’s Kikuchiyo, charged by a dying woman with saving her baby, collapses into the stream surrounding the village and cries along with the infant, lamenting how the same thing happened to him. It’s just a bit too much in a movie noted for its tight script, though it does give some insight into the reckless character’s origins.
These are just a few examples. They don’t ruin the films overall. Yet it’s interesting to see how high our estimation is of them … if we can carp about lesser lines within. Further proof of the merits of these justly praised pictures.
It’s now been a quarter-century since I last saw someone scream in the movie theater.
The rebel yell occurred in Manhattan during a showing of Kenneth Branagh’s intense, glorious Henry V, which had recently debuted. Crowded, hot and uncomfortable was the interior as a host of New Yorkers, squished together in narrow seats, silently watched the actor perform with the utmost passion. When it came to the famed St. Crispin’s Day speech, one of Shakespeare’s finest, the music went into crescendo mode. The theater listened. Branagh reached a climactic point.
And one man sitting in front of me pumped his fist high, like a champion weightlifter.
“Yeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” he screamed, louder than any Patrick Doyle melody.
We stared at him, surprised. Some of us laughed. Me, I smiled. I knew how he felt. He, like the rest of us, wanted to join Henry’s band of brothers. The speech was so well-acted that the guy forgot he wasn’t part of the English army at Agincourt.
I’ve never heard anything as raucous in a movie theater since. I’m proud—it was a unique cinematic experience. Yet it also tells us something about great art: that it’s able, at its best, to transform us, inspire us. That there’s nothing else as immersive … and we can happily disappear into the canvases we embrace.
Sometimes I wish I had done the same thing at that time. I certainly felt like doing it. I realize, however, that the moment belonged to the fellow in front of me, as well as Branagh, whose speech made the reaction possible.
And it’s better that way, I think. Movie magic couldn’t, in my opinion, have been better expressed.
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