Critical Thinking

It's been nearly two months since I last posted here, and in that time I've felt an increasing need to catch up, not only with films and my own writing, but with those of you who read this blog regularly. I have some things on the horizon and hope sincerely that I can get to them soon: about mainstream studio films, about Arnaud Desplechin, about jazz and Miles and tradition and tributes. Just this week, though, I've discovered several items that I'd like to relay and respond to immediately. The first, via Girish, is an incisive take-down of Richard Brody's recent biography of Jean-Luc Godard, Everything Is Cinema (Metropolitan Books, 2008). I've read the book in parts, have considered it instructive in some ways and bizarre in others, and recently alluded to its rather untenable interpretation of Vivre Sa Vie. As Adrian Martin points out in his review, "Brody is a film critic for The New Yorker -- and Everything Is Cinema is definitely a New Yorker's view of Godard ... the book springs from a peculiarly American projection of French society and culture." In addition:

Godard is no longer a citizen of the world, no longer someone who interacted with fellow filmmakers such as Poland’s Jerzy Skolimowski, Italy’s Bernardo Bertolucci, Germany’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Georgia’s Sergei Paradjanov. He mainly seems, in Brody’s account, to be on planes between France and the US – at least until he relocated to Switzerland, where he is based today. But the Switzerland of this book is just a picture postcard of lakes and restaurants, not a living, breathing, troubling society which Godard depicts in films including the magisterial Nouvelle Vague of 1990.

Yet the issue extends beyond critical interpretation of a filmmaker, his films, or the milieu in which he works. Brody, as Martin explains, makes dubious, unsubstantiaed claims for Godard's alleged anti-Semitism and seems fixated on the director's supposed perverse sexual interest in very young actresses. All in all, Martin's review is instructive not only for those interested in Godard but for anyone interested in the methods of film criticism, even those of biography. As a professionally trained historian, I've learned much about how vital evidence, verification, and methodology are, and how important balance and reasoning become in the writing of any account or life. I believe Martin's review is an important reminder of all that.

* * *

Speaking of the practice of criticism, Walter at Quiet Bubble put up a nice piece on film critic Stanley Kauffmann, who has been writing for The New Republic since 1958. Walter is right; few cinephiles and critics seem to mention Kauffmann, much less read him, and I'm as guilty as anyone. Kauffmann's collection of reviews, Regarding Film, was one of the first books on film I purchased when I first began taking cinema seriously about six or seven years ago. In the long run, Kauffmann never figured as an extensive influence on my own writing; Susan Sontag would reign supreme in this regard, and in the years since my initial introduction to Kauffmann, I've shelved his book to look at those of others. Walter's post, though, reminds me that Kauffmann is a refreshing response to the prevailing emphasis on auterist criticism, which (incidentally) I happen to find valuable and which I engage in, but which, as Kauffmann suggests, is not the only way to think about movies. My own affinity with Kauffmann, however, lies in a different, albeit related, arena. I've not talked much on this blog about my own critical agenda, but I have one. In addition to the formalism and the auterism that I've adopted and which have aided me in understanding both the mechanics and meanings of films, I try to practice what might be called a humanist-centerd criticism; film, as the writer Wallace Stegner once said about fiction, "is people", is about experience, and I prefer criticism that is attuned to this. Or as Kauffmann himself wrote in a prefatory note in Regarding Film:

Graham Greene, who was a film critic from 1935 to 1941, wrote during his tenure, "Life as it is and life as it should be: let us take that as the only true subject for a film, and consider to what extent the cinema is fulfilling its proper funtion." This principle, wildly inappropriate though it may seem in numerous instances, is nonetheless insistent. Let's add only that "life as it should be" is less defined by the critic than it is envisioned by the artist. That vision, in whatever species of film, breezy or grave, is the critic's basic concern.

* * *

Chris and Paul Weitz's About a Boy (2002), which I've revisited recently, has more than a hint of obviousness to it: as characters and voice-over narration observe repeatedly, no man is, or should be, an island; everybody needs community, friendship, "back-up", as the young Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) says; Will, the man-child played by Hugh Grant, will slowly learn the importance and value of responsibility and purpose. But the film is charming and has its moments and, like Stephen Frears' High Fidelity (also based on a Nick Hornby novel), makes telling suggestions about men who know much about inanimate things, such as the best records to buy, but not much about life. While watching the film this week, I noticed a shot I hadn't really noticed before. On a Christmas Eve, Will has gone shopping to purchase a copy of James Whale's Frankenstein on DVD, which he will watch, all alone, at home. On his way out of the store, Will rides up the escalator by himself, while the down escalator is crowded with shoppers. The shot is essentially a diptych that underscores Will's habitual detachment from people and illustrates the film's general visual coherence. I certainly wish the Weitz brothers would have expressed their ideas and the story's themes more through these visual means and less through dialogue and voice-over, but I thought this was a nice touch nonetheless.

I hope to return soon.

Comments

[Keith Peoples]

I really love your blog.
Over a month is too long, but any thing is better than nothing.
It is hard to do it, but carry on. It is appreciated. I, like you, don't have time for it today or most days, so the frequency is fine if a little on the slow side. I look forward to reading as often as you can post
Thanks
JKP

[Michael]

Thanks very much for your comments. I really appreciate it. Part of the reason for the infrequency of my posts is a teaching job that requires significant portions of my time; and so I have ideas and drafts for posts, but not quite enough time to complete them. But I'll keep trying, and it's great to have faithful readers who'll keep reading even when the posts are infrequent.

[Keith Peoples]

No, thank you for doing the work.
Your amoung the best.

I would never, ever, have bought the late Ozu package without your post. What a treasure. What fantastic films with such good acting and directing, that uphold repeated, repeated watching. Ozu is great. Keiko Kishi , perhaps, even better.

I'll be checking in regularly, regardless of the lack of a new post--until one, finally--appears. Worth the extra clicks a day--and I do check daily. Yours is a very satisfying blog. I await your next and future posts.

I thank you, and will read regularly as long as you can do it.

[Michael]

Keith, learning I wrote something that turned someone on to Ozu really makes my day -- those late films are masterpieces. Criterion just released his last film, "An Autumn Afternoon", the only late Ozu I've not seen. Gonna try to get to it soon. Thanks for the kind words, and also for visiting regularly.

[Scott Sheperd]

I truly enjoyed your post. Well thought out and put together in a very intelligent, easy to read way. I used to be into film and criticism years ago. I have drifted from that arena but reading your material has made me want to get back into it. The one critic that I really remember and that I loved was James Agee. He, in my opinion, not only had some wonderful insights into film but into the whole social equation that the film was part of.
Anyways, wonderful job.

[Michael]

Scott, thanks. Agee's definitely a great critic, although I haven't read him as much as I have some of his contemporaries, particularly Manny Farber -- and Agee's someone whose work I'd like to get back to and read more of (that includes his fiction as well).