Dargis Factor
A 1.27 Sundance Film Festival article by N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis proclaimed that “nothing else…came close to stirring up the excitement and sense of discovery generated by Beasts of the Southern Wild…a hauntingly beautiful [film] both visually and in the tenderness it shows toward the characters.”
Dargis has an eagle eye and highly refined taste buds, but there are two things I can usually count on when it comes to her Sundance Film Festival coverage: (1) She’ll never share or suggest what it’s like to live in a film as you’re watching it — how it actually tastes and feels from a non-eltitist, Joe Popcorn journeyman perspective, as I attempted to do in my Beasts review; and (b) her Sundance sum-up pieces will almost always focus on films that I missed for whatever reason or chose to bypass (For Ellen, Celeste and Jesse Forever, Bachelorette) or which I respected but wasn’t especially thrilled by (2 Days in New York).
Dargis acknowledges that Beasts “inspired a minor critical backlash” during the latter part of the festival. That may or may not be Dargis-ese for “people of varied pedigrees dared to express their gut feelings in addition to mulled-over aesthetic responses.”
You’ve got to get over this conviction that people whose tastes and perspectives differ from your own are somehow “faking it.” The fact that you’re hardly alone in this pre-adolescent resentment (Christ, Dan Kois is making a CAREER out of it) doesn’t make it any less…well, I suppose the word is tiresome.
Manohla’s not “Joe Popcorn” and never was. Her perspective and voice are her own. As for you, you might wanna make up your mind as to whether you hate Joe Popcorn, love him, are ambivalent toward him, or actually ARE him. Because what you do most of the time is just toggle between whatever’s expedient, that is, whatever attitude enables you “inner Lee Marvin” at any given moment. You say “immediate response,” I say “schizoid man,” and everybody goes home cranky.
I’m with the G man on this, if double-compromised in my views.
The one response to ROAD TO NOWHERE that really ticks me off is “all those people who like it are lying.”
Hate it, rip it, spindle and mutilate but please don’t assume that someone who had a good time or found something of value are “liars.”
As for “BEASTS,” I’m again not impartial as I’m really proud of my team at VARIETY for spotting “BEASTS” early and as with Oscar noms for BULLHEAD and MONSIEUR LAZHAR, the buzz around our VARIETY TEN DIRECTORS TO WATCH (announced in December) is a testament to their savvy and sources.
“They” of course is primarily superstar Peter Debruge whose track record on TEN TO WATCH picks is getting very Daphne Du Maurier, ie scarily prescient.
Wells to Glenn Kenny: In the words of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, “I know less and less about who I am, or who anyone else is.”
I’m just saying there’s an aspect of film criticism that high-end, scholastically-correct aesthetes like Dargis will never get into, and that’s how it actually feels to sit in front of a movie screen and absorb this or that vaguely icky work of art, warts and snakes and all.
I once said in a Dan Kois vein that all (or certainly many) good films are “a little bit boring” in a nutritional Brussel Sprouts sense. I’m adding to this by saying that high-end critics will rarely acknowledge that movies which are quite good from any number of perspectives (like Beasts of the Southern Wild) can also be immersions into a kind of skanky, icky, slithery, oozy and boozy world that isn’t, truth be told, all that pleasant or edifying to be a part of after an hour or so. For middle-class guys like me, I mean, who have a hard time with extended exposure to ooze and slime and bloated dead cows.
You can’t just declare how original and aesthetically stirring a film is, however on-the-money your insight or opinion may be. You also have to honestly describe what it’s really like to watch it without the elite intellectual airs.
http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2011/05/memory_lane_2.php
Dargis is probably my favorite critic; she had an unerring ability to ‘get’ a lot of interesting movies that pass the majority critical consensus by. The fact that she doesn’t examine “how it actually tastes and feels from a non-eltitist, Joe Popcorn journeyman perspective” is absolutely meaningless to me. I’m a movie fiend, and I could give less of a eff how a movie plays to people who have no particular interest in filmmaking, and just want to be pleasantly distracted for a couple of hours. This isn’t a matter of elitism; its a matter of where your particular interests lie. Lots of people aren’t especially passionate about music; they might be interested in sports or politics instead. But who cares what they have to say about music?
Repeating: “You can’t just declare how original and aesthetically stirring a film is, however on-the-money your insight or opinion may be”…which Dargis clearly does time and again. “You also have to honestly describe what it’s really like to watch it without the elite intellectual airs”…which is what I try to do besides the first thing.
“Elite intellectual airs”? Some people call it knowing their stuff. Check out the 6th paragraph of that piece for a direct, no screwing around account of what the this year’s edition is all about. Just because she doesn’t go on about ants, wifi and the outer limits of Monster Energy effectiveness doesn’t mean she lacks descriptive powers.
What you call “elite intellectual airs” are what Manohla, myself, and a lot of other reviewers call, you know, THEIR BRAINS. Also, the more you use that phrase, the more you sound like someone like Dan Quayle. Or worse, Newt Gingrich.
But movies are an emotional thing not an intellectual one.
Thank you, LexG, for the defense! Basic but true.
With every Jeff Wells review, I know exactly what the experience was like FOR HIM in the theatre, and since I read him often, I can translate that experience to my own sensibilities.
Dargis (and Scott) often take on a detached erudite style so that I don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about it. They read as too clinical, like wine snobs discussing the consistency of the grape or something.
I know this one’s deader than dead but it pisses me off so much I had to call bullshit yet again, Any critical writing about anything is all about EMOTION PROCESSED THROUGH YOUR FUCKING MIND – you know, the the place where images and feelings are run through electrons and come out your piehole as speech? The thing that separates human beings from gastropods or those guys from JoBlo? Jesus Christ – Lex is Lex, it’s all good, but someone who times some poor motherfucker’s shower has zero standing to call someone else effete.
You want emotion? Well, right now I feel like Harvey Korman after all those guys have repeated “your name” when taking the oath to him. Jesus, guys. Not just dumb, but willfully feeble.
Also completely hypocritical. Because, you know, how about a little more respect for “The Help” from Jeff and Lex. Or “The Artist,” come to think of it. ‘Cuz people FEEL love for that movie.
Jeff just wants to piss on Manohla, and hopes his commentariat will unzip en masse. The claque seems a little pee-shy. Drop it, man.
“But movies are an emotional thing not an intellectual one.
Thank you, LexG, for the defense! Basic but true.”
So why didn’t you like War Horse, then, Jeffrey? Or is your blind hatred for Spielberg a secret card up your sleeve that trumps all the other “basic” tenets and philosophies of filmmaking?
I once said in a Dan Kois vein that all (or certainly many) good films are “a little bit boring” in a nutritional Brussel Sprouts sense. I’m adding to this by saying that high-end critics will rarely acknowledge that movies which are quite good from any number of perspectives (like Beasts of the Southern Wild) can also be immersions into a kind of skanky, icky, slithery, oozy and boozy world that isn’t, truth be told, all that pleasant or edifying to be a part of after an hour or so. For middle-class guys like me, I mean, who have a hard time with extended exposure to ooze and slime and bloated dead cows. Hotels in Lagos