So I’ve already declared somewhat on what Critics might best want to focus on, as well as where the line in the sand is drawn regarding a Critic and just someone offering an opinion. Now, well, I believe a differentiation needs to be made. A distillation, one could say. Even when one has worked out who are the Critics, we still need to answer the most important question of them all: why on earth should I listen to this person? And this, well, this is where it gets personal.
However, not personal so much in the ‘I hate this writer and I hope his family burns to death’ sense. That’s not conducive to a proper view of the subject (not even if the self-important pomp refuses to accept that Fight Club is, in fact, brilliant, and not self-pity for aggrieved children of the nineties). It’s getting down to differentiating individual reviewers, and this can be described as an almost noble cause given it shows the utmost respect for reviewers as individual with their own likes, dislikes, feelings and insanities regarding whatever their chosen subject happens to be. It is also a massive aid when assigning blame, something which is utterly magical if you really want to start a slanging match. I’ll get on to that later.
Part one of this blogged symposium dealt with what, ideally, Critics should address (on the subject of film because that’s my subject, though much of it is universal). Let’s run with that. I’m not going to turn this into a list of who to listen to and who not to because more than either of the other two this subject is entirely personal, and giving a comprehensive list of who to avoid would defeat the whole purpose of naming my blog a ‘Proposal’. But pare the subject down: what does one want from a review? The two factors are ‘to inform’ and ‘to entertain’ (‘to criticise’ is a category for with one use, and I hate categories like that), and the skill of reviewing is finding something of a balance. We have the stereotypical ‘checklist’ approach, which is too inform-heavy; reading Empire magazine today I noticed an awful lot of this and it has the reviews reading almost like plot summaries. This doesn’t help the reader. Apart from anything, the reviewer is telling them things they will find out for themselves when they actually go to see the film: spoilers come in more shapes and forms than merely revealing the twist. These reviews feel like an incomplete journey planner, a satnav system which takes you three quarters of the way and then leaves you to work out the rest of the route. this might work when you need to find your way across town but it doesn’t work for a film, because it assumes that everything worth watching in a film occurs within the final section, and one can’t make that claim of the medium because it is completely wrong. As an example, the vast majority of Saving Private Ryan reviews I’ve read have had me banging my fist on the table because they’ve mentioned the brilliant few seconds where a bullet pings off a soldier’s helmet, he removes it with an astounded, elated smile, and you know how that particular scene ends. Why would you mention something like that in a review? Some films contain gems, sparkling little treasures which you are entranced by and take delight in. It’s like the pencil trick in The Dark Knight, or Tom Cruise’s role in Tropic Thunder: unexpected pleasures. And a reviewer who ruins these cannot be forgiven because he has absolutely no clue about what the audience require. He thinks that a review is a collection of facts with a (not even necessarily linked) opinion tacked on the end, and everything is fair game provided the ‘final twist’ (if the film has one) is left to secrecy. And you can’t really avoid these. Identifying which critics to avoid is trial and error, which is a shame, but after a while one identifys the right ones.
And these, well, these people you listen to, for the simple reason that they know how to judge a review. Take the film as a whole: does it achieve its aims? Is there anything noteworthy? How does it make the audience feel? Is it worth any attention? And then look a bit deeper: the themes, the influences, the shake-ups. How does it use film? And, of course, make it entertaining. Make it a conversation with the reader; don’t alienate them, but talk directly to them, why they should/should not take an interest in your subject, be it anything from antiques to restaurants. To pull out an example of someone other than Anthony Lane, I’ll take Yahtzee, the game critic who has more or less redefined ‘internet phenomenon’ with his Zero Punctuation reviews which can basically be described as irreverently faulting games for thing you probably would have noticed but never complained about had you played it before watching the review. While being absolutely mind-drainingly hilarious, which I think is the impulse attraction. And being very yellow. I can’t sum up Zero Punctuation in such a meagre set of sentences as I love it too much, but it’s strength is in never bothering with traditional review spiel and simply working to death the gameplay and story modes. He takes delight in isolating the pointless, always views things in the context of the genre (something I view as essential) and has no problem with using the most inventive metaphors to get the point across. Example: in explaining how the emo characterisation ruined the otherwise-excellent Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, he declared: “Never stick your dick in a pudding. It can still be good pudding and you can spend all day explaining that to people but nobody’s going to want to eat it because you stuck your dick in it!” There’s a piercing mentality to such reviews as these, in being able to simply give the points straightforwardly and in an entertaining way.
It should be adopted. Don’t listen to hype. Reward what needs rewarding. If you want to give something the benefit of the doubt, do so, and if one aspect ruined the entire experience for you, say so. And whatever you say, make sure it is backed up logically. Life isn’t balanced and neither should reflections on life be so. Very few Critics manage this, but people such as Yahtzee, Anthony Lane and Jerry Holkins manage it with aplomb. I suppose it’s a matter of searching them out, really: reviewers who, after you’ve seen the film or played the game or listened to the album or whatever, you think, ‘Yeah, I can see why they said that.’ Then we have a Critic who manages to open the minds on his or her readers. It’s a tricky subject, criticism, but some are well worth listening to because they do genuinely know what they are talking about and they don’t patronise their audience – they make them think.
And a final note? If reviewing, never be afraid to use the word ‘boring’. Something can be boring just the same as it can be funny, provided there’s a reason, and the phrase ‘”Boring” is a word used by boring people’ is simply wrong. That phrase implies that one must be interested in anything, which negates the whole beauty of human preference. Keep an open mind, certainly, try to like things. It does one well. But never feel as though finding something boring, if you’ve given it a chance, makes you small-minded. Because it doesn’t. The problem there is the filmmaker’s, and pretending something is interesting when its not benefits absolutely no-one.
