While researching for this article, macabre statements jutted out, such as: “Film criticism is obsolete!” and clumsy questions such as, “Is the film critic DEAD?” In order to restore the dignity of an undermined profession, I found myself part of the audience at the Talent Campus panel discussion during the 60th Berlinale. The title of the event, “Fear Eats the Soul: The State of Film Criticism,” was not an optimistic introduction either, but it sufficed to set the tone for a discussion that aimed to address the origins of the film analysis’ intellectual degeneration. Dana Linssen, Dutch Editor-in-Chief of Filmkrant hosted a diverse mixture of panelists: David Thomson - renowned film critic and author of cinema books, Nick James - UK Editor of Sight & Sound, and Stephanie Zacharek - American senior reviewer of Salon.com. Those specialists were appointed to shed light on the ‘tortured souls’ of both critics and their readers.
The discussion circulated around the qualities of what makes a ‘good’ critic. According to the panelists, film critics have the moral obligation to be contrarians and challenge current trends. What is more, they ought to be charismatic writers. According to many in the panel, it is better to read an eloquent piece on cinema from someone who occasionally writes about film - but has the ability to write well - rather than reviewing replications of derivative, film struck moviegoers that have never seen the light outside the assigned screening rooms. The pessimistic but certainly noteworthy observation is that contemporary film reviews are for the most part sufficiently average. An example of this is how authors often sound suspiciously similar in their interpretations, and even if opinions coincide (a gentler way of describing a “creeping uniformity”), there are fundamentals missing: imagination; challenge of the norms and structures; and constructive propositions “for the love of the movies.”
Adding up to the loss of distinctiveness and the lack of ironic criticism, intellectual debates are often reduced to consumer information. I am not convinced that this is due to the critics’ forced adaptation to a digitalized era of compulsory virtual publishing. It may as well be because of the gloomy signs of our times, in which people chose to alley themselves with the marketing system, in order to hold onto their jobs (over the last decades, approximately sixty US film critics were asked to put their pens down). On the other hand, another substantial reason is what can be called “free film criticism,” manifested by the generation Nick James labeled as “(un)paid fans.” Since film buffs became movie experts on cyberspace, by creating their own blogs and manically reviewing every film that they saw through the light of a projector, a universe of unlimited specialists has subsequently been created. So many are now the web voices claiming to know what they are talking about (and, worryingly enough, many times they indeed know better than the highly praised names), that the average online reader is bombarded with infinite opinions on a single film. Still, as film reviewing is now available to be accessed for free, it becomes a commodity, a fast-tracked sophistication that loses insight due to its spatial temporality. Let alone, that most of the web authors are uncontrolled and range free, missing an old school editor who would have a crucial input on any ill-defined piece.
To get back to the Berlinale debate, plenty of issues were tackled, placing the condition of the modern film critic under scrutiny. In a nutshell, the “perfect” film critic should:
1. Dare to be more risk-taking
2. Think twice before condemning a film, whose making often requires the shedding of blood and tears
3. Challenge the great masters of cinema (thus, be more polemical)
4. Attended film school (an advantage, but not essential)
5. Read other critics
6. Ideally, be a ‘brilliant’ writer
7. Draw from different disciplines when analyzing a film
8. Watch Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) twice a day (David Thompson’s all time favourite classic)
9. Write for the readers, not (only) for the filmmakers
10. Get a life!
Even if nothing really seemed new or promising about the condition of film criticism after this assemblage, apart from a growing guilt of not having revisited the long forgotten magnus opus, Red River, “to get a life” – or at least more of one - was precisely what stuck with me when leaving the HAU2 that bright but frozen February afternoon. Amid hundreds of different articles on, let’s say, The White Ribbon, only a few authors are able to transmute a visual language into a profound work of literature. Screening rooms offer the ultimate escapist opportunity, and the ability for the mind to travel within the lives of virtual characters is extraordinary, but, in the end, without the real deal - life experience - the journey tends to end up being one-dimensional. Film can be seen in better light once we are able to perceive things in their comparative importance and their actual interrelations. Without a self-reflective approach to life, we will never be able to make sense of the mimicked celluloid realities -for, ultimately, is it not film interpretation all about the attempt to make sense of lived realities themselves?
Eftihia Stefanidi
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