Why film critics matter

Elitism
That’s how I’m a populist. Here’s how I’m an elitist.

I’m an elitist in the sense that most people can’t do what most critics do: inform, entertain, and, at their best, articulate something about this movie, or movies in general, or life in general, that most of us have only felt but haven’t yet put into words.

Inform. When I reviewed movies for The Seattle Times, one of my favorite responses came from my neighbor, Geof, who complimented me on my review of Lars von Trier’s film “The Idiots,” adding that it made him want to see the film. “But I gave it a bad review,” I said. “I know,” he responded, “But it still sounded interesting.”

Which is pretty much what you want from a daily movie critic. Here’s the film and here’s what I think of it; and what I think of it doesn’t get in the way of informing you what it is.

Entertain. Critics are writers, and writers are entertainers. I read Anthony Lane in “The New Yorker” less to be informed than to be entertained. I know our tastes don’t always match but that doesn’t matter. He makes me laugh, as when he slams Yoda in his “Revenge of the Sith” review, writing, “Also, while we’re here, what’s with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. ‘I hope right you are.’ Break me a f---ing give.”

I remember how shocked I was when I found out Lane wasn’t old, gay and British but young, straight and American. And yet this bitchy? This funny? Incredible.

Articulate. This is hard to do with daily reviews, where the space allotted gets smaller and smaller, and where there’s only so much of the movie you can write about without revealing key plot points. It’s easier to do in magazines. Anthony Lane did it earlier this year with his review of “Inside Man” in which he posits Spike Lee as the anti-Renoir, writing, “‘Grand Illusion’ offered the ennobling suggestion that national divisions were delusory, and that our common humanity can throw bridges across any social gulf. To which Lee would reply, Nice idea. Go tell it to the guy who just had his turban pulled off by the cops.”

Similarly, my friend Craig Wright, a playwright and TV writer in Los Angeles, helped me appreciate Terrence Malick’s “The New World” over breakfast last February. He loved the movie, I didn’t, but then he began talking about one of the film’s final scenes, in which Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) runs laughing from her toddler son among the manicured gardens of an English estate. He compared this finale with chases at the end of Malick's other films, and explained how the one being chased through the greenery moves — progresses — from unsympathetic killer (“Badlands”) to sympathetic everyman (“Days of Heaven”) to sacrificial overman — the man who’s better than we are (“The Thin Red Line”).

All of these previous chases occur in the wilds of nature and end with death for the protagonist. Pocahontas, however, is chased through a landscape of meticulously tended greenery —  a perfect balance-point between civilization and nature, between the old and new world — and the chase seems to be a game. But it’s not. The point-of-view eventually shifts so the camera, rather than her son, is the one chasing her, while the narrator explains that she died several weeks afterwards. So what’s chasing her? The thing that’s chasing all of us — time. And where is it chasing her? Into death, and, through her son, into new life. It’s chasing her into the new world, where all of us eventually go.

This mix of complexity and clarity is exactly what you want as a reader or listener. I still don’t think “The New World” is a particularly good movie, but I’m open to seeing it again, to see what I’ve missed; to see if Malick can stun me, as he stunned me with “The Thin Red Line.”

What’s worthwhile in criticism isn’t the critic’s final judgment of the film — thumbs up or down — or how many stars they’ve given it. It’s their argument. Sure, I’m bummed that my favorite movie critic, David Edelstein, late of Slate and now with “New York” magazine, didn’t like “Superman Returns” (I did) and liked “V for Vendetta” (which I thought adolescent crap), but generally he made good arguments. It’s the chase that matters. No matter where we all end up.

A helluva hangover
A few weeks after his review of “Pirates 2,” A.O. Scott delivered his defense of criticism. Unfortunately he gave it a Hollywood ending. Here are his final three lines: “We take entertainment very seriously, which is to say that we don’t go to the movies for fun. Or for money. We do it for you.”

I disagree with almost all of this. I go to the movies for fun and work. I go to the movies for money and not-money. As for Scott’s third rationale? You is a broad category, encompassing, let’s face it, some people with pretty bad taste. So, as much as I like you (yes, you), I don’t do this for you. I do this for clarity — my own as much as anyone else’s.

I take the long view. Will this movie last as popular entertainment? Will we still talk about it in five or 10 or, God willing, 50 years? Box office, like critical acclaim, is no indication of longevity, particularly when it comes to sequels. In 1992, to choose just one year, the number one movie was “Aladdin,” but numbers 2 through 4 were all sequels: “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” “Batman Returns” and “Lethal Weapon 3.” Every other film in the top 10 (“A Few Good Men,” “Wayne’s World,” “A League of Their Own”) will last longer in the national consciousness than these forgettable sequels — none of which was particularly bad, just never particularly good. They lacked a few things: coherence or economy or feeling. But they were popular at the time.

This summer everyone’s getting drunk on Pirate rum, but, unless the third installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean” saves things in a big way, everyone will soon wake up with a helluva hangover and wonder, “Now what was that all about?”

The archived opinion pieces of Erik Lundegaard and other MSNBC writers can be found here. Erik Lundegaard can be reached at:

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