Monday, November 27, 2006
Film When You Can't See What I Saw
Posted by Jonathan Rosenbaum on 11.27.06 at 07:00 PM
Two contenders for my ten-best list this year are Pere Portabella’s Warsaw Bridge (1990), shown recently in the Portabella (pdf, pp. 81-108) retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Atom Egoyan’s Citadel, a very personal essay film that he recently showed at Doc Films. Neither film has (yet) any sort of distribution, and it’s not clear that this is going to change anytime soon. Both are entirely under the control of their makers, and they want to keep it that way, preferring not to turn these films over to distributors—for a variety of reasons in each case.
But here's a question: am I being rude and inconsiderate if I cite these films on my ten-best list knowing that most people can’t see them? How much should my position as a critic be ted by my function as a consumer guide? I’d like to imagine that we’re all sufficiently grown-up to realize that we can’t expect instant gratification in fulfilling all our wishes about what we see next, and that it’s even desirable to think and dream about films that we can’t yet see. But I’m not sure how many of my readers agree with this proposition.
Comments (12)
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FWIW, I'd include them--with something like Egoyan's film, I can see it getting release of some kind in the near future. So, for example, if I read your list and then next year, or the year after when it comes through the city or makes it to DVD or something, it'll click and I'll be more likely to see it. Also, if you mention it and a bunch of other critics do too, who knows? It could encourage a release.
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not sure i see the point of the exercise if you don't list what, at least for YOURSELF, generates the most frissons--since it's all about pleasure/satisfaction/that family of descriptions ... which you want to share with everyone, let us all feel in surrogate relation to you, riding on the coattails of your own enchantment, etc otherwise, only a drudge chore--which ultimately reveals itself in the language of half-felt praise, the less than committed, lackluster response, ever so slightly disabused ... so who needs that? a season of gifts, so i'd say be generous to a fault
As a former Chicago Reader reader, I've always valued your bringing to light great films that are hard to come by... I may not always agree with your assessments, but you've certainly changed the way I experience and think about film. Since you already narrow the field to only those films screened in Chicago, I would leave that as your principal criterion — and from there share with us the cinematic wonders you've discovered, regardless of distribution or pedigree.
Same problem as I have, as a movie critic in Chile. But on the other side, the situation has a bright perspective; specially for the people who feel the need to push themselves up and have some other choices to see, to read about hard-to-find-but-great-films is invaluable. For instance it was your long article on Bela Tarr that pressed me to track down Satántángó. Same thing with some Kiarostami, Yang, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and others. Writing about "invisible films" stimulate the reader to efectively go and see those works. Keep on doing it!
I think they should definitely be included since these lists do get archived and at some point the films may get released and as one of the other people pointed out, it could actually help with a release. However, I suppose it would be prudent of a critic to at least include a decent number of films that the public will at least have a chance at seeing. In these cases it seems to me like it wouldn't be cheating to list more than ten.
Why worry now about being rude and inconsiderate? You have always been that anyway. You are the most smug and aelf-important of all critics working today.
In your comments comparing Bobby to Nahville, I want to point out the obvious: Jonathan Rosenbaum is wrong even when he's right (Altman admitted he wasn't interested in making a movie about the real Nashville or country music; after all, he let the actors write their own songs). Rosenbaum's preoccupation with his own perception of "hipness" (which he deems extremely uncool) appears to have obscured his view (or his memory) of what's happening on the screen in Altman's movie. Using "Bobby" to bash "Nashville" makes as much sense as using "Neil Simon's California Suite" to bash "Short Cuts" -- or "The Towering Inferno" to belittle "Playtime." Yes, there are superficial similarities (as Bob points out), but in terms of ambition, complexity, vitality and sheer movieness, there's no comparison. From the moment it was released, people lined up to exalt or disparage "Nashville" -- and that's understandable. (See the Village Voice reprint of a 1975 conversation between Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris here. Southerner Haskell's opening statement contradicts Rosenbaum's almost point for point.) But I've always thought the "hipness" charge, as a critical gambit, was more of a projection on the part of the slinger than an appropriate slur against the movie itself. "Nashville" is too complex and multi-layered to be dismissed as an attempt to be "hip." Indeed, its most brutal portrayal is of Tom (Keith Carradine), the archetypal callow, blonde LA hipster-folkie poseur who scorns everyone he sees -- except Linnea (Lily Tomlin), who's got his number. Tom exudes misanthropic youthful arrogance from the get-go, sneering at Pfc. Glenn Kelly (Scott Glenn) at the airport with a trite "counter-cultural" put-down: "How ya doin, sarge? Ya kill anybody this week?" I hope Rosenbaum (a critic I very much like, by the way) doesn't honestly believe the movie -- or the audience -- is so insensible as to uncritically embrace Tom. I've grown wary of critics like you who accuse filmmakers of indifference or, more especially, "meanness" towards their characters. This comes up quite a bit in discussions of the films of Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre). Unfortunately, some critics tend to take it for granted that a film that is indifferent or mean towards its characters is inherently flawed, inferior. But I think that a film can be indifferent and/or mean to its characters and still be very good (I still contend that neither Fitzcarraldo nor Lost In Translation, to cite two quite different examples, is entirely sympathetic towards its characters, and that this enhances both films), and likewise that a film can be fond of its characters and still be quite bad.
I know a lot of people see "Nashville" as cynical and contemptuous (and don't see the joy and exuberance that are ALSO expressed in the movie), but that's kind of what this post is about -- opposing critical views of the same film. I hope I've demonstrated what I think Rosenbaum is missing in the film. Elsewhere, I compared "Nashville" to Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" -- a movie I always remember as overflowing with humor and joy (I swear, every time I see it I almost forget it's heading for tragedy), while others see it only as cynical or disturbing or inflammatory. I'm fully aware of the charges of condescension and cynicism leveled at filmmakers like Altman, the Coens, Errol Morris, Christopher Guest -- but I think that's only superficial, and that there's much more going on beneath the surface. Still, many people are turned off by what they perceive as these filmmakers' "attitude." (A friend of mine once said he wasn't about to go to a Coen brothers' movie just so they could laugh at him; I told him that if he located the real humor, he'd find himself laughing WITH the movie. The only filmmaker I can think of off-hand who just seems to despise everything and everyone in his films is Alan Parker.)
Thanks for the comments, Jim, despite the disagreements. I'm in transit at the moment (in New Haven, leaving for New York tomorrow), and don't have much time to comment, but I did want to make a couple of points. Rightly or wrongly, I think a lot of people have been trashing "Bobby" and "Fast Food Nation" for similar reasons--because they're both political and leftist and, by the same token, uncynical and undefeatist politically. "Nashville," whatever its virtues (and I certainly wouldn't deny that it has quite a few of these, which I've written about in the past), doesn't share any of those qualities--and that's part of what I think, rightly or wrongly, make it relatively hip for some people, unless I'm misreading the signals. The fact that Jim can link a film as leftist and as politically committed as "Do the Right Thing" with "Nashville" is for me a strong indication of a big generational divide between us. Maybe both films are overflowing with humor and joy, but the kind of humor and joy in each case is for me profoundly different--above all in the attitudes towards people and society.
In answer to your first question, yes and no. I took some inspiration from your top 20 and decided to do a top 20 myself, including non-commercial releases (such as film festivals and screenings at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, ACMI). So, while I do think it could be construed as a little elitist to include films that the bulk of people do not have the opportunity to see, you're doing an injustice by not raising awareness of great films if you don't include them.
Absolutely include films that are currently unavailable or unreleased on DVD. As with your 1000-film list in "Essential Cinema," when rare films do turn up it's a special treat to seek them out, as with the recent screenings of Rossellini's "India" and "The Rise of Louis XIV", Rivette's "L'amour fou" and "Paris Belongs to Us", and even an obscure gem like "Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks" here in New York.
Well, citing a film that one may have difficulty in seeing seems to serve more of a purpose to me than reading a top ten list that merely confirms what other critics are citing or what everyone else has already seen. In addition, the season of top ten lists and awards has been co-opted anyway by the film industry as just another marketing tool towards a larger payoff. Film has less of an undergound than ever; the term independent has never been more meaningless. So while it's frustrating as hell to me that I missed the Portabella screenings while I was in Chicago and can't figure out how I'm going to get a chance to view them, those films whose message is being presented and viewed in situations outside the dominant Hollywood influenced paradigm of product and promotion need to be championed- and harder than the films accorded huge promotions budget and vocal supporters. We reward, discuss & esteem that which has been seen, in general. A critic, in particular, has a responsibility to advocate for those films with advocates who are less vocal (or whose vocals are less amplified).
