I love movies.
Ask anyone who knows me. My pursuit is unconditional and trivial knowledge is encyclopedic.
There is an exquisite anticipation that comes with that eagerly anticipated cinematic experience; the one that has been tantalizing you for weeks with carefully designed preview campaign, trailered in front of recent movie vehicles and during commercial breaks of your favorite TV distractions. As the opening day approaches, film critics from across the virtual landscape line up with their thoughtfully designed and hopefully insightful analyses.
If you seek out these inflections and interpretations as I do, there are times that they did little more than to dash that purest of candied sensations by telling me that my eager anticipation has been misplaced. Every now and then, we the viewers are forced to confront one or more of these opinions in conflict with our hopes, a rhetorical lambasting of that upcoming film treat. The critical community has the power take that sunny window into escape you so long to look through and pull the shade with their negative shroud.
At times that opinion infects your awareness after your viewing and the initial formation of your sovereign opinion, tarnishing the experience in the aftermath. Have you ever emerged from a movie that you found perfectly enjoyable, only to later hear that some pompous fop told the world from his interplanetary movie podium that it sucked because the hero’s muscles weren’t convincingly painted on or main character’s motivation wasn’t explored enough in the third act?
Why do we allow the input of this critical network to affect our enjoyment?
Why is the opinion of a vocal minority ever more valuable than an individual point of view?
Criticism is vital to the interpretation of creative expression, by providing a standard of review, a platform for us all to stand on and form our own opinion, in compliment or contrast to the one previously stated. While that contribution is undeniable to even the most outlandish artist, the role of the critic is rarely more than a byproduct, as brilliantly put in the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille:
"The average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
One of the best things I’ve ever heard formed of English words and I encountered it in an animated children’s film. I love the notion of something so eloquently truthful in the apex of childhood fantasy. Incidentally, that animated film got rave reviews.
So, should we heed the critics?
Should you make your decisions based on the inclination of a critic's thumb? Or even by the whim of their swarthy piper's tune?
Every time I plan to head out to the latest highly anticipated cinematic event I take a moment to read through a handful of online criticisms posted by film critics, reviewers, and bloggers that I have found to either share a viewpoint with my own or have shown to provide a satisfyingly objective perspective. Not to mention, that they seem to want to provide insight, avoid the seemingly standard practice of putting aside thoughtful reflection in favor of some snappy, thoughtless turn of phrase playing upon a reduction of the movie's title.
Every playground has its share of troublemakers. Whenever I see a thoughtless pun, turning like a square wheel on a movie website, hammering through a china shop like a bull chasing a bag of hammers, and smugly simmering next to a thumbnail photograph smiling at me like he’d just hit a homerun off a T-ball stand, I just feel bad for other critics. Filmmakers can handle the barbs, these are artists and circus people who have lived their lives overcoming and bouncing back, but for the most part they are a species of individuals.
Critics have a harder time standing out. By the definition of the process: one product passing through the approval filter, through a gathered consensus. Their voice often speaks as a collective, comprised of both gems and germs.
Criticism can be unpure. For every critic, blogger, or pulp pundit out there looking for something sound bite-ish to attract weary surfers, or quasi-journalists trying to push a political agenda supported by the name signing their paycheck, or those digital voices just drunk with power and influence, and speaking as an artist myself, stop what you’re doing. Consider a career change. You’re an abuser; you’re like a crooked cop.
Refer to the earlier quote and consider yourself the junk. You have already been designated.
I don't think that true critics want to be blindly accepted or followed. I think it is inherent to their practice to be questioned. After all, they themselves are asking questions, they are presenting a formed opinion, which is all but pointless without a counterpoint. Who wants to yell artistic insults into a vacuum? Well… vacuum critics, I suppose.
The cinematic landscape thankfully doesn't exist by the oligargic word of the critic community alone. For better or worse, the legacy of a movie exists both in its critical consensus and box office footprint, and often cultish corners in between, giving a voice to the powerful philistines as well as the intelligentsia. For every Oscar winner there's a Happy Meal toy collection that earns its own immortality. Power to the people; except where Transformers is concerned.
The ultimate station of the critic is to provide conjecture and analysis to all seeking their counsel, but the greater role of analysis belongs to the viewer interpreting with the compliment of earlier interpretation. Any expression of creativity, or explosion of Hollywood blockbuster-hood, relies upon the connection of the piece with the appreciator. Any experience is subject to context and to orbiting opinions and perspectives. We're at our best when we ingest the product of expression and determine its worth as it turns in our own belly.
We need the critics; we should thank the movie gods for them. In their best moments they get the conversation started that turns a movie into visual literature by encouraging the connection between beauty and the beholder.
The duty of every moviegoer is to incorporate the informed rhetoric with their own opinion, enter the experience with an objective opinion, sit back, and enjoy the show.
…And kill the fucking cell phones.
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