Pauline Kael: The woman
who declared
2001 and Star Wars as "unimaginative movies".
At age 80, retired (fortunately), she's made quite a mark. A negative
one, that is... Many consider her to have revolutionized the way that films
are criticized, and responsible for how critics write nowadays (in my opinion,
that is enough to hang her). What I can say of her is that at least
she was in many senses a smart, well-educated woman, who would write what
started out as interesting theories of cinema that fell flat once she attempted
to develop them. She just revelled in being another film historian
and in attempting to take a stand against art-house filmmakers, while taking
her own "I'm a film critic, I'm an artist" pose. I do applaud some
of her attacks on some of the pretentious snobs making films out there.
But the problem is, she labels too many interesting films as pretentious
trash (or "films for people who like to suffer"), or basically frowns upon
most attempts to do anything slightly expermintal, bizarre, or surreal.
She also loves to belittle the work of directors, reducing any vision as
just basic luck or wisdom in hiring a good technical team. To top
it off, she never defined what film was not "trash", as she labeled films
as different types of trash (many masterpieces being "trash greatly in
command of the medium").
Quite frankly I think that she herself was a pretentious snob who was
trying to be notorious by writing bad philosophical arguments regarding
film criticism, and then attempting to examine film history with it, resulting
in an incoherent mess. And her reviews per se were waaay too simplistic
and unrevealing.
Then again, what else did you expect from a critic who worked at The
New Yorker for 30 years?
P.M.-
