Pauline Kael certainly believed that film criticism had a lot to show and tell.
Her film criticism, constructive or destructive, was about discovering quality, in film, and in the addition or connection it had with life. Oscar Wilde said “without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all, worthy of the name,” and that sort of self-importance certainly exists in Kael’s work. Reading Kael, there is a sense that the criticism of film was an exploration of a connection, or the possibility of connection, she wanted herself and others to experience at the movies.
In Afterglow, a last interview with Kael, she remarked, “I love writing about movies when I can discover something in them—when I can get something out of them that I can share with people” (95-96). Unique to Kael was how much she cared, how much it broke her heart to not only see poor films, but a barrage of what she called “first-rate intellect” praising bad stuff. To criticize movies, to Kael, was to criticize “mass culture,” and to hold contempt or joy in the way world was working. Film was a tunnel through which to view life and culture. Watching film was to relate to those things that make life what it is, difficult or pleasurable; criticizing film was to take on a personal relationship with the film and, through that lens, with everything it connected with the world outside the theater.
In “Canaries in the Mineshaft,” Adler is deeply critical of Kael and literally picks apart her voice, word choice, sentence structure, and overall positive reputation. After quoting a few Kael reviews that make some severe accusations about the character or nature of the films she’s reviewing, Adler remarks that “each marks a kind of breakthrough in vulgarity and unfairness” (343). Adler objects to being superfluously critical, absolutist, dramatic, and overly and personally presumptuous, for the sake of having a noticeable opinion.
Its true Kael was unique; her unfocused content and unfixed point of view identified her as an outlier, extending an idea that film could touch the world around us, could be identified as worthwhile by our own critical eye, not just at the movies but in life. Her passion for films seems to be equal to her passion and general enjoyment of directing others though her own thought process.
This smattering of self-absorption is alluring.
There is no doubt that readers are free to self-indulge while reading Kael’s reviews. She storms into your conscience and demands some substance, an appropriately decisive and serious attitude about the implications of any given film, and a feeling that subjectivity and individual voice is vital and valid in its self-importance. Kael wants to criticize her world, our world, her frustrations, our frustrations, using film as a medium (sometimes for better, sometimes for much much worse) and in our heart of hearts we want to her to too. Like watching a Steven Spielberg film, it’s easy to jump on the melodramatic ride. Her overstatements make it easy to join in the fun, and as right as Adler is about much of her flashy (sometimes meaningless) prose her value as entertainer is irrefutable.
Readers experience her as she experiences the film; she is part of the show and its endearing. Kael doesn’t demand others to encounter films as energetically and indulgently as she does, but she certainly convinces us to try.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Overall this was a good examination of Kael's work. However, I think you should exemplify some of the judgments you make about her work like: "(..sometimes for better, sometimes for much much worse) or "(sometimes meaningless).
ReplyDeleteApart from that I liked your kicker very much. That's certainly what happens when you read Kael's reviews.