REVIEW: Is Inception This Year's Masterpiece? Dream On
If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we've entered an era in which movies can no longer be great. They can only be awesome, which isn't nearly the same thing.
In Inception, Nolan does the impossible, the unthinkable, the stupendous: He folds a mirror version of Paris back upon itself; he stages a fight sequence in a gravity-free hotel room; he sends a train plowing through a busy city street. Whatever you can dream, Nolan does it in Inception. Then he nestles those little dreams into even bigger dreams, and those bigger dreams into gargantuan dreams, going on into infinity, cubed. He stretches the boundaries of filmmaking so that it's, like, not even filmmaking anymore, it's just pure "OMG I gotta text my BFF right now" sensation.
Wouldn't it have been easier just to make a movie?
But that urgent simplicity, that directness of focus, is beyond Nolan: Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities -- of both the emotional and intellectual sort -- add up to a kind of ADD tedium. This may be a movie about dreams, but there's nothing dreamlike or evocative about it: Nolan doesn't build or sustain a mood; all he does is twist the plot, under, over, and back upon itself, relying on Hans Zimmer's sonic boom of a score to remind us when we should be excited or anxious or moved. It's less directing than directing traffic.
Nolan's aim, perhaps, is to keep us so confused we won't dare question his genius. The movie opens with Leonardo DiCaprio being washed up on a beach somewhere -- mysteriously, there are two little blond children cavorting around, though we can't see their faces. Then some Japanese soldiers drag him into a menacing-looking seaside castle nearby. Then he sits down at a table, opposite some mysterious old guy, and proceeds to eat some gruel. What, you might ask, is going on here, as bits of runny porridge drip from the haggard-looking DiCaprio's lips? You're supposed to be perplexed -- it's all part of the movie's puzzly-wuzzly structure.
Before long we learn that DiCaprio's character is an "extractor," meaning he's a skilled craftsman who can enter others' dreams to draw out valuable information, useful, particularly, in corporate espionage. His name is Dom Cobb -- which is, I guess, better than being called Com Dobb -- and not only does he have the ability to enter others' dreams; he actually builds those dreams, with the help of his number-two man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), plus an architect, who had better know what he or she is doing. The architect working for Cobb at the beginning of the movie (he's played, all too briefly, by Lukas Haas) meets a bad end after installing the wrong kind of shag carpeting in an important dream. Perhaps these dreams need interior decorators, too, to prevent future faux pas, but let's not get off-track.
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Yes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfh24uYCofg
I'm sure SZ will be glad to hear that she's now responsible for her husband's opinions and manner of expression as well as her own. I find the notion absolutely ludicrous - I think it's your logic that doesn't hold up, primarily because it's not logic.
Here's the original, still-ridiculous statement:
"If she can't take it, she shouldn't dish it out: or she should have a word with her significant other about his fanboyish paranoia and vindictiveness, which is every bit as bad as the most abusive rant ever hurled Stephanie's way. "
In order:
(1) "If she can't take it" - can't she? I've seen no complaint from SZ
(2) "she shouldn't dish it out" - she didn't
(3) "or she should have a word with her significant other about his fanboyish paranoia and vindictiveness, which is every bit as bad as the most abusive rant ever hurled Stephanie's way"
(a) she is not her husband's keeper
(b) "fanboyish paranoia" - note that Taylor is referring not only to Byatt's response to HP - surely the subject of your 'fanboy' comment - but her earlier remarks on Martin Amis' large advance
(c) "and vindictiveness" - in case you've forgotten, here's the aforementioned response: "I always earn out my advances and I don't see why I should subsidize his greed, simply because he has a divorce to pay for and has just had all his teeth redone." Now that's vindictiveness.
(d) "which is every bit as bad as the most abusive rant ever hurled Stephanie's way" - that's a matter of opinion, of course, but I think Taylor's restraint in not using the phrase "you dumb c**t" should probably count in his favour.
That's if Taylor's words, or Byatt's, or Amis' for that matter, had any significance in deciding whether (to quote the OP) "the level of vitriol and outright hostility directed at Stephanie [on this page] is pathetic".
For the record: they don't.
Obviously it **does** bear some resemblance to The Matrix (and other mind-bender/mind-teaser type movies) otherwise her first paragraph wouldn't be so easily transferable to the Matrix movies. No matter how you try to perpetually spin things in Stephanie's favor, Trace, her review is still a failure insofar as it fails to distinguish the "trash" she likes from the "trash" she doesn't.
Her complaints might be true so far as they go, but they can just as easily be applied to many titles she's endorsed over the years.
This here is a memorable piece of writing--
"But that urgent simplicity, that directness of focus, is beyond Nolan: Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities — of both the emotional and intellectual sort — add up to a kind of ADD tedium."
--but it doesnt seem to have occured to SZ, or you, that it works just as well as a description of many of SZ's own favored films, and Charles Taylor's, and Pauline Kael's too.
Living up to your name, are you Cantankerist?
Your defense of Zacharek is as flimsy as a piece of Kleenex. Taylor's abuse was not limited to Byatt, but is directed at anyone who pisses him off. That was just one example of his printed rants. I could have picked many, many others.
For instance, in this piece of resentment-addled drivel, Taylor enthusiastically endorses the idiotic, woefully ignorant, unfactual, ahistorical thesis of John Carey's *The Intellectuals and the Masses*, which compared the high modernist writers and artists of the 20th century to Hitler. Yes, really. James Joyce and T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were just nasty elitist borderline Nazi creeps, didn't you know? Taylor, needless to say, joyfully endorses this "idea":
http://www.observer.com/node/38253
"Mr. Carey argued that modernism in early 20th-century literature was a horrified reaction to the increased literacy that resulted from 19th-century education reforms, a way of ensuring that art would remain the province of the elite. If that sounds too simple a thesis, Mr. Carey more than supported it by providing details of the class-cleansing fantasies of writers as disparate as H.G. Wells and D.H. Lawrence (“I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace … and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed”). The best parts of the new book build on the anti-elitism of The Intellectuals & the Masses. (Mr. Carey is clearly not persuaded by the argument that immersion in culture makes us better, more moral, people: Hitler, he reminds us, was as strong a friend as the concept of government-funded art has ever had.)"
If you don't know why the above paragraph by Taylor is delusional bullshit from start to finish, sue your alma mater, or sue your high school. They failed to educate you. (At the very least, Taylor's alma mater should be found guilty of malpractice.) If you DO know why that's a load of crap, then you should also realize by now what an incompetent, envy-and-spite motivated pseudo-populist, demagogic dunce Taylor is, both here and in his imbecilic Harry Potter piece.
You contradict yourself, because on the one hand, you claim bringing up Taylor's track record of demagoguery is somehow irrelevant, yet at the same time you apparently think A.S. Byatt's remarks about Martin Amis **are** relevant to her feelings about Harry Potter. They're not remotely relevant.
(Incidentally, Byatt's remarks are not simply sour grapes: colossal advances for authors who don't enjoy huge sales figures can bankrupt whole publishing houses. If authors fail to recoup their advances, if their novels underperform, it can result in lower-tiered authors being dropped by the publisher to make up for someone else's blunder. In fact, it's precisely because Amis has never enjoyed Rowling-like sales figures that he doesn't deserve that kind of advance - the fact Taylor even brought it up shows he doesn't have any grasp of the actual issue Byatt was getting at.)
You then proceed to cherry-pick the worst comments leveled at Zacharek, calling her a "cunt," but conveniently ignore all the most thoughtful replies, like the one from John, on July 16th.
And why is it not relevant that Taylor has been guilty of vitriol, abuse, and character assassination? Most important, why is it not relevant that Zacharek is married to a demagogue who uses the "elitist snob" argument at the drop of a hat? Haven't you noticed that politicians, business leaders, and celebrities are held accountable by the public if they endorse one set of behaviors but their immediate family violates these principles? Why should this be any different? You and all the other Zacharek defenders pretend that she's this brave, daring truthteller who sticks to her guns, while her detractors are all immature trolls. But now that I have proven this picture to be simplistic, lopsided, and therefore in some sense false, you get mad. Too bad for you, because the facts speak for themselves.
Zacharek is married to a demagogue, therefore if she is now on the receiving end of a certain amount of demagoguery, well, who's fault is that? If you don't like getting burned, don't marry an arsonist. If you don't think demagoguery, then you have the obligation to resist and fight it wherever it occurs, not simply when it's directed at you.
I demand a public refutation and critique of Charles Taylor's various hatchet jobs: until and unless Zacharek does that, she has no right whatsoever (nor do you or any of her admirers) to complain about the rants hurled her way.
Politicians are not let off the hook for what their spouses do. In fact, nobody truly is. If you're a politician who advocates a particular set of values, and meanwhile your partner is off violating all your ostensible principles, you think that's not held against you? On what planet?
Likewise, when S.T. VanAirsdale (the editor) and several posters refer to the behavior of SZ's messageboard detractors as "pathetic," it's **directly** relevant to the issue that SZ"s husband and fellow critic regularly conducts himself, in print, in precisely the same "pathetic" manner.
I am outlining my case against SZ and Charles Taylor as critics. That is part and parcel of my critique of their work. When their detractors are called "pathetic" because "they can't tolerate differences of opinion," it is entirely, directly, totally relevant to point out the fact that **they themselves** can't tolerate differences of opinion either.
Yes, Cantankerist, but it was Stephanie's idol, Pauline Kael, who did more than any other major film critic to conflate and confuse the meanings of "awesome" and "great." Stephanie is always on the verge of saying something important, but because of her rigid allegiance to certain Kael-inspired principles and perspectives, she can't say what needs to be said about what's wrong with the movies.
For the reality is that Kael dismissed countless great filmmakers and whole artistic movements because they were too austere, too artsy, in her eyes, and not "awesome" enough. Insofar as Zacharek continues to work in Kael's tradition, she can never really help turn the tide. She hates a lot of the most popular blockbuster spectacles out there (Titanic, Avatar, The Dark Knight, Inception), but all she can offer as an alternative is Night at the Museum or Prince of Persia (a movie aiming for Avatar/Inception box office numbers, but failing to get them).
Contrast that to someone like Jonathan Rosenbaum, who (regardless of whether one shares his taste or not) was always on the look out for challenging and interesting movies, and didn't waste all his time separating the trash from the slightly better trash.
You know, it's obvious that Stephanie hated this movie, but I don't quite know where to place her entirely mean-spirited review of this movie. This actually reminds me a lot of my ex-fiance who could take anything good, twist it 180 degrees, and then turn it evil in a heartbeat. There wasn't any reasoning to it, she was just insane. I won't go so far as to say the same thing about Stephanie here, but she managed to take everything that I thought was great about "Inception" and managed to make it sound awful by panning it. I guess this is the case of the glass being half empty or half full. Two people are looking at the same exact glass, but their opinions of it are diametrically opposite. Even the other reviews I have seen on the net from other movie critics had some salient points to them, and in some cases the reviewers just said that they didn't get it, but this? This is just take everything you see and slam it has hard as you can any way you can. That's all this is. Thank God I never married my ex fiance...
Normally when a movie spawns so many different interpretations of its content, it actually means that the director was incoherent, the movie was poorly executed, some studio executive cut out key scenes that were critical to the film to meet an arbitrary “run time”, or the story just plain sucked in the first place. I am happy to say that I don’t think ‘Inception’ suffers from any of that. In fact I would dare say that the more you actually “get” this film, the more interpretations there are of the actual story, and that this was totally intentional on the part of Nolan and that’s why I say this movie is absolutely AMAZING. It is also amazing to me how many people, even professional movie reviewers, were simply unable to peel back even the first layer of this movie when Nolan is throwing clues at you in almost every scene of the film! A spinning top? A loaded dice? A chess piece? A mobius staircase? Come on! Most reviewers out there were trapped on level 1 with the whole mental espionage plot and mental bank heist being their central focus while seemingly ignoring the other 50% of the movie! If you stop there, and think that this is all this movie is about, then it’s not a really good movie, is it? The characters are flat, there is little character development, yada yada yada, and so people come away thinking the movie wasn’t that great. Oh, for shame! No wonder you thought it wasn’t a good movie. You were snowed from the word go and you just flat out ignored everything else in the movie. Nolan pulled the wool over your eyes. That's OK. Inception is a really mental movie, so, for those of you who really didn’t get it, I’ll give you some clues, and I want you to go back and see it again in light of what I am going to say. For those of you who HAVE NOT see ‘Inception’ CLOSE YOUR WEB BROWSER NOW. There will be ’spoilers’, but not really, because even if I did tell you what is really going on, we can debate the actual interpretation of that until the end of time and still not arrive at the same conclusion. First off, the mental bank heist does not take place on dream levels 1,2,3 and 4. It actually takes places on dream levels 2,3,4 and 5 with level 1 being the “reality” that we think that Cobb is living in with the other members of the dream hack team. If you get that, you're 50% of the way "there". Second, pay especially close attention to the age of Saito in the table meeting with Cobb in light of the dream state rules that Nolan is doling out. Pay especially close attention to what goes on between Cobb and Saito and Cobb and Cobb’s wife Mal. Also note that when Cobb washes up on the beach and gets taken to Saito that he is actually on level 5 of the dream “heist” where Cobb and his team are trying to crack into the mark’s mind, and where he and his wife created a vast landscape, and where Cobb is causing the rest of the team to risk falling into limbo. Also pay attention to the rules of “limbo” and then define what Nolan is actually talking about when he says that Cobb is trying to get back home. If all that doesn’t yank the blinders off you and show you what “Inception” is really all about, then, well, maybe you’ll just have to sit out there continuing to think that it was just an “OK” film. ‘Inception’ is an absolutely incredible film and I feel lucky to live in the year 2010 to be able to see it. And even though I think I got 90% of it, I still have to go back and see it a second time to try and make sense of the other 10%. ‘Nuff said.
This film is not for those who want entertainment or mushy emotions; this is a complex film that appeals only to the serious and thinking audience. Intricate psychological thriller, watch it to see your inception....
"Obviously it does bear some resemblance to The Matrix (and other mind-bender/mind-teaser type movies) otherwise her first paragraph wouldn't be so easily transferable to the Matrix movies."
The thing is, only in your LOL-worthy mind is that paragraph easily transferable! The only thing The Matrix (forget the dismal sequels, which in fact DO share an unfortunate amount of similarites) has in common with Inception is alternate realities. And that's where the comparisons end. The Matrix gets all the "mindbending" crap out of the way in the first act, and proceeds to bring it into action thriller territory. Nothing is a real twist ending. Inception, on the other hand, is designed so that EVERY plot point is designed as a shocking twist (to where it ends up contraditing the movie's plot logic). The Matrix's action scenes are also vastly different. Where the Wachowskis rely on extended shots and slo-mo cameras to show you EXACTLY what's happening and who's firing the shots, Inception makes no such effort to show you any sort of logistics. And of course, The Matrix is far more subtle in introducing its artistic themes of faith. The movie never contradicts itself to make a point.
And the Wachowski's trick endings (when they had them) were never cloying like Nolan's. They had no effect on the plot. Did it matter whether Racer X was Speed's brother? Not really.
"Her complaints might be true so far as they go, but they can just as easily be applied to many titles she's endorsed over the years."
Feel free to name some.
"First off, the mental bank heist does not take place on dream levels 1,2,3 and 4. It actually takes places on dream levels 2,3,4 and 5 with level 1 being the “reality” that we think that Cobb is living in with the other members of the dream hack team."
Nolan actually takes care to establish that Leo was in the real world when approached with the idea of Inception with that spinning top you mentioned earlier.
"Straw man argument. it's the same b.s. that she put in her review, that we 'have' to be impressed by the amount of work that they put in (we don't) or in the cass of Nolan, how much praise he gets."
She's remarking on what is now conventional wisdom. Pixar is percieved as better, and if you don't believe me, you can look at Pixar's box office revenue and compare it with everyone else, or go to metacritic and compare their reviews to everyone else. There's nothing invented about it.
"I had a very interesting conversation with an animator the other day abut Pixar. She was not a fan, I am. But her argument never degenerated into, "we're supposed to like or appreciate them, so I don't"."
That's not what Stephanie is saying. That she prefers certain Dreamworks movies (or any other animated movies) over Pixar movies is purely coincedental.
Maybe it's ok for animators to avoid the popular culture angle of it, but when you're a critic, the popular culture plays a fairly significant part of your perception of the movie.
Chris, I don't know what's getting narrower - the text or your range of vision!
"(Mr. Carey is clearly not persuaded by the argument that immersion in culture makes us better, more moral, people: Hitler, he reminds us, was as strong a friend as the concept of government-funded art has ever had.)"
That is not a comparison of high modernist writers and artists to Hitler. That is an argument to the effect that immersion in culture is not automatically a moral good - that it depends very much on the kind of culture one is being immersed in. That is the only context in which Hitler is invoked in that article; you're teetering dangerously close to Godwin's in dragging it into this one. The review itself seems far from "resentment-addled drivel", and I encourage all other readers here to peruse it - it's a remarkably equivocal review that goes a long way to fundamentally disproving your stance on Taylor. Perhaps you should reread it yourself.
"You contradict yourself, because on the one hand, you claim bringing up Taylor's track record of demagoguery is somehow irrelevant, yet at the same time you apparently think A.S. Byatt's remarks about Martin Amis are relevant to her feelings about Harry Potter. They're not remotely relevant."
I don't contradict myself at all. Byatt's remarks about Amis are relevant because they directly form part of Taylor's argument - the one you dragged in and referred to as "fanboyish paranoia" in your initial outburst. You might want to reread that article too.
Amusingly, you try (in phrasing this contradiction) to suggest that my objection is that Taylor's remarks are "somehow irrelevant". Somehow? I mustn't have been clear enough.
So, trying one more time:
TAYLOR ISN'T ZACHAREK.
"You and all the other Zacharek defenders pretend that she's this brave, daring truthteller who sticks to her guns, while her detractors are all immature trolls. But now that I have proven this picture to be simplistic, lopsided, and therefore in some sense false, you get mad. Too bad for you, because the facts speak for themselves. "
Hehe. I must have already gotten mad, as in, y'know, completely insane. I'm clearly losing my power of memory. For instance, I'm unable to recall where I've uttered one word of praise for Zacharek on this page or any other. And I never said I thought her detractors were all immature trolls - I didn't even say that most of the posts were from immature trolls. I said I hoped they were. I wasn't including yours in that - but if it is, bravo and well-played sir, that's a grown-up troll if ever I saw one. Otherwise, the facts do indeed speak for themselves.
"You then proceed to cherry-pick the worst comments leveled at Zacharek, calling her a "c**t," but conveniently ignore all the most thoughtful replies"
I've censored the swearword here in the reposting, but: you're shocked that I cherrypicked the worst comments? Here's what you said (I'm aware that this is the second time I'm requoting it, but it hasn't seemed to sink in): Taylor's "rant" was "every bit as bad as the most abusive rant ever hurled Stephanie's way". Your words, not mine. Your argument, not mine. If you'd said "A lot of the comments on here are more reasonable than the stuff Taylor writes", you might have a supporting point...
...But you'd still be lacking the main point. Because at the end, where you circle round (finally) to addressing it, that's where stuff just gets funny.
"Most important, why is it not relevant that Zacharek is married to a demagogue who uses the "elitist snob" argument at the drop of a hat? Haven't you noticed that politicians, business leaders, and celebrities are held accountable by the public if they endorse one set of behaviors but their immediate family violates these principles? Why should this be any different?"
By and large, they're not; more often than not public figures receive a great deal of sympathy from the public, be it Hillary Clinton or whoever, if a family member strays. For every one you can name (and I'd wager most of them were tax/finance deals where the 'sinner' was in dispute), I reckon I can comfortably name five where the public rally round the figure. But in any case, "demagogue" is still funny - that's a hell of a stretch there! - and you keep saying it further down as if, by sheer force of repetition, you'll will it into truth.
"If you don't like getting burned, don't marry an arsonist." I bet that one sounded good in your head, eh? Is revenge arson big where you come from? "If you don't think demagoguery, then you have the obligation to resist and fight it wherever it occurs, not simply when it's directed at you." That one doesn't even make sense, but I understand it's just a brain-fart early on there. And yes, I understand the principle of "first they came for the...", but if the frontline for you is Charles Taylor, might I suggest a cool shower and a subtle reordering of priorities? 🙂
"I demand a public refutation and critique of Charles Taylor's various hatchet jobs:" hehehehehehehehehehehehe I'm sorry, but you've really cranked the motor up a little hot now, dontcha think? You're heading into territory that ideally should be scored by W. G. "Snuffy" Walden...
"Politicians are not let off the hook for what their spouses do. In fact, nobody truly is. If you're a politician who advocates a particular set of values, and meanwhile your partner is off violating all your ostensible principles, you think that's not held against you? On what planet?"
The thing is, I see you can see how weak your argument is. You keep bringing in phrases like "husband and fellow critic" to try and bind Zacharek's opinions to Taylor's emotively; it's transparent rhetoric, and it doesn't wash, because you don't provide any substance - not one example, not one genuine case - to support this exciting new notion of refracted culpability.
Anyway - to your question: People are let off the hook for what their spouses do all the time. Some folks are let off the hook precisely because their spouses have done wrong. Most folks are never on the hook in the first place, because the question is often asked, and answered in the negative: Should it be held against you? Legally, of course, it's far more cut-and-dried: if you don't do the crime, you don't do the time.
But that's on this planet. Your judicial system is probably far more advanced than ours. 🙂
My experience in reading Kael was finding neither an elitist nor an anti-elitist; you could hardly accuse her championing of "Last Tango" as being infatuated with the common touch, nor her appraisal of "The Road Warrior" as being too high-toned. I disagreed with her opinions a lot of the time, mind you - she hated some of my favourite films - but I enjoyed her obvious engagement with film of all stripes - alright, most stripes (Ozu among others was never really up there as I recall!) - and her passion for the transportative power of the artform. It was just as likely to be "The Rules Of The Game" as it was "Tootsie".
"... because of her rigid allegiance to certain Kael-inspired principles and perspectives, she can't say what needs to be said about what's wrong with the movies."
Hehe, perhaps she's too busy reading "What's Wrong With The Movies?" 🙂
It's interesting that you seem to be conflating "awesome" as Zacharek uses it with the teenage slang version of the word; that wasn't where I was going with it at all. As I said, I thought SZ was using it in the sense of scale - where "mammoth" objects become worthy of celebration simply because of their size. I never got the sense that Kael was that way inclined at all; indeed, she tended to err on the smaller, more emotional side for my tastes. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if someone objecting to Inception (which I haven't seen) on the grounds of a lack of genuine emotional connection in the script also found fault with Avatar and Titanic - they're two awful scripts with nary a true emotional moment to be found, in my opinion, but their great selling points are scale and length. I'd expect Inception to be better than either of them on the script front (it would struggle to be worse).
"The Matrix" I enjoyed for the Alice-in-Wonderland ride it was intended as, but it couldn't be confused with a challenging film. There were gestures toward complexity early on, but half-hearted ones at best: "Love will conquer all and bring people back from the dead" - wasn't that where the first film ended up? And let's not mention the sequels. Oooooh please let's not mention the sequels... FX aside, it sounds as if the film more directly comparable to Inception is Existenz. A more worthy adversary, in any case.
It seemed to me that the Joker's fate would have been addressed in the next sequel (maybe he escaped, maybe he got locked up, who knows?). Obviously, any scenes regarding the Joker would now have to be cut out or rewritten, so I doubt you'll ever get an answer to your question.
I think most viewers don't care about what happened to the Joker simply because we all know what happened to the actor.
Since the idea actually IS successfully implanted in the person's mind, how does the movie supports your statement about the mind always knowing genesis of an idea! Nolan says the exact opposite by having the inception succeed.
One of the characters suggests that implanting an idea is impossible because the mind can trace back the idea to the "fake" source. Nolan obviously disagrees because of what happens in the film.
She thought Prince of Persia was a great movie, and that bombed in the United States.
*"I enjoyed her obvious engagement with film of all stripes"*
But Kael didn't engage with films of all stripes. *Rules of the Game* was made in 1939. When it came to contemporary filmmakers putting out new movies during the era Kael was actually writing about film, this is a typical response from Kael:
"A lot of later Bresson didn't interest me. There are big names I don't care for very much. For me, Zhang Yimou joins Ozu and Tarkovsky."
These names join all of Antonioni after *L'Avventura*, all of Cassavetes after *Shadows*, Werner Herzog, a lot of Ingmar Bergman, and many more major filmmakers she hated. By contrast, a "fun" but fairly minor movie like *Bonnie and Clyde* (style over substance) got her pulse racing. So what if she loved *Rules of the Game* or *Citizen Kane*. These movies were already canonized and created before Kael came of age as a critic. When it came to contemporaries, she was usually very close-minded about what was or wasn't a legit technique. A movie almost always had to be "entertaining" in a very overt way for her to approve (Antonioni's *L'Avventura* is one of the rare exceptions that proves the rule, and I doubt she'd have gone for it at all if Antonioni hadn't cast a hot babe, Monica Vitti, in the lead.) And she opened the door to a whole generation of even more close-minded, hipster chic, too-cool-for-school reviewers (Zacharek and Taylor being two of the worst offenders) who take their cues from Kael's own laziest intellectual habits.
This piece is correct about Kael's pernicious influence, and why she does share personally the blame for the declining quality of movies, and movie criticism:
http://blog.theartsfuse.com/2007/08/15/kael-revisited/
Cut the pseudo-intellectual crap, Cantankerist.
Let's see if you are capable of following a simple argument:
1) Taylor regularly resorts to abusive and dishonest arguments: to put it more clearly, he regularly *lies* about his opponents (like Bloom or Byatt).
2) Zacharek has never distanced herself from her husband's intellectual positions. In fact, she seems to agree with him on almost everything.
3) You and other SZ fans charge her detractors with "trolling." Yet, only a minority of posts criticizing her position are bona fide "troll" posts, and none of those posts resort to worse logic than Taylor's. The only objectionable posts I can see are the ones that attack her because she departs from majority opinion on a popular hit. Yet, Taylor likewise attacks reviewers (Bloom, Byatt) for departing from majority opinion on popular hits *he* likes. In fact, he goes *further* and actually blames them for the decline of literacy in the populace (never mind that almost all the readers in question have never even heard of Bloom and Byatt, let alone read them.)
4) Let me repeat: since you seem not to get the obvious: Zacharek has never distanced herself from or openly disagreed with Taylor's views. Taylor's views are identical to the views of the most immature, demagogic trolls on this board (who, I repeat, are only a minority of Zacharek's detractors). This is relevant. It always will be relevant. Anyone who isn't a hairsplitting casuist like yourself can see that it is. Now, if Zacharek makes clear that she doesn't support Taylor's tactics, that would be something. But she's never done that. Dismiss it all you want, but it matters, because it says something about her character. And it also says something about you that your blindness that you don't see the slightest bit of relevance.
Now as to the John Carey book, here's where you really make a fool of yourself, Cantankerist. That particular paragraph may not suggest Hitler and the high modernists are morally comparable, but the *titles under discussion in Taylor's review do indeed suggest this*, and do much more than suggest. Taylor gullibly swallows "master critic" Carey's overall arguments, because it plays into his immature, adolescent resentment of difficult and experimental artists.
For a review that actually understands what's wrong with Carey's books, read this (note that the reviewer does make crystal clear that Carey does indeed accuse these artists of being morally and intellectually bankrupt):
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9406/reviews/kimball.html
So your "defense" of Taylor is no defense to speak of. But I see now you make a habit of commenting on positions and people you know nothing of.
All the things Kimball finds wrong with Carey, Taylor finds just wonderful. Taylor's enthusiasm for Carey's smug, duplicitous book betrays his own shallowness and crassness of soul. Too bad you're too much of a casuist and sophist to acknowledge it.
That's if you believe it DID work
I love a reply that starts by calling me pseudo- intellectual and finishes by calling me a casuist and a sophist! Not perhaps the best approach, eh? Alright then, "let's see if [I] can follow a simple argument", full of points which I have repeatedly challenged and you've done nothing to back up. Luckily, it looks as if this post is going to be spread out word by word to aid your own comprehension.
So, once again, and notice how I address every concern you bring up whereas you skate happily over the stuff you can't answer - which is most of it:
(1) "Taylor regularly lies about his opponents." For this to be true in argument, you would need to show two things. First, you would need to show that he is lying; second, you would need to establish that those lies were about his opponents. This you have abjectly, manifestly failed to do time and time again; you've simply repeated the charge.
(2) "Zacharek has never distanced herself from her husband's intellectual positions. In fact, she seems to agree with him on almost everything."
It's actually not Zacharek's responsibility to distance herself from her husband's opinions, no matter how much you might wish it. She is allowed to be a separate person in our glorious modern society. She is under no obligation to disclose her views to you on any topic on which her partner writes. Equally, she is not answerable for the actions of her partner. You indicated that that was a ridiculous notion, but have been unable, despite a direct request, to come up with one - just one - example where that's the case in our society. I'm not surprised. Such cases are few and far between and loaded with extenuating circumstances.
You're geting funny again in the second part of (2). "She seems to agree with him on almost everything." Seems. Almost. Does she or doesn't she? Everything or almost everything? If you could establish that she always agreed with him on everything, that might serve your case a little better; pointing out the holes in your argument doesn't help. I'm actually searching for examples where Taylor and Zacharek opine on the same film, and of course there aren't many, since Taylor's reviewing years were largely spent at Salon as well - or do you mean that their attitudes to film in general are identical? And do you see how neither would even get you close to a position to make your point valid? I share very similar political, aesthetic and ideological tastes to my father, but I would neither be held responsible for his writing nor do I feel obliged to publically decry it when I disagree; it's his opinion, not mine. You'd be amazed, but most people are savvy enough to make the distinction.
(3) "You and other SZ fans charge her detractors with "trolling.""
Actually I ceded that because that was the language you introduced; to my mind, trolling always involved bait, which I don't think most of the posts I was commenting on dangled. I feel pretty comfortable with my indication that a majority of them were, I thought, spurious at best. For starters, about a third of them hadn't seen the movie, but were criticising her for giving a negative review - how would they know whether she was correct? Many others ran along the lines of "Just cause you're an idiot and don't understand it doesn't mean a negative review is warranted" or "why does this womans reviews ever get counted these days? Its obvious shes just stupid.", or responses to argument like "STFU, Chode." It's still receiving well-reasoned responses like "She thought Prince of Persia was a great movie, and that bombed in the United States." Now, there are also well-written, valid dissections of Zacharek's review in there, written by folks who clearly have seen the film, have loved or hated it, and are interested to contribute something genuine to the discussion; more power to them, but compared to the influx of Rotten-Tomatoes-style comments, they are not in the majority.
(4) "and none of those posts resort to worse logic than Taylor's"
See above.
(5) "The only objectionable posts I can see are the ones that attack her because she departs from majority opinion on a popular hit. Yet, Taylor likewise attacks reviewers (Bloom, Byatt) for departing from majority opinion on popular hits he likes."
There are several objectionable posts above that never remotely get as far as articulating that objection - they simply accuse her of being too stupid to understand the film. Other commenters attack her not because she departs from majority opinion but because they see her as deliberately doing so on the basis that it's majority opinion - despite the fact that her review is written (and published) before majority opinion is even known.
In the case of Taylor, majority opinion is well-established in public and (generally) critical circles before he goes to press or disk. But here's the virulent, offensive firebrand as you characterise him - here's the Bloom piece:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/18/opinion/oe-taylor18
That's your second-best example of Taylor in attack mode? Dear God. You must think authors are timid souls indeed; there's very little in that to frighten the horses, and most of it is a substantiated line of argument, agree with it or no. He's criticising Bloom for - in his opinion - assuming that popular success equals poor quality, and that a book cannot be enjoyed simply as escapism; whether Bloom actually did assume that or not, it's a valid point of view. Note that the same questions, being asked of Zacharek, presuppose an antipathy to popular success which is simply not borne out - she reviews the films before they are released.
(6) "In fact, he goes further and actually blames them for the decline of literacy in the populace (never mind that almost all the readers in question have never even heard of Bloom and Byatt, let alone read them.)"
Okay, I've previously argued re. Byatt, but Bloom? He blames Bloom for the decline of literacy in the populace? There must be another article I ain't readin'; he doesn't remotely do that here.
(7) "Taylor's views are identical to the views of the most immature, demagogic trolls on this board (who, I repeat, are only a minority of Zacharek's detractors)."
Again, you haven't remotely been successful in showing this. You seem to think that by restating something you can refer back to the earlier statement as a proof; as learned an authority as you no doubt are, it doesn't quite cut it. Pick the most immature, demogogic post on this board, repost it, and show me the Taylor writing that you identify as identical. Simple enough, surely?
(8a) "here's where you really make a fool of yourself, Cantankerist."
Ooh, good! I know you must have been feeling lonely by now!
(8b) "That particular paragraph may not suggest Hitler and the high modernists are morally comparable, but the titles under discussion in Taylor's review do indeed suggest this, and do much more than suggest. Taylor gullibly swallows "master critic" Carey's overall arguments, because it plays into his immature, adolescent resentment of difficult and experimental artists. "
Let's take a draught of Taylor swallowing Carey's main argument:
"What disgusts Mr. Carey most is the veneration of art over human beings. On that tendency he’s sometimes persuasive; and sometimes—as in the section where he likens Churchill protecting British art works during World War II with German guards who arranged string quartets from musicians they then sent to the ovens—he’s talking out of his erudite ass."
Seems to me like Taylor has gone to some effort to indicate that there are parts of Carey's thesis that he feels draw too long a bow. I know it's fun to conflate the two writers - it appears to be your favourite thing - but let's stick to reality shall we?
(9) "So your "defense" of Taylor is no defense to speak of. But I see now you make a habit of commenting on positions and people you know nothing of. "
See above - I'm afraid your "attack" on Taylor is no attack to speak of.
By the way, I'm no fan of Taylor's or Zacharek's; you seem to see me as jumping to their defence, but I'm sure they can take care of themselves. It just pains me to see folks thinking they can bully other commenters with poor logic and unsupported argument, and yours is fundamentally, irretrievably flawed.
Again (sigh): Zacharek isn't Taylor. Actually, let me do it in your overheated style: Zacharek isn't Taylor, has never been, will never be, does not share the same brain or write with the same hand, contains different DNA information... is any of this getting through yet? She isn't responsible for his writing, nor he for hers. If I thought there was genuine logic and evidence behind the arguments - sadly there isn't, and the few examples you've given have inadvertently underlined that - I'd happily cede every single point you make re. Taylor's writing, and it still wouldn't justify your stance on Zacharek. Even if Taylor had argued that T.S. Eliot was actually Hitler, Zacharek would not be somehow morally obliged to publically disavow his words - she would proceed on the understanding that his words were his own, and hers were separate, and to be regarded as such.
I find it impossible to believe that the essential truth of this point still eludes you. It's increasingly funny, because your intellectual pride won't let you back down, but your initial stance was so without sensible foundation that your tapdancing takes on a more fevered pitch with every post: Look over here, people! Perhaps we can get into Carey's stuff on Donne, and then Donne's political stances? But still no examples to back your central thesis, because you know it's insupportable? And you accuse me of sophistry? 🙂
As I quite explicitly qualified, "most stripes", not "all stripes" - I love the way you cut the quote off to distort the position. As I said, I disagreed with her opinions a lot of the time. And, as I said, your conflation of "awesome" as "entertaining in an overt way" or the like is not at all my understanding of the word as SZ uses it above.
I agree Kael had her share of blank spots. But the brazenness with which you presume her underlying motivation and then link it to Zacharek and Taylor's own stances is pretty amusing. And the link does little to change my mind, awash as it is with unsupported statements - for instance, the approach to Kael as "betting on low over high" is ridiculously reductivist. A flick through any collection of Kael reviews turns up just as many cheers for "Lacombe, Lucien" as jeers for "Dances With Wolves", raves for Satyajit Ray as boos for "Ghostbusters". It would be more accurate to say that she reviewed each film with respect to its ambitions, and how successfully it achieved them; if she placed a greater emphasis on the latter part of the equation than the former, that's as may be, but I don't think that's grounds to call out the firing squad.
"This piece is correct about Kael's pernicious influence..." - y'see, I guess that's just where we differ. I don't see Kael's influence as being pernicious at all; I see it as inspiring many people to engage, passionately, emotionally and intelligently with film. What I draw from Kael is that film criticism need not be a dryly analytical enterprise - that indeed, if it is, it fails to capture the spirit of cinema. In this, I guess you could extrapolate that Kael's own taste in film ran to those that emotionally connected rather than concentrated (or commented) on the artificiality of a 'formal aesthetic' - and from there I guess you could assume a like-mindedness in Zacharek at least. But they'd be guesses, not proofs.
OMG, LYKE WHAT HAPPENED TO BATMAN AFTER HE RODE ON HIS MOTORCYCLE?
Let me save you the trouble, Chris, and quote myself for the guffaw:
"And the link does little to change my mind, awash as it is with unsupported statements..."
Hehehe. Let me rephrase!
*He's criticising Bloom for - in his opinion - assuming that popular success equals poor quality*
Yeah, except that Bloom has *never* assumed any such thing. In his book *The Western Canon*, in every chapter devoted to popular writers (in their own lifetimes: Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens for example) *Bloom explicitly and approvingly mentions* their success in connecting with the masses. In another book, in a chapter devoted to Victor Hugo, he notes that *everyone* in France was reading and discussing *Les Miserables* when it first came out in 1862. Bloom never tires of reminding us that Shakespeare (his all-time favorite writer) has been translated into more languages and achieved popular success in more different cultures than just about any other author, great or small.
If Taylor has never read any of Bloom's books, he shouldn't attribute imaginary stances to him. It would be like me saying, "Cantankerist is a jerk because he's xenophobic!..... I know for a fact he is because he hates Chris Nolan's *Inception*, and *Inception* is directed by an Englishman, and the Irish Cillian Murphy's in it." Not knowing a damn thing about your beliefs, I wouldn't assume you're xenophobic..... but not knowing a damn ting about Bloom's beliefs, Taylor feels free to accuse him of whatever he feels like.
In short, his piece is a disgrace because he's not interested in the real reasons Bloom or Byatt feel the way they do. But funny how you continue to lamely defend the indefensible, while at the same time insisting it's all beside the point anyway. If Taylor's stances are wholly beside the point, why do you keep making excuses for them?
[b]Taylor has gone to some effort to indicate that there are parts of Carey's thesis that he feels draw too long a bow.[/b]
If you were capable of reading, you'd notice that what Taylor objects to is not Carey's anti-elitism, but rather that his anti-elitism *doesnt' go far enough*. Taylor objects to Carey's *privileging of literature over movies and popular music* - because of course Taylor feels insecure about his evidently scanty knowledge of literature, whereas he's obviously very, very well-versed in pop music and films. He evidently has little problem with Carey's slandering of the High Modernists, or the completely confused, self-contradictory nature of his thesis. *That aspect of Carey's ideas, Taylor has no qualms with*. (The absurdity of Carey's thesis is evident: why does he on the one hand berate the Modernist movement for, in his view, *developing experimental, complex prose styles that made their novels inaccessible to the masses - and also asserting that this was the REASON they did it - they were snobs who hated the masses* - and at the same time, who does Carey cite as a particularly misanthropic, eugenics-loving scoundrel? *H.G. Wells - who employed one of the MOST accessible prose styles of the era, an enormously successful bestselling writer who was the Spielberg, or Nolan, of his day in terms of popularity*. This intellectual confusion isn't even perceived by Taylor, who notes how "thrilling" the book is and how even though the thesis might sound a tad too simplistic, it's really not and really, don't you know, Carey builds such a rock-solid case. Of course, in reality, Carey does no such thing.) It's only when Carey makes a case for the especial importance of books, more so than movies and songs, that Taylor feels discomfited, and says so.
As for your claim that Zacharek and Taylor are two different people, therefore it was wrong of me to bring up Taylor's populist ranting and raving, this is another house of cards. You don't share your dad's views: but you don't choose your dad, you do choose your spouse. (Even courts of law see the difference: when spouses divorce, one usually has to pay out a settlement to the other, whereas you never hear of the courts ordering a rich, famous actor, for instance, to pay out X amount of cash to their brother or second cousin. But to their partner? Absolutely. *And that's because the courts recognise the ethical and personal significance and centrality of the marital bond.*)
Zacharek has an especially strong connection with her spouse: they're both critics and they sometimes publish stuff under a shared byline. Your Hilary Clinton example is also weak, for Hilary Clinton escaped public censure over her husband's infidelities because her whole persona was not the traditional little white picket fence homemaker (also, she *would* have come in for some heat if it had turned out she condoned and happily supported all his screwing around: it was precisely the fact she *didn't* know about Monica till the scandal went public that the public felt sympathy for Hilary). With Sarah Palin, it would be harder to get over if it ever came out she was presenting herself as a good strong Christian family values type gal, while consciously, calculatingly supporting behavior from her family that went against the grain of her professed beliefs.
Moreover, you act like your little *ZACHAREK ISNT TAYLOR* neon sign resolves the matter. It doesn't. Your personal extreme individualist stance isn't some universal standard: in many parts of the world even today it would be incomprehensible.
*As I quite explicitly qualified, "most stripes", not "all stripes" - I love the way you cut the quote off to distort the position.*
I didn't "cut it off" to "distort" - my life doesn't revolve around hanging on to your every word, as if manna from heaven. But even if you say "most stripes," it's still untrue. As the writer notes, Kael was not open to films that went against her rigid biases. So what if she loved *Pather Panchali*? It's still the case that the vast majority of her valentines were decidedly more mainstream than that - and that she ruled out of favor an astonishingly large number of significant films: *films that were generally more significant than the ones she praised*.
*It would be more accurate to say that she reviewed each film with respect to its ambitions, and how successfully it achieved them; if she placed a greater emphasis on the latter part of the equation than the former, that's as may be, but I don't think that's grounds to call out the firing squad.*
But she was much more often than not *wrong* about how well each film achieved its ambitions. She wrote disdainfully about "fantasies of the arthouse audience," and heaped scorn on critics who admired European art films in her "Fantasies of the Arthouse Audience," yet many of these films she disdains in that essay have inspired rich, thoughtful, in-depth interpretations like the following:
http://davidsaulrosenfeld.com/
So much for that effete, poseur "arthouse" audience! Kael couldn't admit that with the "arthouse" movies she didn't "get," the fans of these movies weren't just pretending to love them. All those movies and entire ouevres she dismissed - it would be equivalent to a literary critic living through the first publications of the novels of Kafka, Mann, Woolf, Conrad, and Joyce, and dismissing them all while holding out fondness for the novels of James M. Cain, John Buchan, and William Saroyan. Now, that isn't *entirely* wrong, for Cain and Saroyan are genuinely solid writers - but it wouldn't be much of a critic who seriously thought the former group were all failures (barring one or two books) and the latter are brilliant. But a feisty personality and a witty style can't make up for deficient judgment.
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