December 11, 2008

Goldstein and Dargis.

LA Confidential "It's an open secret in indie Hollywood that no one wants Manohla Dargis to review their movie, fearing that the outspoken critic will tear their film limb from limb," blogs the Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein. "What causes so much fear and loathing in the filmmaking community about Manohla's work as a critic isn't her blunt appraisals but her seeming lack of empathy for the challenge of tackling difficult material."

My first reaction: Since when has empathy for the filmmaker - varying degrees of the stuff, too, evidently depending on the nature of the project s/he takes on - been part of the critic's job description? Turns out, I'm not alone.

At the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth writes: "It's almost as if Goldstein is advocating for a kind of affirmative action for art (or, at least, artsy) films: all pictures may be on a level playing field in Manohla's eyes, but a certain type of picture should be given special consideration for at least trying to be art, even if it fails.... [I]f he's actually suggesting that critics should allow 'empathy' for the architects of blatant awards bait to temper their judgements, then this might be his harshest anti-criticism statement yet."

Adds IFC's Alison Willmore: "Dargis is a critic I've found comes across sharper in out-of-context phrases than in the opinion expressed in each review as a whole, which may also be why studios are averse - so pullquote unfriendly!"



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Posted by dwhudson at December 11, 2008 2:29 PM

Comments

Ms. Dargis is absolutely the first person I would want to review my work.

Dargis' work is frequently generous with works of great ambition, even when she is critical of the finished product. The problem with Goldstein's conceit is that he sets the bar for 'ambition' terribly, terribly low.

Posted by: Dave McDougall at December 13, 2008 1:26 PM

The first thing to say about this is that I hope that Goldstein is projecting, because if the "filmmaking community" is really full of self-pitying drips who think that bad movies with grand ambitions deserve to be graded on a curve, or even praised, for what their makers wish they'd been able to achieve, then God help us all, and to hell with any hopes we might have had for some tough-minded, hard-won artistic triumphs at the movies anytime soon. The second thing is that if Dargis is aware of Goldstein's horseshit, and it's hard to imagine that no one has brought it to her attention by now, then I hope she reacted to it with the laughing fit that would be the only appropriate response, and that it's just a strange coincidence that her review of "Gran Torino" in Friday's New York Times included that bizarre throwaway line implying that it's a shame that some critics weren't more respectful of Stanley Kramer's unfulfilled ambitions forty years ago.

Posted by: Phil Nugent at December 13, 2008 2:38 PM