CRITICS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR? - I'm a little more settled into my new job and apartment in Chicago so I can finally get back to blogging. Hopefully, my devoted throng of readers (it's a nice thought, anyway) didn't lose patience with me. My brief hiatus has me playing catch-up on what's going in terms of film commentary -- so behind, in fact, that this post is going to deal with something that was actually published online more than a week ago. But it's too good to ignore, especially since it ultimately calls into question the function of every film "critic" out there, whether it be a little blogger like myself or Roger Ebert. Speaking of Ebert, a reader named Paul Montgomery from Chicago recently wrote into his bi-monthly Movie Answer Man column with this question:

Q. Your review of "Auto Focus" from Telluride was the final straw for me. How you can rave about a film that contains "wall-to-wall sex" escapes me. I guess I'm just a fogie about such matters. Films aren't often being made for people like me, and the critics have forgotten that people like me exist.

This question is truly fascinating, partly because Paul totally misinterpreted Ebert's comments (as we will soon see in Ebert's response), but primarily because the implication is that a film critic should somehow consider his or her audience when reviewing a movie. Moreover, Paul is saying that a critic actually has a duty to try and judge a movie from the audience's perspective. Perhaps you're thinking to yourself, "Isn't that a critic's job...to tell me whether a movie is good or bad so I can decide whether I should pay to see it or not?" Well, no, that's not what a critic is supposed to do. And yet that's exactly how most people I run into see it. And it's not just moviegoers. Here's how Philip Wuntch of the Dallas Morning News explains his approach to film criticism -- or perhaps I should say, film "reviewing" -- in this quaint bio (click on his name; you may have to register to view it):

I THINK THE ROLE OF A CRITIC IS: On the most immediate basis, after I see a film, I put myself in the place of those who pay first-run prices, and maybe pay a baby sitter in order to see a movie. Is it worth it? My first responsibility is to the reader and potential moviegoer. I also hope that somewhere along the line, someone of authority in film making may read something I've written and be informed/enlightened/enraged by what they read. But my foremost responsibility is to the potential moviegoer.

Mr. Wuntch certainly has his heart in the right place, and I hate to be too negative towards him since he took the time to actually respond to my CinemaScoped Critics & Readers Poll 2002, but I can't imagine a more misguided view of film criticism. How does someone actually put themselves "in the place of those who pay first-run prices, and maybe pay a baby sitter to see a movie?" And who are these people? Mr. Wuntch seems to think that a) every person who hires a baby sitter to see a movie (in Dallas, presumably) shares the same taste in movies and b) that he is somehow able to tap into their brains when he reviews a movie. The fact is that not every moviegoer can be packed into such a neat little box, and even if they could, what benefit is there in a critic who simply tries to regurgitate what the supposed masses think about a film. That's not film criticism; that's market research. I'll give another example. My friend Nate Yapp, who writes reviews now for The Daily Iowan and runs the site Classic Horror, is very smart about movies. On one of his old review web sites, he wrote in his statement of purpose (and I'm terribly paraphrasing here) that "if you're tired of self-important critics, this site is for you because it will tell you what you really want to know: 'Will I enjoy myself.' " Now again, I'm not trying to demean Nate or his reviews. The problem with the question Nate poses, however, is that it presupposes that he can tell his readers whether or not they will enjoy a certain movie. But how does Nate know what I, or anyone else for that matter, think is funny, or sad, or thrilling? All Nate can do -- all any critic can do -- is articulate his or her own biases as clearly and consistently as possible. The great irony is that disregarding one's readers is the only way a critic can actually be useful to them. If you really wanted to know whether you might "enjoy" a particular film, all you'd have to do is read the one critic who you always agreed or disagreed with -- the critic who seemed to have the same criteria for judging a movie as you did. And how would you know what a critic truly believed if he simply tried to tell his mass of readers how they'll react to a particular movie -- which, as I said before, isn't really possible anyway. As for Ebert's answer, I'm happy to report he nailed it:

A. I have not forgotten that people like you exist, but I am not you, just as you are not me, and unless I honestly report my own opinion, I am of no use to you or anyone else. I admire Paul Schrader's new film very much; Greg Kinnear is surprisingly effective in charting Bob Crane's self-destruction. Certainly sexual addiction is a valid subject for a movie, but I didn't "rave" about the sex. I wrote: "Schrader somehow succeeds in making a film with wall-to-wall sex in which sadness and loneliness, not passion, is the subject." There is a difference between a movie that is wall-to-wall sex, and a movie that is about it. Here is a crucial rule for anyone seriously interested in movies: It's not what the movie is about that makes it good or bad, but how it is about it.

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