How NOT To Critique Movies

Zor was perusing the comment section of my midsummer review the other day when I chanced upon this little gem from one of my more special viewers drinker u loquacious hypothesize er I'm afraid your criticism of this movie is totally invalid midsummer is about the breakdown of a relationship it deals with complex themes like the loss of mutual friends the grief and sadness of being betrayed by someone close to you and the desire to take revenge ultimately leading to tragedy and heartbreak well congratulations deceptively polite YouTube frequenter you correctly identified some stuff that happens in this movie chosen a couple of vaguely appropriate words that cover them and strung them together into a tenuous pattern but all this insightful feedback got me thinking about the whole concept of themes what they're for how they come about and why they're relevant to media criticism they're not so I thought why not make a video about it so we can explore this together pour yourself a shot and let's get into it people just love talking about themes these days everywhere you look online you'll find armchair psychologists speculating about the hidden meaning behind this rock or this facial expression or telling you that the predator represents man's inherent fear of female sexuality because its face looks like a vagina but you know where themes get mentioned most of all in responses to legitimate film criticism believe me I know try walking a mile in my drunken shoes before you know it your comments section will be awash with phrases like this review is a joke lol you just don't get this movie it's all you're not seeing the deeper themes it's great stuff that always brightens my day but the real question is why do people see this when it makes them sound like pretentious condescending dicks well if I had to guess I'd say it's a quick and easy way to make yourself sound more intelligent and insightful than you actually are you can even start throwing around pompous terms like thematic undertones and allegorical incision to make yourself into a true verbal boss and if people call you out on it you can just blow them off by repeating that they simply don't get the movie in the same way you do even better talking endlessly about themes also allows you to neatly avoid engaging with actual criticism of the film having to use your brain to explain away all the problems and inconsistencies or even worse facing up to the terrifying prospect that maybe is just not as good as you've somehow convinced yourself it is no it'll be fine you don't have to worry about any other because your understanding of the movie transcends simple stuff like plot structure internal consistency and character development you've discovered the deeper meaning deviously hidden beneath the veil of lights and sound no this is all great you might think no we can all stop talking about the nitty-gritty functional elements of movies and just concentrate on the ideas they represent instead it's like we've put aside our petty disagreements and ascended to a higher level of understanding or something well I'm sorry to piss on your chips but there's a couple of flaws in this grand plan the first one is that picking out the theme of a movie is a bit like looking for shapes in the clothes everyone sees something a little different and what you see depends a lot on your own point of view shut up the point here is that I could offer up any number of different interpretations of something like midsummer all of which are equally valid for example you could see that movie as an allegory for the war in Afghanistan a coalition of Americans and Brits enter into a foreign country full of high hopes and overconfidence but their lack of understanding of the local population causes them to get bogged down in a situation they didn't plan for soon casualty starts a moment and their superior technology fails to win the day for them worst of all their enemies turn out to be all around them hiding in plain sight and ultimately forcing them to fight for their very lives no this is bad enough but things really start to fall apart when people decide they're going to see before they even see it and then trying to reinterpret the movie to suit their ideas for example paul blart mall cop could be seen as a sobering rumination on the dangers of rampant consumerism in a post-911 world a warning against our misplaced faith in traditional authority figures simply because they wear a uniform or a melancholic reflection on the struggles faced by working-class Americans against the backdrop of the global financial crisis or it could just be a film about a fat guy on a Segway fighting criminals the point here is that if you're willing to stretch your imagination far enough you can bend the plot of a film around just about any theme your twisted mind can come up with and if every interpretation is equally valid then every interpretation is equally [ __ ] they can simultaneously mean everything and nothing which makes them for a useless when it comes to making a judgment about a movie which brings me neatly along to my other problem themes aren't a magic shield to protect a shitty film from criticism a theme is nothing more solid than a simple idea that a movie touches on and as I learned when I tried to build my own gin still an idea is only as ever as good as its execution a movie can explore the most fascinating idea ever but it still has to be strong enough to stand on its own merits if it expects a good review from me now let's take a look at the example of midsummer again shall we it's a slow-paced psychological horror film about a group of people in an isolated location that deals with the following themes a relationship breaking down betrayal by a significant other the loss of mutual friends grief and sadness escape from a toxic relationship and moving on fascinating stuff now let's compare it to another movie The Shining a slow paced psychological horror movie about a group of people in an isolated location The Shining deals with a relationship breaking down betrayal by a significant other the loss of mutual friends grief and sadness escape from a toxic relationship moving on to movies with very similar themes the difference here is that one of them is an effective and compelling horror movie and the other ones are boring pretentious piece of [ __ ] because the shining creates a genuinely tense and foreboding atmosphere through a unique combination of haunting cinematography unsettling imagery an eerie an ominous soundtrack and great performances by experienced actors who actually know what they're doing the scenes and events of the plot build logically on each other the characters are influenced by the supernatural forces around them but their own actions and decisions have consequences that ultimately leads to the resolution of the story there's a well explained and justifiable reason why they can't leave their isolated location the breakdown of the relationship between the main characters is well explored through their increasingly tense interactions there is even a shocking revelation about Jack's deteriorating mental state through the plot device of his book Regan oh [ __ ] man he's been writing for BuzzFeed this whole time deaths are sudden and meaningful because the script takes its time setting up characters as sympathetic and likeable so that you actually care about what happens to them this is what we like to call investments The Shining works successfully because the core elements of the story character development performances and atmosphere are all meticulously built up and developed over its runtime drawing you into the narrative and keeping you invested in what's happening to the characters the themes that the movie explores emerged naturally as a result of the story it tells instead of being the basis of a contrived story that's been bent and reworked to fit around them midsummer on the other hand feels as a horror movie because the themes it tries to represent are allowed to overshadow and dictate the story itself there's nothing except their own stupidity preventing the characters from escape in their isolated location when it would clearly make sense to do so conflict between characters comes across as contrived and unexplained because the plot needs it to happen people that have been shown as patient and understanding suddenly get portrayed as villains because the movie needs someone for the main protagonists to overcome the renewal mysteries to explore no intriguing secrets to unravel or shocking revelations that put previous events into a horrifying new context all of these elements have been sacrificed and compromised in order to fit around a core theme that's simply not compatible with the events of the movie and the result is a viewing experience that's inconsistent illogical and [ __ ] now you might be wondering why I've chosen to spend so much time talking about something like this well mostly it's because I wanted to be clear about how I go about reviewing an artistic work and because I want it to take a giant [ __ ] on anyone who doesn't share this view I've talked before about the problem of movies sacrificing narrative quality character integrity and simple dignity in favor of politics and ideology but this problem isn't just confined to the writers and directors making them there's been a real trend of people with lots of enthusiasm but not much common sense trying to deflect genuine criticism and make excuses for bad movies by pointing to stuff that has no bearing on their artistic merit this movie was great because it showed demographic X in a positive light and started important cultural conversations this movie works because it subvert Adar expectations of the past and give us a progressive vision of the future this movie is important because it shattered an imaginary glass ceiling that actually got broken decades earlier and of course this movie is smart and inspired because I had a powerful thematic subtext when you get right down to it this is the critical equivalent of putting a shiny new paint job on a car that won't start it's nothing but surface flash using a bunch of vaguely defined and totally subjective words to try to gloss over a movie's obvious flaws so what's the end game here are we expected to enjoy movies based on some theoretical idea of what they might represent instead of how they actually function is fair and objective analysis now some crazy outdated idea to be abandoned instead of a goal to aspire to well I take a dim view of that kind of thing it's not to say that I don't have any interest in the movies themes I mean I even talked about it myself at times when I think it's relevant but I never allow that to influence my overall opinion of the film no you can argue all day long about how people should review an artistic work and I don't pretend to have all the answers here but I can certainly tell you what you shouldn't do you shouldn't allow your preoccupation about our movies themes to cloud your judgement about its objective quality if you do you're no better than the average hack journalists looking to push an angle instead of presenting a fair and balanced assessment of the film's strengths and weaknesses and there's only one thing I want cloud in my judgment anyway thus all I can think of today go away No

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,063,135

Keywords: The Shining, Midsommar, reviews, critical theory, Star Wars, Black Panther, criticism, themes, thematic depth

Id: DmMIkw-dcgM

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019