San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
ASK MICK LASALLE
Hi Mick: Are there any universally acclaimed films — classics, contemporary movies widely cited as masterpieces, or other canonized works — that you thoroughly despise?
Hanna Fogel, Long Beach
Hi Hanna: There are no movies quite in that category, unless we go really marginal and start talking up borderline items such as “Avatar” as recognized masterpieces. But there are a lot of respected movies that I don’t think are all that good. Just in the past quarter century, these include “Slumdog Millionaire,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Crash,” and “Forrest Gump.” There are still others, such as “Babel” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” that I consider to be fairly bad. Then there’s a whole category of classic that I just don’t enjoy, even though I can see why these films are highly regarded. These include most of the D.W. Griffith movies, “Last Year at Marienbad,” Fellini at his most excessive, most of Guillermo del Toro’s movies (even ones I’ve reviewed favorably), most Sergio Leone westerns, John Ford’s “My Darling Clementine,” etc. “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” meanwhile, I have no use for at all.
When we talk about classics — the American cinema’s basic repertory — here’s something to think about. This repertory was established by the generation of critics that came into their own in the 1960s and ’70s. They wrote lots of film books during a period in which the film-book market was booming. These were writers who are now (or would be) between the ages of, say, 75 and 90 years old, and their tastes were formed by the films they grew up seeing, either in third-run houses or on television. These were indispensable writers, and I read all of them when I was in my teens and early 20s. Their tastes defined what was considered great. They enshrined their preferences in print.
But here’s the problem. With the coming of home video, circa 1980, the market for film books nosedived, so that a continued popular discussion of the repertory, in mainstream books, ceased altogether. There remained scholarly magazines and film books written either for low budget publishers or university presses, but the vigorous public debate over what’s great and what’s not just stopped. The repertory fossilized, and as a result there are many movies that are still considered great that really aren’t, that are just movies anyone might have liked if they’d happened to grow up in the ’40s or ’50s. I’m thinking of “His Girl Friday” and “The Philadelphia Story,” just to name two. This fossilization has two bad effects: (1) The longer it goes on, the more intimidating and monolithic it seems to lowly critics who might differ; and (2) It can turn people off to classics entirely. Imagine if you’ve never seen a silent movie, and so you go see “Intolerance” (1916), because it’s supposed to be so great. You’ll never see another silent movie for the rest of your life.
Hi There Mick: I just happened across “Erased,” yet another actionadventure about an ex-CIA operative out to save himself and his daughter from ... blah, blah, blah. The protagonist is an unnaturally gifted, exceptionally educated character who can use extreme knowledge to perceive and escape threats — just like ... nobody we know. Why don’t they make movies about some ordinary dope with ordinary skills and experience, who gets out of trouble using what he or she learned in junior college?
Richard Levitt, Oakland Hi There Richard: Because nobody would care. You’d have to figure out how average skills can overcome extraordinary challenges. Soon you’ll be figuring out ways for the protagonist to apply those skills in remarkable, unexpected, brilliant ways, and then you’ll be halfway toward making the movie you’re trying to avoid. For the most part, drama is about the remarkable and the unusual. Even when you are depicting relationships we all know, the emotions are remarkable and outsize — recognizable yet enormous enough for us to stay interested.
Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.