Ask Mick LaSalle:
Is “The Disaster Artist” good or so bad that it’s good?
Dear Mick: “The Disaster Artist” is good at being bad. Is the movie good because it is bad or is it bad because it is good? How confused am I?
Cornel Barnett, Point Richmond Dear Cornel: It’s good because it’s good at being good, depicting a guy who was so bad at being good that he was almost good. But not quite. So Mick: I just saw “Call Me by Your Name” and left the theater wondering how this film would’ve been received if Elio had actually been a 17-year-old girl instead of a 17-year-old boy. Would the Oliver character have been considered a predator? And also, how would the father have looked upon such a relationship inasmuch as he seemed to wholly condone the relationship with his son?
Tracey Ayres, San Anselmo So Tracey: The movie would have had to have been a strictly European film. And it couldn’t have been imported. I can say this with a degree of certainty, because the same director, Luca Guadagnino, made something very close to the movie you’re describing, called “Melissa P.” (2005), which no one on this side of the Atlantic has ever heard of. American cinema has very fixed ideas about women’s lives with regard to sexuality. In European film, a woman’s life is all of a piece. It’s understood that, like a man, a woman has sexual feelings her whole life and sometimes acts on them. Fanny Ardant and Nathalie Baye were still doing love scenes into their 60s, and Sandrine Bonnaire and Sophie Marceau were doing bedroom scenes when they were 16 and 17. But in American movies, a woman’s sex life is divided into three stages. Basically, everything up to 17 is either puppy love or cause for a criminal investigation. Then it’s open season, from about 18 all the way up to somewhere around 50. And then after 50 or 55, sex doesn’t exist, or becomes pathetic, or cute, or a subject for wistful rumination. American audiences seem to be willing to accept things from boys and older men that it will not tolerate in girls and older women, and so our movies adjust to that reality.
Dear Mick: When I saw “La La Land,” the ending sequence echoed a particular torment I was going through so strongly that I was unable to experience the film at any level past my own pain. I got to wondering what a critic does in such a situation. Have you ever watched a film that opened such a personal wound that you just couldn't review it objectively?
Tom Bertino, San Rafael
Dear Tom: I’ve never had quite the experience you’re describing, but when I was 30, I was on a bus from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco, with a book of Fitzgerald short stories to keep me busy. I read a story for the first time called “The Sensible Thing” that so corresponded to an experience I’d had when I was 23 that I just sat there like a zombie for the rest of the trip. However, I do think that if I had the same intense, personal response to a film, I’d probably just accept that it was an effective movie. I mean, sure, you probably shouldn’t review “Old Yeller” on the same day that you put your dog down. But movie reviews aren’t objective; they’re subjective. Except in the sense that they can’t be totally removed from objective reality, objectivity isn’t the goal. Rather, a review explains a subjective response and attempts to persuade everybody that that subjective response is the smartest and most reasonable response that anyone could possibly have. As for your case, I’d much rather read a review by someone who was busted up and tormented by the ending of “La La Land” than someone else’s random, routine, filling-out-the-numbers review. Imagine something that begins, “It’s been three days. I can’t get ‘La La Land’ out of my head. I keep thinking of the moment when ...” Wouldn’t you keep reading? Or would you rather read some clown talk to you about camera angles?