San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
ASK MICK LASALLE
Dear Mick: What do you think of the constant gun use in the Coen brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”? Despite the skill of the filmmaking, I am appalled at their blatant use of senseless gun violence.
Max Lightfoot, San Francisco
Dear Max: Well, it’s a Western — actually, it’s more than a Western. It’s a Western about Westerns. And while it might be possible to make a Western that doesn’t have gun violence, you definitely can’t make a Western about Westerns without gun violence. In a way, you could say that because it disturbed you means that the Coens did a good job, because they were trying to make the Old West seem like a nihilistic nightmare. In the earlier films that they were referencing, the violence had no impact at all. That said, although the violence in “Buster Scruggs” didn’t disturb me, I did get really sick of it. It never stopped.
Dear Mick: Rolling Stone, the arbiter of taste at the time, said Queen was a manufactured group, not an authentic band. I liked Queen but didn’t know what to think about what the magazine was saying. Now with the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody,” they seem to be unassailable. But doubts could remain. Are we stuck with relativism, where opinions are just a product of their time, and we can have no final truth? Can you ever reach a Mozart stage? Sometimes I doubt the quality of the Beatles, whether they will last another 50 years.
Kevin Steed, Oakland
Dear Kevin: Rock critics of the 1970s were often wrong. They made fun of “Quadrophenia.” They made fun of The Runaways, and now Joan Jett is in the Hall of Fame. As for your question about whether things are ever officially, unassailably great, the answer is mostly yes, but slightly no. The usual pattern is for someone to be considered great. Then their work goes into an awkward middle age, from which they either recover and enter the pantheon, or disappear. But once in the pantheon, there’s a certain amount of fluctuation, as each generation looks at the canon or the basic repertory and decides what it values most within it. Around 1930, there was probably only one person in America who knew F. Scott Fitzgerald was a better writer than Ernest Hemingway, and it wasn’t Fitzgerald. (It was Hemingway.) Now that impression has reversed, but Hemingway will remain in the pantheon, and critical assessment might flip back in his favor in a generation or two. In the 1960s, JeanLuc Godard was considered a genius, and Francois Truffaut was thought to be really good. But today Truffaut’s movies look better than ever, and Godard’s work looks like a product of its time — although he made a handful of important films that guarantee he won’t go away.
But everyone is subject to fluctuations. You mentioned Mozart as an example of someone unassailable. This is only a layman’s impression, but I suspect if you were writing this 40 years ago, you might have chosen Beethoven. When I was a kid it was just understood that Beethoven was the greatest composer in history. As for the Beatles, they were one of the major events of the 20th century. Their impact on cultural history will make their music of endless interest, and the music itself is so charming that it’s not going to go away. But I can imagine different generations deciding that the superior songwriting talent was Paul McCartney, not John Lennon, or vice versa. We may even have a George Harrison phase in 100 years. After all, “Long, Long, Long” is the best song on the White Album and “Something” is the best song on “Abbey Road.” A case could be made. Hey, Mick: I have often wished there existed a fact-checker for “movies based on a true story.” “Green Book” is the latest movie to make me wonder what’s real and what’s not. Does not knowing ever bother you?
Bob Blomberg, Berkeley Hey, Bob: Yes, and I usually try to find out. A good rule of thumb is that whatever is really good and interesting didn’t happen.
Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification.