WARNING: This entry begins with a quotation from a literary critic whose work I’ve needed to read a lot recently. I make little apologies for this, as far as I’m concerned I am happy to let pretension ring out from the highest mountaintop. However, for those with perhaps a more grounded mind, I make this deal: If you’ll bear with me as I get all serious and pompous, I promise to end with a quotation from a Pixar movie. Hopefully then the dualities of culture with be appeased.
Tzvetan Todorov wrote some words in the early seventies about the role of the critic in relation to literature. He stated that, before anything can be analysed about literature, it is important to always remember that: “When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature.”
I think this quite poetically sums up some issues I’ve been struggling with recently as I tried once again to grind out another entry for this blog. It chimes with me because it seems they confront some rather deep neuroses that lie at the heart of me, and perhaps most people whose chosen profession/ passion/ hobby comes from enjoying and commentating on art. I love cinema and I love discussing and writing about cinema. When I write, I like to feed my ego by thinking that I am, in some way, shedding some insight into the topic and perhaps occasionally I or others do just that. However, cinema is cinema, and frankly it doesn’t need me or anybody else to unlock it for anyone. Nobody needs me to tell them why they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy a certain film, they just did, and that’s much, much more important then any theoretical or philosophical baggage I might want to throw at something to make me sound smart. Ultimately, I can write as many words it is possible to write about a film and I will have still said nothing truly valuable about it. Not really. Cinema, literature, or any art form one wishes to focus on, possess that a certain, indefinable core that makes it special, makes it worth commenting on, makes it art in the first place. Nobody can say or explain what that is, you just feel it and know it in your heart, I guess in some way like some people feel God or fate or karma. To close on another quotation, this time from the mouth of Anton Ego from the glorious Ratatouille (which frankly says everything I just tried to say with talking rats, so perhaps you should just watch that if you remain a bit lost): “The bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful then our criticism designating it so.”
I hope these musings explains my lack of entrees and why perhaps also why, on occasion, months and months will go by before I even update this blog. I sometimes find it hard to write about cinema knowing this, believing this. But, ultimately, I also find this knowledge quite liberating: Nothing I can possibly do will fulfil the requirement of explaining cinema, so it doesn’t really matter what I write. All I can hope is that my words get somewhere close to explain the magic of the moving image. With this in mind, I have decided a slight change in format to one of my sections. I’ve, in the past, to write about the cinema that has touched me the most and it’s been impossible. The one attempt I published on Pulp Fiction I really wasn't happy with and, as I re-read it, feels incredibly pedestrian and far away from any sense of value. Therefore, I’ve decided to focus instead on individual scenes/ moments I love within films I adore in the hope that by sacrificing an impossible breath I might include a trace of depth. Hopefully, this will bring me that ever-illusive sense of worth I’m craving. I will fail, but I might not fail entirely, and that little nub of ambition is enough to make me want to try.
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