Thursday, August 25, 2011

Is it any good? As art?

That is Bridey's question from Brideshead and it's a question I have put off about A River Runs Through It. Short answer, no it isn't but a lot of films I'd cheerfully watch again aren't good art. (This is the third of a series of posts. Here are the links to part one and part two.)

I can say that it was a lot better than I remembered it.

But I raise the art question because the people who praise this film fall into three groups: a) men who like fly fishing and b) women who like Brad Pitt and c) people who think it is art.

If we look at the Rotten Tomatoes page for the movie, we can see that they give it an 82 percent positive rating. They arrived at this number by finding 39 reviews and determining that 32 (82 percent) of these were positive. That's a long way from scientific.

But it gets even weirder when we look at some of these "positive" reviews. Here are some examples.

1. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post is rated a positive review and he does praise the movie for being out of step with current Hollywood trends, but he concludes by determing that it doesn't make much sense:
"River" is a serious and, at times, moving film, and it deserves serious analysis. Yet serious scrutiny only leaves a deeper confusion. Redford did not make the film with the intention of making heroes; in a sense, it's an elegy for a lost style of living. But the sympathies of the gods appear to be divided here, throwing the moral compass out of whack.
And that's a pretty good assessment of it if you ask me.

2.  Jon Niccum's review for the Lawrence Journal-World is also rated positive. We don't have access to the full review but the blurb we are given reads:
Nice to look at but rather dull.
That doesn't sound like praise to me.

3. Emanuel Levy of Cinema 24/7 is also rated a positive review. Here is how he sums it up:
Rather dull, the film is made with too much reverence and taste for Maclean's short story, adapted to the screen by Richard Friedenberg, and not enough drama or compassion. The family members often just stare at each other without uttering one word. But it's nice to look at the landscape and at the gorgeous face of Brad Pitt, which gets the start treatment through numerous close-ups.
Rather dull is not a positive review.

4. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader is also rated a positive review and he says:
Though it's made as a labor of love, with a carefully fashioned script by Richard Friedenberg and attentive direction by Robert Redford that takes full advantage of the area's beautiful scenery, none of this ever quite compensates for the lack of a strong story line.
None of these reviews could properly be called positive. They are all perceptive reviews and, taken together, they correctly identify all the film's shortcomings.  But you might want to watch it anyway.

But, what gives? How did intelligent people read these reviews and think, "That's a positive review"?

I think the answer is because the film is supposed to be art. I mentioned Bridey's question at the start. The guys he asks it of (he has been asked to rate some architecture) says that he doesn't like it much but it may be good art. That's a strange attitude, as even an odd duck  Bridey can see. And yet that strange attitude kicks in whenever something presents itself as art.

What makes this so strange is that we ought to approach art with all our critical faculties working but there is this bizarre modernism that says we have no right to expect art to be likeable.

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