Un certain Regarding Film

“All of us who are keen on the history of film — and, I’d guess, some sane people as well…”

A few years ago, a friend of mine in college introduced me to Stanley Kauffmann,¹ longtime critic for The New Republic.  Though I’ve read a review of his from time to time, I never really made him a part of my regular routine.  What a dope I am.  Very recently, I borrowed Regarding Film from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s library.  Reading it was a breeze.  The volume (Kaufffmann’s seventh of film criticism) features selections that were written from about 1993 to 2000.  Reviews of films and books, plus a few obituaries, a lecture, and some other ruminations fill the relatively slim book.  Kauffmann writes with an air of casual authority: every assertion he makes seems full of a modest, yet intimidating store of knowledge and experience.  He’s not afraid to say that he hasn’t seen films, something more familiar to those of us who read (and/or are) amateur Internet bloggers, so when he discusses the work of a filmmaker like Abbas Kiarostami, Kauffmann readily admits that he’s only seen a nonrepresentative handful of the director’s oeuvre.  Yet he writes so lucidly and passionately about those films that he’s every bit the professional critic, if not a particular expert on the subject of Iranian cinema.  This revelation was an interesting contrast to the editorial in the recent issue of Cineaste (which, coincidentally, featured an illuminating interview with Kiarostami’s vaunted contemporary, Mohsen Makhmalbaf), in which the editor-in-chief asserted the necessity of expertise.  I’m still on the fence about where to mark a division between elitism and old-fashioned expertise.  I like the fact that the Web is full of amateurs who write about cinema purely because they love movies, and they are driven to communicate their feelings, even though there is no paycheck in it, and certainly no guarantee of much readership.  That unguarded ardor doesn’t destroy good criticism, it fuels it, if people aren’t too lazy to seek out the worthwhile voices amidst the din.  Professionalism isn’t delineated by employment, but by the rigor of the intellect and the craft of writing.  In any case, Kauffmann is a professional, a critic for more than fifty years.  (Wow.)

That professionalism has a few pitfalls.  A part of me was a little disappointed in the brevity of the articles, limited by by page space in a publication usually stuffed with articles by talented writers, often tackling hard subjects.  And the reviews too often took the shape of a checklist of the elements of a film: Comments on the director? Check.  Cameraman?  Check.  Cast?  Check.  Editor?  Check.  Production designer?  Oops, nope.  A quick note on that at the end, then…  Etcetera.  Though mercifully devoid of grades or ratings, this style was a little too similar to newspaper criticism at times, although it didn’t diminish the sincerity of the writing at all.  Indeed, the casualness itself was almost too perfectly realized at times, as if Kauffmann got home from a screening, pondered for thirty seconds, jotted down a few notes (a.k.a. the review), and sent it off to his editor.  Though I’m sure he’s too much of a craftsman to glide by on that kind of work habit, it was maddening to think that he could get away with such a loose style, and have it not only be good but eminently readable.  Voraciously paging through Regarding Film was like devouring a paperback bestseller.

What struck me most severely during the course of this book, however, wasn’t the fact that it was a good read (although it was).  What struck me was that this book more or less covers the time period during which I was getting into film as an art form.  Actually, reading the book made me realize that, at the time, I was getting into the idea of loving movies.  I adored the notion of being a “film buff,” which was a handy way of settling on an identity for myself as I entered my teenage years.  In reality, I merely watched a lot of movies.  Watching lots of movies doesn’t make one a movie lover.  It just means that, for whatever reason, the medium fills a need; it’s not necessarily a love affair.  As with any successful relationship (as I came to realize much later), a real relationship requires work.  Such it is/was with film.  I’m privileged to be engaged in a love affair with cinema in a time of seismic activity in the form.  As fate would have it, I’m also in a bit of a valley, relationship-wise.  That is to say, after years of glutting myself, carried away by raptures, I find myself lacking the ambition and drive to funnel my creative energy into the viewing experience.  The last several years have been marked by a sharp decline in film viewing and a dramatic rise in television watching.  I consider this a bit of a rectification, after having neglected television for the better part of my college years.  But it’s also true that I’m either too intimidated or bored by a lot of the movies I watch.  Mainstream American cinema this year hasn’t offered me a whole lot, and the sheer volume of past cinema with which I feel I much familiarize myself to be a true cinephile daunts the everlovin’ shit out of me.

Considering Kauffmann’s book has put a lot of this into perspective.  I feel a little bit like a slightly more mature version of my younger self — redundant, I know.  What I suppose I mean to say is that I am self-aware enough to realize that there is a universe of cinema out there with which I’m unfamiliar and, if I’m honest, with which I have no genuine interest in being familiar.  In my younger days, ignorance and unidentified laxity stunted my growth as a self-identified film buff.  Though I’m no longer ignorant of the fact that I’m terribly, horribly ignorant, I continue to consider myself a film buff.  Perhaps this is a dire assertion in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, perhaps a denial of the facts.  At the same time, it may also be a small attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Because I have considered myself to be a film guy for so long, I don’t think it’s possible to separate myself from that identity — I may not be as good of a cinephile as most who would consider themselves such, but my life, for better or worse, is married to the medium of cinema ’til death us do part.

How could I have been so stupid as to think of myself as a film buff during a period of time when Kauffmann was writing about films like The Dreamlife of Angels or La Promesse — films about which I knew nothing at the time?  It’s easy to look back and say, “Ah, I was young and idiotic,” but I’m not sure that brand of idiocy as a shelf life.  Recognizing one’s own shortcomings doesn’t excuse arrogance when the arrogance takes the form of modesty…

These are some of the basic conceptual problems my constructed identity now faces.  However, I did realize while reading Regarding Film that expressing myself concisely (at which I usually fail miserably),² that living life through the movies, and consecrating that life with writing is a kind of simplicity to which I want to aspire.  Thinking and writing about film as a way of life can render moments of beauty and insight; it can bring joy to both writer and reader.  Even in raw, black and white print on page, the movies can unite strangers in shared love and wonder.  That’s gorgeous.  That’s one of the overlooked boons of good film criticism.  It’s not just about politics or ideology; it’s not about telling people whether or not they should spend their time and money on a film they haven’t seen.  It can also be about one film buff sharing an intimate moment with another, and uplifting him/her with a conscious celebration of life depicted by and lived through art.

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