Directors Are Overrated
The Pre-Ramble to Another Rant About Over-emphasizing the Importance of Film Directors When Writing Film Criticism
One cannot claim to be an art lover and only see the flaws, because the experience lacks joy. The domination of modern criticism by cultural analysts has nearly defenestrated the intelligence of what began as a movement of artistic appreciation. Early film critics wrote about the joy of watching movies as much as the movies they watched. This joy is largely absent from what passes for modern Film Criticism.
I believe the origin of our current crisis in Film Criticism lies in an overemphasis on hero-worshipping directors as the primary focus of analysis and discussion. This attitude towards film appreciation through the primary lens of the director (rather than the film itself) is known as the Auteur Theory, and it is a driver of the sorry state of modern multicultural criticism.
Cinema is the first great multi-cultural channel of artistic expression. I suspect that cinema is also the most commercially successful channel for selling art to the public for a desired profit. Making movies makes money. But it wasn’t always this way. In the early days of Cinema, around the turn of the 20th Century, movies were strange magic acts. Most people who saw movies didn’t understand what was happening, yet they paid to watch those stories play out until the house lights came up.
Looking at films primarily through the lens of their creators was a necessary stage in Film Criticism, but it has overserved its purpose. Now, we’re bickering about the skin color, cultural heritage, and sexual identities of those who made the movies instead of talking about what the movies mean to the average human being trying to survive in this crazy fucking world where everyone is oversharing stories and selling some lies.
When I review a movie, I review what’s exposed in the frame and what comes through the speakers. I’m not interested in the decisions behind the camera when it comes to composing analyses and appreciations of the films that move me to transcendence. It’s why I’ll never write an essay about something I don’t like to convince someone else not to like it either. That’s bitch made shit, written by punks for other punks to read. I’ll never write, and I damn sure won’t read it. Either tell me about something you love, or sit down, be quiet, and listen to the man with the plan at the mic’aphone stand.
That said, I do value what directors think and communicate about creative choices, logistics, and the commerce of Cinema. After all, creating movies for sale in a marketplace of entertainment choices is an epic act of expression that requires many artists working together. Consumers of entertainment make choices about how we spend our time and money. Some of us watch a lot of movies and take in many stories. Shouldn’t that time be considered an investment? If so, what does that investment pay off in value? Shouldn’t the experiences be worth more than the money and time allocated? If not, why watch movies at all?
Listening to what film directors say about their craft and business is important. But when it comes to writing about their films, the director should be forgotten and treated as a commodity. This is New Criticism.
