The background information includes genre, stars, director, anecdotes about the film’s production and reception and so on (this is where the review functions as news). The set of abbreviated arguments about the film is the reviewer’s main focus, as he or she analyses and comments on the film. Finally, the reviewer offers an evaluation of the film, and (implicitly or explicitly) a recommendation to see/not to see the film. The evaluation is the result of the reviewer’s activity and is backed up by his or her set of abbreviated arguments and knowledge about the film’s background.
The reviewer can arrange these components in any order, but the most common structure seems to be this:
Open with a summary judgement; synopsize the plot;
then supply a string of condensed arguments about the acting, story logic, sets, spectacle, or other case-centred points; lace it all with background information; and cap the review by reiterating the judgement.
David Bordwell, Making Meaning, p. 38
6 The reception of film: the art and profession of film reviewing 183
Of course, the reviewer’s judgement, writing style and decisions about how much background information and condensed
arguments to give the reader are determined by the projected readership and perceived character of the paper, magazine or website. A broadsheet newspaper, such as The Observer for example, has a projected readership that is perceived to be highly literate and knowledgeable of debates in the arts, culture and society. A film review in such a newspaper (an example from The Observer is printed below) will therefore be strong on background information and condensed arguments, while making an evaluative judgement implicit. It conforms to a journalism of opinion. A review in a tabloid newspaper, on the other hand, emphasizes plot information and summary judgements. It is a journalism of taste. In my comparative analysis of three reviews of Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014), my examples from newspapers will concentrate on the more detailed reviews that appear in the broadsheet newspapers.
The next section reproduces an actual film review, Philip French’s review of The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996) for The Observer. I then analyse this review to see how it is organized according to the four components listed above.
phIlIpfrenchon ThE ENgliSh pATiENT
By my reckoning, out of around 160 novels short-listed for the Booker prize since it began in 1969, 25 have been turned into films for the cinema or television. Interestingly, the three made with sizeable budgets provided by Hollywood
are all set during the Second World War and their unusual perspectives make us reconsider a conflict that still
overshadows our lives. The first two, Thomas Keneally’s
Schindler’s List (winner in 1982 as) Schindler’s Ark and J G Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (runner-up in 1984), are relatively straightforward chronological narratives – one biographical, the other autobiographical.
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (winner in 1992), however, is an immensely complex piece of storytelling,
looking at the war from the viewpoints of four sharply
184
contrasted characters living at a shattered villa in Tuscany during the months leading up to VE day in May 1945. It is a subtle meditation on history, nationality, warfare, loyalty and love, but it is also a gripping mystery story.
Like Ondaatje, who was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in
Britain and lives in Toronto, the villa’s physically and psychically wounded occupants come from three continents.
Hana (Juliette Binoche) is a nursing officer with the
Canadian army who has lost her fiancé. When her unit
moved north, she stayed behind at the villa to care for
the dying English patient (Ralph Fiennes), who received
appalling burns in a plane crash and is in fact Almásy, a Hungarian aristocrat educated in Britain. The third figure is Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) a suave Canadian thief, whose
criminal skills and knowledge of Italian had been employed by military intelligence, and who is in pursuit of Almásy, whom he suspects of treason. The quartet is completed by Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh from India, risking his life daily as a bomb disposal officer with the Royal Engineers.
Another continent enters into the story, for half of the movie takes place in Cairo and the North African desert in the Thirties where Almásy had been a member of a Royal
Geographical Society cartographical expedition and had
a passionate affair with Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a colleague. All four have endured terrible crises and looked death in the face. Now, as the war approaches its end, they are coming to terms with its contradictions and absurdities.
Ondaatje has written poems about the cinema (his Late
Movies With Skyler and King Kong Meets Wallace Stevens are included in my anthology The Faber Book of Movie
Verse) and his fiction is intensely cinematic. But like other novelists of whom the same can be said – Graham Greene,
for instance, or Salman Rushdie – his work is fiendishly difficult to adapt, and the writer-director Anthony Minghella has done a remarkable job in making a coherent movie that retains the themes, motifs and density of the original.
6 The reception of film: the art and profession of film reviewing 185
Moving back and forth in time from the shimmering desert to the rain-drenched Tuscan countryside, The English
Patient is a richly visual experience. Old biplanes fly over a desert landscape that looks like a woman’s body. The sands of the Sahara dissolve into the crumpled sheets that cover the disfigured Almásy’s bed. The thunder of approaching
war in Egypt becomes the thunder of an oncoming rain
storm in Tuscany. A powerful central image is the copy of Herodotus (the father of history) that Almásy has turned into a scrapbook so that it incorporates the story of his own life. The picture is also swooningly romantic and one can see what attracted the author of Truly Madly Deeply, another story of a transcendent love. There is grandeur in the shot of Almásy carrying the crippled Katherine, wrapped in the parachute that will be her shroud, along a mountain ledge in the desert, and there’s magic in the scene where Kip hoists Hana up to the ceiling of a Tuscan church so that she can look at a Piero della Francesca fresco by the light of a flare. All the performances are first-class, with Binoche and Scott Thomas playing two of the most radiant heroines of recent cinema. Technically, The English Patient is a miracle.
John Seale’s cinematography can stand up to comparison
with Freddy Young’s on Lawrence of Arabia Walter Murch’s editing is exemplary. This thoughtful and exhilarating movie is a credit to everyone involved in its making.
The Observer, 16 March 1997
As with many of French’s longer film reviews, the first
paragraph of this review begins with some very general
background information, in this instance, the Booker Prize and the number of short-listed books that have been filmed. French notes how many books short-listed for the Booker Prize have been filmed (25) and how many are set during the Second World War (three, including The English Patient).
In the second paragraph, French notes that The English Patient, winner of the Booker Prize in 1992, is different from the other two Booker books set during the Second World War in that it has a complex plot structure. This paragraph, together with 186
the third, then gives a plot synopsis of the film. This synopsis is quite long because the film’s plot is long and complex. French concentrates on the film’s four main characters, together with the plot lines in which they are involved.
The final paragraph presents an analysis, or a set of abbreviated arguments about the film. These relate specifically to what French calls the film’s ‘richly visual experience’. In particular, French notes how the transitions from the present to the past are signified by means of sound and image: ‘The sands of the Sahara dissolve into the crumpled sheets that cover the
disfigured Almásy’s bed. The thunder of approaching war in Egypt becomes the thunder of an oncoming rain storm in Tuscany.’ French also writes about four striking scenes and shots in the film: 3
3
the shots of the old biplanes flying over the desert (which French describes as looking like a woman’s body)
3
3
the shots of Almásy’s copy of Herodotus’s book on history, which Almásy also uses as a scrapbook
3
3
the shot of Almásy carrying the crippled Katharine along a cliff ledge
3
3
the scene where Kip hoists Hana up to the ceiling of a Tuscan church so that she can see a fresco lit by a flare
French presents two additional arguments: firstly, that the performances are first class (French singles out the acting of Juliette Binoche and Kristin Scott Thomas) and secondly, the film is technically miraculous (singling out the cinematography of John Seale and the editing of Walter Murch).
Finally, the review ends with an evaluation: the film is thoughtful and exhilarating. Yet, the rest of the review also contains brief evaluations, particularly in the adjectives and nouns that French uses. From beginning to end, the review contains the following evaluative statements (emphases added):
‘… a subtle meditation…’; ‘a gripping mystery story’; ‘Minghella has done a remarkable job…’; ‘a richly visual experience’; ‘A powerful central image…’; ‘ swooningly romantic’; ‘There is a grandeur in the shot…’; ‘there’s magic in the scene…’; ‘all performances are first- class’; ‘… the most radiant heroines’; 6 The reception of film: the art and profession of film reviewing 187
‘Technically, The English Patient is a miracle’; ‘Murch’s editing is exemplary’. Furthermore, it is obviously a compliment for John Seale’s cinematography to be compared with Freddy Young’s desert cinematography in David Lean’s visually stunning film Lawrence of Arabia.
The boundaries between the four components of French’s
review (indeed of most reviews) are not always clear-cut.
However, French’s reviews do contain all four components and they usually follow the same order: background information, condensed plot synopsis, a set of abbreviated arguments about the film and an evaluation.
Evaluation
What are reviewers looking for when they evaluate a film?
Reviewers are looking for some, or all, of the following: 3
3
the motivation of what happens in a film
3
3
entertainment value
3
3
social value.
motIvatIon
In relation to motivation, reviewers are looking for the relevance of or justification for a particular narrative event or technical skill such as an elaborate camera movement or special effects. David Bordwell ( The Classical Hollywood Cinema, p. 19) has identified four types of motivation in the cinema: 3
3
compositional
3
3
realistic
3
3
intertextual
3
3
artistic.
Compositional motivation refers to the formal structure of the film’s narrative. An action or event in the narrative is motivated if it constitutes part of the film’s cause–effect logic, as discussed in Chapter 2. If an action or event falls outside the cause-effect logic, it is deemed to be unmotivated. In contemporary 188
Hollywood cinema, this usually applies to the many prolonged action sequences and special effects that appear on screen as if for no other reason than to overwhelm the audience’s senses and shock their nervous system.
Realistic motivation does not necessarily mean that the action or event under question is literal or true to life. It can also mean that, within the world of the film’s fiction, the action or event is plausible or believable. For example, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1997), it is plausible for a T-Rex to eat Eddie (as he tries to pull the trailer up from the cliff face). But it is not plausible if the T-Rex started to talk English. However, within the context of everyday life, it is implausible for a T-Rex to eat Eddie (or anyone else for that matter), because the T-Rex is an extinct species and has not (as yet) been brought back to life through genetic engineering. So realistic motivation not only means ‘authentic’, or ‘corresponding to everyday life’ (this applies only to the artistic movement known as Realism), but also means ‘plausible’ and ‘believable within the boundaries of the film’s fiction’.
Following realistic motivation is intertextual motivation, which includes the relation between the film and its source (such as a famous novel), and the relation between the film and the genre to which it belongs. If a film is based on a famous novel, reviewers will invariably look for the similarities and differences between the two. In his review of The English Patient, French writes that ‘writer-director Anthony Minghella has done a remarkable job in making a coherent movie that retains the themes, motifs and density of the original [novel]’. In terms of genre, conventions motivate a particular action in one film, but not in another. For example, if two characters walking along a street suddenly burst into song, accompanied by the sounds of a 50-piece orchestra, this would be motivated in a musical, but would look rather odd in a film noir. In the musical, the action of singing is motivated generically, whereas in the film noir it would be unmotivated. Sometimes a reviewer will attempt to place an unusual film within a genre in order to make sense of it. For example, Star Wars was described, on its initial release in 1977, as a Western in outer space, with several parallels to John Ford’s The Searchers (1956).
6 The reception of film: the art and profession of film reviewing 189
Finally, artistic motivation means that a particular filmic technique is motivated for aesthetic reasons. For instance, an elaborate camera movement may serve the function of creating an unusual pattern, or simply demonstrating the virtuosity of the director. Although such virtuosity is occasionally displayed in Hollywood films (as auteur critics argued: see Chapter 3), it is more systematically displayed in independently produced American films and in European Art Cinema. Reviewers who are strongly inclined to look only for compositional, realistic or intertextual motivation will argue that such displays are simply unmotivated and pretentious. However, reviewers
who appreciate independently produced American films and European Art Cinema are more sympathetic to these displays, and can justify them in terms of artistic aims and intentions.
Why is a reviewer’s evaluation of a film usually guided by the search for motivation? Because motivation creates a sense of unity and coherence. When a critic complains that a particular event or technique in a film is not motivated, he or she is arguing that it does not contribute to the overall coherence of the film, but distracts from that coherence because it appears arbitrary.
A critic looking for compositional, intertextual and realistic motivation will perceive many events and the technical virtuosity in a European Art film or an American independent film as arbitrary. However, a critic familiar with the artistic intentions of European and independent American directors can see the relevance of these events and techniques, that is, they will see the motivation behind such events and techniques. We can therefore distinguish critics according to the different types of motivation they are looking for in a film, which in turn determines the type of film they will evaluate positively and recommend to the reader and the type to which they will give the thumbs down.
Critics who look only for compositional/realistic/intertextual motivation, while debunking artistic motivation, can be called
‘conservative’ critics, while those who also seek out and praise artistic motivation are ‘radical’ critics. Conservative critics try to cultivate common-sense rationalism, by suggesting that a film must not disturb our common-sense ideas. A
good film, they argue, must have a wide appeal, and must entertain. This is a consensus view of films, a view that argues that films must 190
simply reinforce our everyday ideas, rather than challenge us.
The opposite is the case with radical critics. They champion a film that challenges our everyday assumptions and shows us the world from a new perspective. However, this opposition between conservative and radical is not clear-cut. In reality, most critics fall somewhere in between; we can call these the ‘liberal’ critics.
The debates in the British press over David Cronenberg’s film Crash (1996) clearly separated the conservative critics from the radicals and the liberals. Crash is based on the novel by J G
Ballard and was a controversial winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. The film charts the relationship between five characters who are sexually aroused by car crashes.
It depicts both the car crashes and sexual encounters between the various characters in graphic detail, while forgoing any attempt to depict character psychology or narrative motivation.
The conservative critics in the British press, such as Alexander Walker in the London Evening Standard and Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail, believe that the film is depraved. In looking for motivation, they can assign it only to the genre of pornography. The radicals, including Suzanne Moore, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis (all writing in The Independent), together with a number of writers for Sight and Sound (Mark Kermode, Julian Petley and Leslie Dick), thought that it was an important piece of film art, or a social satire metaphorically commenting on the role of technology in modern society.
Finally, the majority of critics (the ‘liberal’ critics) thought that, although many may find the film distasteful, filmgoers must still be given the opportunity to see it.
entertaInmentvalue
A review that looks for entertainment value considers whether the film functions as an escapist experience for the audience.
But what makes a film entertaining? Hollywood film producers would like an answer to this $64,000 question. Here I can present only some speculative ideas. A film is entertaining if it is successful in holding audiences’ attention and arousing their emotions. One important way this is achieved is by encouraging spectators to identify with a character or set of characters within the film. Under these circumstances, the character must be 6 The reception of film: the art and profession of film reviewing 191
Film Studies- An Introduction Page 22