the m0vie blog

I quite liked J. Edgar. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think it was perfect or anything like that, but I thought it was an interesting piece of cinema that clearly articulated Eastwood’s views on twentieth century America, fitting as part of a tapestry the director had crafted exploring the country’s history. However, I still feel a little uncertain about my opinion. After all, it seems that most critics quite disliked it. I know that anybody writing or discussing film is required to formulate their own opinion, but there is a strange feeling that comes with disagreeing with the majority opinion. While the world wouldn’t be an interesting place if we all agreed, it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the individual’s opinion against that of the critical majority.

Suits you, sir...

The internet is a great place, because of the sheer diversity of the place. You can find anybody saying anything about something if you look hard enough. It allows for the development of an opinionated and informed community on the subject of just about anything, instantly connecting people with dozens of others interested in the same sort of subject matter. It makes it possible to discover and debate things you’d never thought of before, but it also introduces the idea of a consensus, something it feels a little strange to brush against.

A lot of people have some very serious problems with Rotten Tomatoes because it reduces the quality of a movie to a binary equation informed by majoritarianism. It’s not about the particulars of the individual film, but about fresh/rotten dichotomy. I can see the merits in such an argument – there are critics I personally trust more than I trust the Tomato-meter, but it is a handy tool for determining the general swathe of opinion, the wider attitude towards a certain film. It’s easier than ever to determine what the majority of critics thought about a particular film or work, and that tends to inform the conversation about it. After all, the fact that critical opinion about Cars 2 had solidified long before it was released over here gave me significant pause.

Race to the middle?

Because of the gap in release dates between the United States and Ireland, it’s hard for me not to know the majority opinion about a film before it opens here. And while I pride myself on remaining objective, and while I’d argue it doesn’t influence my opinion of a given film on its own merits, I’d be lying if it doesn’t set my preconceptions about watching the film in question. Ideally we’d find a way to convert Plato’s Cave into a cinema, where we could each view every film without the burden of popular opinion weighing down on us. However, that’s not quite possible.

And so, knowing the majority opinion, it’s interesting how we respond to it. Most writers would argue that they don’t pay it any heed, and to a certain extent that’s true – it’s the fairest way to write, paying no attention to the majority. And yet, as I find myself enjoying a film that everybody else hated (The Three Musketeers), or hating a film everybody else loved (Avatar), I do wonder a bit why that is.  I wonder why my own opinion is relatively far off the base, and if I’m being “eccentric”, to use a polite word. I wouldn’t dare to say that I second-guess myself, but I do contemplate it a bit.

Na'vi blue...

Don’t get me wrong. As I noted above, everybody must form their own opinion. What’s the point in watching a film if you’re just going to echo everybody’s else’s sentiment? I subscribe to the idea that film is a subjective artform and that everybody can make their own sense of everything. Some of the most passionate and thoughtful articles I have ever read on film espouse opinions sometimes directly opposed to my own, but they’re valuable precisely because they provide a different perspective. I hope that somebody might think the same of my own writing, even if they disagree vehemently with my position.

I am always amazed by some of the responses to my reviews from commentators who hold different opinions – I welcome debate and discussion, but there seems to be an unnatural amount of vitriol in some of the comments. You would almost have sworn that, by daring to hold a position different from their own, that I had somehow killed a relative or beloved childhood pet. I never understood how daring to have a position different from the majority (or even an individual) could provoke so angry a response. After all, what good is anybody’s opinion if it can’t withstand the articulation of a point in opposition?

50/50...

Of course, at this point, I should probably clarify that while opinion is subjective and personal, I do take exception to those with an ill-informed opinion. For example, my issue with Armond White isn’t that he’s wilfully contrarian, it’s the fact that he doesn’t appear to pay any attention to the films he likes to lambast. Consider his infamous review of Toy Story 3:

The toys wage battle with the daycare center’s cynical veteran cast-offs: Hamm the Piggy Bank pig, Lotsa Hugs and Big Baby.

The obvious point being that Hamm is one of the good guys. (The lesser being that the bad guy is Lotso Huggin’.) I tend to dislike White not because he holds controversial decisions, but because he’s consciously adversarial towards other critics and viewers who don’t share his opinions, working off the assumption that everybody who doesn’t agree with him is a moron. That’s an attitude that I find objectionable, and – to be frank – I find it hard to believe that White isn’t cynically setting himself up as contrarian in order to garner more attention.

Gun to my head, I kinda like The Three Musketeers...

Still, while I don’t let the majority inform my opinion of a given film, I’d by lying if I didn’t concede that it changes the way that I write my commentary. Of course, I try to justify every opinion I hold on a given film, no matter how mundane or insane it might be, but it feels as if pressing against the majority requires a higher standard of proof. It’s as if the majority opinion almost sets a higher threshold for my argument, which I have to rise to meet. Of course, in an ideal world, every argument would receive every ounce of passion that we have, but the reality of the situation is that we have to pick and choose our battles.

Indeed, it’s almost as if I imagine I’m addressing the majority when committing my opinion. Odds are, after all, that the reader is probably a part of it. It’s the reader who I have to convince with my opinion, if I can be said to convince anyone, and I can’t claim to write for absolutely everybody. There are going to be those who will agree with me, and those who will disagree with me no matter the opinion. And, publishing on a public forum like a blog, I can’t target my audience and – truth be told – I wouldn’t want to target my blog. Ideally anybody could read this and like it, regardless of whether they’re somebody killing time on the internet, or a die-hard cinephile.

No prompting!

Either way, I feel it’s fair to assume that the average reader is either familiar with, or holds, the majority opinion, and that’s a fair starting point. Unless I’m among the very first to see a given film, in which case there is no solidified opinion, I often find it reasonable to work from that perspective. And we have to start somewhere.

In this era of Rotten Tomatoes and instant publication and dissemination of internet opinions, it’s hard not to be mindful of how the majority have spoken and what they have said about a particular film. In the end, my opinion is my own, but you do need to listen if you plan to enter any sort of dialogue.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: armond white, films, fresh, J Edgar, majority, Majority opinion, Movie, Movies, Opinion, Piggy Bank, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, reviews, rotten, rotten tomatoes, toy story 3, United States |