I enjoy movies. I like to watch them, and I like to think about them. I even like to have discussions about them. But I’ve never written a movie review.Over the years I’ve written several book reviews, and I feel pretty comfortable doing so. After all, I’ve studied literature. I know what I like and what I don’t. I have opinions about what’s working and what’s not. I can speak the language. And if you disagree with me, that’s okay. I can handle it.
But film is different. I’ve always wanted to take a Film as Lit class, but every time one’s been offered during my time as a student, from undergrad to grad, it was always during the time of another class that I absolutely had to have. So, even though I do have opinions about the movies I watch, I’m reluctant to share my judgments. I don’t know film history, I haven’t studied the criticism, I don’t know the specialized vocabulary, and that makes me hesitant. I feel unqualified.
That hasn’t stopped me, though, from watching films, privately forming opinions, and reading film reviews. But I have the same procedure with film reviews that I do with book reviews—I don’t read them until afterwards. I don’t want to be told what to think; I want to experience the movie for myself, make my own discoveries, and form my own opinions.
Right after Thanksgiving I went to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. (I promise, no spoilers.) I think it’s a really good movie, but there were a couple of things that bothered me about it, and something about the movie overall that I kept thinking about but couldn’t quite get to where the unease was leading. I came home and looked up one of my favorite movie critic’s review, and lo and behold, he brought up each of the negative things I’d noticed and answered the question I hadn’t even realized I’d been grappling with.
Our family went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas night, and on the way home I mentioned that something about it reminded me of Forrest Gump. Later I read a review and discovered that both films were written by the same screenwriter. Ah-ha!
The same sort of thing has happened with several movies I’ve watched lately.
Now, I’m not saying that the film critics and I always agree or that I notice everything they do. Far from it—I have a long way to go. I still want to learn more about the field. But my confidence is growing.
1 comment:
I pretty much agree with everything you've said here. Last semester I took a class in Postmodern Aesthetics and a third of the texts were film (the other thirds were lit. and art). I had to give a few presentations on film and it was quite unnerving each time, especially because one of my classmates had gone to film school.
In the end, though, I was very glad to have covered those topics.
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