Reading, Watching, Listening 10/18/2024
A few words about stridency
I went to a movie last night. What else is new? It was a special screening of a film that’s getting a lot of acclaim, based on a related work by the filmmaker, which also received a lot of acclaim. I don’t feel like giving the name of the film because it’s really not important. You might already know the one I mean, and it’s not actually that difficult to suss it out if you no where to look. Part of the reason I don’t want to name the movie is that I feel a bit like an asshole for not liking it, given how personal the project is and the themes involved.
Our relationship to art is never pure, I’m well aware of this. Maybe too aware, sometimes. I can be forceful in my opinions, but more often, internally, I’m unsure of myself, unpersuaded by my own knowledge and taste. Some of this comes from not having formally studied film, leaving me without some of the go-to references and vocabulary some of my other cinephile friends have. Truth is, though, I feel that slight lack of confidence in most areas of my life, so I don’t think some schooling would’ve fixed that. It does keep me humble about some things, though, like seeing a movie I don’t care for, recognizing that most other people are finding great resonance in it, and accepting that for whatever issue I may have with the work in front of me, my enjoyment is as much a function of myself, if not moreso.
Having taste means being able to discern. Good from bad, primarily, but other qualities, too. I think I’m just more interested in those other qualities, even if it means I end up liking most things I see, like a rube. Which makes me feel like that much more of an asshole when I don’t like something I think I should like—to the extent anyone should like anything, of course. I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing that, either, though the incentives of social media don’t promote the sharing of it. It’s all about stridency out there. Just splattering our opinions out there as forcefully as possible, like we’re at war and our opinions must be defended with the strongest propaganda we’ve got. A weird way of conducting ourselves, if we’re being real. Which is why I won’t name the movie. I didn’t think much of it anyway, so why tell you about that. It’s this feeling that it left me with, the ambivalence about my own attitudes, that I find more interesting. As valid a way of engaging with art as any other, I think.
This week, I published two entries in my Late Eastwood series, coving J. Edgar and Jersey Boys. I’ll be doing a few more next week, in the lead-up to Juror #2.
I also wrote this week about a photography exhibition I saw last weekend at the McMichael gallery, about live for Indigenous communities in Northern Ontario in the ‘50s, which also spurred thoughts about the situation in Gaza and how we understand other people’s humanity.
Reading, Watching, Listening
Saffron Maeve profiled Bette Gordon for Mubi’s Notebook. Saffron, a wonderful critic and programmer here in Toronto, spent nearly two years getting to know Gordon, putting together this long piece about her great life and career. While i have seen Gordon’s film Variety, there is a whole lot more to see, and the profile made me extremely eager to dive in. “To me, Gordon’s practices—from scrap celluloid in film school to nude roadside odysseys, to subverting a dominant gaze via porn and explosives, to assessing warfare, masculinity, and the legal system—are essential to American cinematic thought,” Saffron writes. Convincingly, I might add.
Ta-Nehisi Coates was on Ezra Klein’s podcast last week. I’m still reading through Coates’s new book, The Message, and may have a few words about that down the road, but I thought this particular podcast appearance was something special. No columnist has done a better job covering all angles of the catasrophe unfolding in Gaza thank Klein has in his many interviews since Oct. 7 last year. With Coates, he has a very honest, searching conversation about complexity and simplicity and how we come to form opinions about difficult world issues while maintaining clarity in our moral thinking and imagination. It is well worth a listen.