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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Role of the film critic

22:30 / 03.03.03

There's been a Tarkovsky retrospective recently, which has brought to mind the ongoing question of the proper role of the film critic. Tark is a particularly possessive filmmaker. He claims on one hand that the doesn't want people reading too much into his films, he insists that they should be taken just as they are, and on the other hand his films are rife with symbolism, What should critics seek to do? Unearth the auteur's meaning? Or read against the grain of the film, and find something serendipitious there, that very a possessive filmmaker might perhaps not have wanted to see?

02:00 / 04.03.03

'Think of it like a sunset.'

Well, yeah, but it's more interesting when opened to public domain, and interpretations are drawn, I reckon. Mind you I've never seen a Tarkovsky film, and some music does not incline me toward anything other than simply experiencing it.

But music doesn't have narrative, at all, if it's wordless.

The Return Of Rothkoid

04:33 / 04.03.03

But music doesn't have narrative, at all, if it's wordless.
Taking the range of classical music as an example, I'd just like to say bollocks. Take the ubiquitous Four Seasons by Vivaldi (or Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, or...) - you're claiming that there's no narrative there?

What about silent films - are they devoid of narrative too?

I think critics are merely doing what viewers of a film do themselves - they just have a wider audience for spreading their take on a film. Be it paper or pub afterwards, people will generally give their own view on something if asked - this is an unavoidable fact of putting something out in public. Which I think has been dug over in a head-shoppy way a number of times before...