reviews and what to think

Reviews. Not an easy subject, but I am pleased to have been asked these questions.

I have been dogged my entire life by 'mixed' reviews. In other words, some critics like the work, others don't, sometimes violently so. I tend to hold to the Kipling paraphrase, that success and failure are the twin impostors. Should I cheer and raise a celebratory glass in happiness if an authoritative stranger loves what I have done and says so in print? If so, then logically should I beat my breast and howl if another equally authoritative stranger berates me and what I have done and lets the world know that my work was an affront?

I suppose the first step out of such confusion is to eliminate the idea that any review represents an objective truth. This fact becomes clear with time. Look back at a review written some years ago and you see primarily a portrait of its writer, not of the film. The second illusion to eliminate is the idea that, for the most part, any film review is written with anything even faintly resembling the care, devotion, and time that was given to the work being written about. Reviews are often tossed off in an evening or less, by someone tired and overloaded; perhaps it was the fourth or fifth film of the day. One sometimes gets the whiff of exhausted envy (why am I sitting here writing about this film? Why is it not my name in the credits?). And I know from experience how many of the critics simply paraphrase the first review to come out (usually in the most mainstream trade press, Variety or Screen International). It seems to be much harder to stick your neck out to praise than to follow the tide of negativity, if it has started that way. it is a kind of pack mentality.
And we live in a time of journalism which is steeped in cynicism; the addictive and easy pleasure of the lashing tongue, the desire to appear clever through linguistic demolition.

When I visited the Soviet Union in the nineteen-eighties and nineties I was fortunate to meet several erudite and brilliant film critics. I learned that under the old system they had studied at film-school alongside filmmakers. The course was as long, the study as hard. It was a respected profession and the critics became excellent writers, extremely knowledgeable about cinematic history and with a good grounded understanding of the processes of filmmaking. Criticism was creation, not judgement. One felt uplifted by the writing (Maya Tourovskaya on Tarkovsky, for example), not depressed by it. There was none of that slightly bitter taste in the mouth left after reading a review in the Sunday papers, variously sarcastic or sycophantic.

There are some brilliant exceptions to this rather depressing portrait of the average critic, of course, and it is a pleasure to read them. But in answer to your question, I try not to read reviews of my own work any more (though I am always tempted by the good ones when I get wind of them). I get friends to write a report of the content, those for and those against. The reason for this is that some critics have focused on me, rather than the work, in a form of ill-disguised personal attack, and one remembers such things more than they deserve to be remembered. There is a humiliating kind of negative imprint in a public personal attack which is hard to shake off, even if at some level it means that something in the work must have 'hit home'; especially when you know the work has come from a place of love.
Anyway, instead of reading such material, which has a random and anonymous quality to it, I get the gist and then seek out people I deeply respect for their views and ask them to be brutally honest. A considered criticism given with love is of immense value.

And i have also traveled with my films around the world and listened to the reactions of audiences, which i have always found to be educational in the most profound sense. The audience becomes your teacher in a Q and A as you try to decipher their complex and sometimes opaque questions and responses; the form of dialogue means that even a negative baffled reaction can be used and transformed for the benefit of everyone in the room.

A phenomenon I have observed amongst film students and others is a real fear of criticism. It can be paralysing. For some people it stops them working at all. I have repeatedly tried to help, for it seems to be a skill one must develop in order to survive as a filmmaker, or indeed as any kind of artist. We live in a culture of discouragement, but an artist cannot wait for a mythical 'support' to keep going. We must build an inner resilience that is founded not on denial of our painful inadequacies but on a belief in the value of the endeavour. At times when trying to help i have felt myself to be at the most a quarter of an inch ahead in this process. i am as vulnerable as the next person, and need to keep my heart open in order to do the work I do; to become cynical myself would kill something at the core.

The only meaningful way to consider what a film has done, how it has worked on the collective psyche, is to take the longest and widest view possible. The immediate first flush of critical reaction is not necessarily a valid measure. In what political and historical context has the film been made? What are the cinematic reference points? And who, in the end, does it seem it was made for? This is a journey full of surprises. I have been delightfully surprised myself by reactions to my films that have emerged sporadically on this site many years after the films were made and the original reviews, both positive and negative, have long been forgotten.

We work for strangers and may never see their faces, but must trust that the message in the bottle thrown out into the wind from a ship in a storm of confusion will eventually reach its destination.