Life As An "Aspirational" Cineaste

Not too long ago, there was a tiff between film critic Dan Kois and the New York Times film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott. Kois threw down the gauntlet with his article “Reaching for Culture That Remains Stubbornly Above My Grasp” in the May 1 issue of the New York Times Magazine. Kois posited that watching longer, “boring” films like Tartovsky’s Solaris or Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff is just intellectual heavy-lifting, comparing it to a child’s self-imposed vegetable consumption. (“It’s for my own good, right?”) 

Kois explains how he has tried and tried—watched and watched again these long, meditative films—but they don’t get through to him nor he to them. He has tired of the attempts. He questions himself: “…Am I actually moved [by Meek’s Cutoff]? Or am I responding to the rhythms of emotionally affecting cinema? Am I laughing because I get the jokes or because I know what jokes sound like?” He cannot help but suspect that his deep-seated appreciation of these films is borne out of a cultural expectation rather than the any intrinsic artfulness of the film itself. 

The two-pronged rebuttal to Kois was written by Dargis and Scott and published June 3. (I tweeted the article the day after it came out—thanks to someone who posted it on my Facebook wall.) Scott and Dargis’s article, “In Defense of the Slow and Boring,” took on Kois’s complaints.

Dargis argues that long films “take time away even as they restore a sense of duration, of time and life passing.” She points out that one’s “mind may wander…[but] it will come back [and] in wandering there can be revelation.” I’m surprised that she did not pick on Kois for his discussion of Meek’s Cutoff, in which Kois noted, “[the film] affected me viscerally, and I’ve found myself thinking about it over and over since.” Reichardt, it’s safe to say, did not have entertainment in mind when she was making the film. But I’d be willing to bet she was hoping to affect the audience in exactly the way she affected Kois—who “[thought] about it over and over” since seeing it.

[More recently, the three critics were featured in a roundtable discussion available here on nytimes.com, published in the June 17 issue of the Times. (You should read this—it’s fantastic.)]

~

My concern in this discussion, however, boils down to the stack of DVDs sitting across the room from me. They are, in the word that Dan Kois uses frequently throughout the roundtable discussion, “aspirational” films. I’d like to watch them because…well…I feel as if I should. As someone who considers himself a young cineaste, I tell myself that it’s necessary to sit back and…*cough*…“enjoy” films like Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (both parts! gasp!), and Tartovsky’s Andrei Rublev (the same Tartovsky Kois finds problematic). 

And yet they sit across the room still unwatched. 

As much as I love A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, I must admit that I share some feelings with Dan Kois on this one. Knowing ahead of time that these films will be somewhat of a workout, it’s hard to want to sit down and watch one (and probably alone at that…good luck getting friends or family to watch one with me). Needless to say, I tell myself I’ll do it but usually end up returning them to the library unwatched.

Occasionally, I’ll sit back and watch one—Last Year at Marienbad (after hearing that Inception was similar to it…a misleading claim) or Tati’s Trafic (certainly not a “boring” film of the Kois strain and also one of the most entertaining films I’ve ever seen). But more often than not, I return the films without even a glimpse at them.

I wonder if, in the course of their discussion, these critics ever considered how the very nature of their job asks of them, even sometimes requires of them, to watch some of these films. Whether or not they liked it, one of the Times film critics was going to sit down in a theater and see Meek’s Cutoff. Another would see The Tree of Life. My point is that their profession inescapably revolves around films and seeing films. I don’t have that luxury. I have other things to do other than see these films—I’m never on assignment to sit down and watch them. Although sometimes I wish it were so. 

All I’m saying is that if you catch me returning Alexander Nevsky, just let it go—I’m no A.O. Scott.