Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

Reviews: 50 Years in the Making?

Tags: Criticism, Harry Potter, American Beauty

A friend and I were talking, and he mentioned to me a paraphrase of a quote that says something to the effect of “You have to wait 50 years before you can write history.” Maybe some of you know the actual quote or saying or notion, but the idea is that it takes 50 years after an event to have enough objectivity and distance to truly see what went on and how everyone should feel about it (which is why I keep telling people that they are not looking at films like United 93 or World Trade Center objectively. I really believe if United 93 was about a different event, it wouldn’t have garnered nearly as much praise).

Now, the reason my friend brought this up was because we were talking about Lady in the Water, and my post about the film in which I seemingly made a 180 on my stance. I still believe the film is too flawed, but I also believe I may have had a knee-jerk reaction the first time I reviewed it; I couldn’t get past certain elements until the second viewing. I’ve noticed this about some of my reviews: looking back at them, I realize I may have reacted too quickly in one direction or another.

So lately I’ve found myself reviewing movies after having seen them more than once, the reason simply being that I forgot the movie the first time around and needed a refresher for the review. But this brings me up to date. Opening night at midnight, I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’m a huge fan of the series (film and book), but I found myself walking out of the theater not sure at all of how I felt about the film; I know I didn’t like certain things and loved other things, but overall I couldn’t gauge how I felt. I had already planned on watching the film a second time, but now I’m thinking it’s an even better idea.

I could very easily post a review of Phoenix, but I fear it would not reflect my true feelings on the film; I have to see it again. And so I wonder, should I be doing this more often? Watching films twice before I review them? Would that be a better way of assessing how I feel about the film? Or should I give myself more distance from it? I remember it took me a month after seeing The Village to realize how I felt about it; before that, I simply couldn’t tell you at all. Do we react way too quickly in our rush to post a review? I don’t want to do that as a (wanna-be) writer, but I know I do. Should we be waiting 50 years to get some distance from these films?

Of course I exaggerate, but I think there’s something to that. Look at American Beauty: eight years ago it was the toast of the country—an Oscar lock despite an earlier release date. And now what do people think? Well, some claim to have hated it all along (a lot of those people are liars), while others say it’s not nearly as good as they thought it was in 1999. Sure, people grow and they see new things as their opinions change, but the fact that a lot of these opinions about American Beauty seem to be coming out around the same time tells me that it’s starting to click with everyone. I attribute this to the passage of Father Time.

I think that’s why it’s good for me to not always focus on reviewing the latest-and-greatest as I had previously hoped (plus, I’ll never be quick enough to get those reviews out there). I like the idea of reviewing older films as well, or films that are part of a project (such as the On Trial series). It allows me to mull over them and see what’s cooking. I’m not going to re-watch every film I see—there are some I wish I hadn’t seen the first time around—but I need to be open to the possibility. I’d rather post a late review than an untruthful one; the only problem is that, too often, I’ve contemplated my thoughts on a film so long that by the time I’ve made up my mind, it’s all been thoroughly covered throughout the blogosphere (such as with Knocked Up).

All this gets me thinking about my Top Ten lists. I look back over them from years past, and I cringe at some choices; a lot of times I felt the pressure to be “cool” and pick the trendy films, and other times I see myself picking films that I didn’t have enough distance from. I had always been a firm believer in not touching my past reviews or Top Ten lists, but now I’m wondering about the latter. Am I posting these things to show how I feel “now” (up-to-date) or “then” (true to the moment it was written)?

I guess “then” would be the answer, seeing how blogs are sort of like diaries; you don’t change past entries, you merely make new ones to replace, revise, or renounce the old ones.