View image Clint Eastwood, a Caucasian American, made a movie about Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima in WW II. How "liberal" of him!
2006 was a big year for stories about the "death of movie criticism" -- which were really just bandwagon-jumping trend pieces about the increasing numbers of studio products that the studios themselves don't deem worthy of the expense of advance critics' screenings. How can this be tied to some mythical decline in the influence of film critics? Have critics ever had the power to sell a stinker to the public? Or to warn a substantial portion of moviegoers away from a bad movie with a monster ad budget, marquee names and/or genre appeal (horror, comedy, action)? Would "You, Me & Dupree" (which was pre-screened for critics) have done substantially better at the box office if it had gotten good reviews? Of course not. Word-of-mouth travels fast.
So, if American film criticism is wounded or dying, it's not because of any publicity department's policies. It's because of the crap some of the critics -- even some of the most reputable -- are writing.
If you want to watch film criticism writhe in agony from a mortal wound, if you want to see critical standards expire pitilessly before your very eyes, you need only read Jonathan Rosenbaum's four-star ("Masterpiece") review of Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" last week:
One reason I wasn't sure what to think of "Letters" the first time I saw it was that I didn't know how it would be received in Japan. I wondered if it would seem accurate to most viewers there. I've since learned that the response has been very favorable and that it's been near the top of the box-office charts since it opened.Critics be warned: Don't form your opinions about a movie until you've checked the box-office charts and the critical and popular reaction from the region in which it is made or set! (I did a Google search for 腐ったトマト, but I couldn't find a Japanese rottentomatoes.com -- what am I to do?)A Japanese film critic and friend, Shigehiko Hasumi, who was around eight years old when the Americans landed on Iwo Jima, admitted to me that even though he likes "Letters From Iwo Jima," he prefers "Flags of Our Fathers." I suspect he prefers it for the same reason I prefer "Letters From Iwo Jima" -- because it tells a less familiar story. (I'll concede that "Flags of Our Fathers" is stylistically more ambitious -- in its exploration of how images are made and turned into emblems -- but that doesn't necessarily make it more successful.) I told Hasumi I worried that "Letters From Iwo Jima" might define the humanity of the Japanese characters only in terms of American traits (a bias I see in spades in "Lost in Translation"), but he assured me the film is true to a "certain Japanese reality." He added that he found the portraits of the pro-American Japanese officers in the film a bit "romantic," comparing them to John Ford's depictions of Confederate officers in such films as "The Horse Soldiers."
If Rosenbaum wanted to include the critical opinions of this "close friend" Shigehiko Hasumi, why didn't he ask him what those opinions were? We learn that Hasumi preferred "Flags of Our Fathers," but Rosenbaum can only "suspect" why. He says Hasumi "assured me that the film is true to a 'certain Japanese reality'" -- but what "certain Japanese reality" might that be? And is there only one?
I share Rosenbaum's concern about films that "might define the humanity of the Japanese characters only in terms of American traits" (but I don't see how it applies to the deliberately jet-lagged, discombobulated, "stranger in a strange land" sensibility of "Lost in Translation" -- which, heaven forbid, was not popular in Japan!) But I don't read Jonathan Rosenbaum to find out how a picture is being received in Japan, or anywhere else. I'd like to know how he sees the movie.
Rosenbaum does allow himself a few opinions of his own:
In essence, Eastwood is saying that the similarities between American and Japanese soldiers in 1944 are more important than the differences. This is a surprisingly liberal position for him to take, and in "Letters" it has the effect of turning the mainly unseen Americans into villains.Does Rosenbaum not get the difference between "villains" and "extras"? This patronizing sentiment (mighty white of ol' Clint to make a movie about the Japs, huh?) reminds me of Sting's sanctimonious "Let's hope the Russians love their children, too." Yeah. Isn't it ironic?
And look at those two sentences again. Is Rosenbaum seriously suggesting that an attempt to show similarities between American and Japanese soldiers is tantamount to painting Americans as "villains" -- which is a "surprisingly liberal" position to take (even though that's transparently Rosenbaum's position/assumption, not Eastwood's)? I've long admired Rosenbaum's writing, but this characterization of "liberalism" sounds more like something Sean Hannity would say.
If the central achievement of "Flags of Our Fathers" and its companion film, "Letters From Iwo Jima," was simply that both movies "humanized" their main characters -- more so than the ones who barely appear onscreen -- that would be a pretty puny accomplishment, don't you think? Hardly worth two whole movies. Wow, how impressive: We learned from "Flags of Our Fathers" that the American soldiers had feelings -- and families! -- and now, turns out, so did some of the Japanese ones, too!
Although some in Japan reportedly still feel it was "daring" to "show the humanity on the Japanese side" (see LA Times story below), that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what the movie is doing. (And I don't pretend to have gotten much deeper in my four-star review of "Letters" for the Chicago Sun-Times and RogerEbert.com last week, either. But I did make an effort.)
But is Eastwood saying the similarities between the Americans and Japanese are "more important than the differences"? I think not. It's not so important in combat that the enemy be viewed as "the villain," just that he be viewed as "The Other." It's already obvious they're the opposition. How do you get soldiers of any nationality to kill other people they don't even know? By objectifying and dehumanizing the "faceless" enemy; by treating The Other as a horde rather than as a group of individuals; by training soldiers to believe they are fighting for a higher cause: Country, God, the Emperor (or, in the case of the Japanese in WW II, all three combined into one). As "Flags of Our Fathers" emphasized, soldiers mainly fight -- moment by moment -- to protect themselves and their comrades, not for abstract ideals. (That feeling of comraderie is not so strongly expressed in "Letters From Iwo Jima." The military and nationalistic culture is fundamentally different that America's. Is that part of the "certain Japanese reality" of which Hasumi assures Rosenbaum? If so, why not elaborate?)
If you want some background on the Japanese reaction to "Letters From Iwo Jima," I recommend this LA Times story by Bruce Wallace:
"The Japanese are aware of their history as invaders but, in general, are not able to look and face that reality," [producer Chihiro Kameyama] said. "The limit in Japanese war films is to portray a fight to protect loved ones. It's not a matter of who fought who. It's what they learn from the experience."Yet many here wonder why a subject with the moral thunder of Iwo Jima has never been the subject of a great Japanese movie. Furthermore, Eastwood built "Letters" around the thoughts and actions of Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, an extraordinary figure little known in Japan. Educated at Harvard and well aware of America's economic and technological superiority, Kuribayashi still devised a brilliant defense of tunnels and traps that turned Iwo Jima into a charnel.
"It's a Japanese trait to not create heroes," said Kiyoshi Endoh, head of the Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans Assn., who advised Eastwood on Japanese perspectives of the battle. "Japan was in total devastation after the war, so in understanding for the feelings of those families who lost members, we couldn't make any movies about heroes."
It may have taken an American director to lift that taboo. Until now, foreigners have criticized Japan for ignoring the war, while simultaneously criticizing it whenever a movie veered from the agreed narrative that requires every Japanese soldier to be portrayed as the brainwashed bayonet of an evil regime.
Even Eastwood's movie, were it not made by an American, would likely have been attacked for daring to show the humanity on the Japanese side.
Yes! Nice analysis, Jim. I posted a link and a bit of Rosenbaum's comments Friday night, but left them without my own comment because a) I kinda wanted to let them stand on their own and see if anyone felt like commenting (no one did!) and b) I was getting tired and wanted to go to bed. But your post goes even further than what I'd thought about, and I consider it a great response to my own unpronounced hesitations about Rosenbaum's comments. I've updated my post with some comments of my own, plus some of yours, and, of course, a link here. Again, thanks for your words, and thanks too for the added slice of perspective from the L.A. Times article, which I suspect is what Rosenbaum was going for. I just wish he didn't come off so wishy-washy in the doing of it.
It's been my unfortunate conclusion these days that Rosenbaum is apparently content to go on being asleep at the switch - to forego the intense scrutiny he usually brought to bear in favour of a haphazard, indifferently argued version of same (i.e. his knee-jerk half-dismissal of "Children of Men") or a veil of (his considerable) intelligence draped over party-line acclaim of certified critical darlings, his reviews of "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Pan's Labyrinth" being his latest, and laziest, examples.
What's particularly troubling to note in his piece on "Iwo Jima" is his evident "conversion" in regards to Eastwood - a shift in thinking that I think has more to do with (here it comes again) laziness rather than concerted critical re-evaluation. Four years ago, Rosenbaum was severely critiquing what he assumed to be the ideological foundations of "Mystic River" (assumptions which I disagreed with, I might add - my own considerable problems with the film came from different directions), and the implications of hailing Eastwood's brand of "classicism" - three films later, Eastwood is suddenly "one of the finest directors alive."
Now, the latter declaration need not necessarily negate the previously voiced concerns, but in Rosenbaum's case those concerns seem to have evaporated entirely. For a critic who once sought to productively problematize the critical and audience reception of films, which is particularly vital in this era of distressingly predictable groupthink (and equally distressingly predictable contrarianism, to return to last week's topic), Rosenbaum's verdicts these days are distressingly unproblematic, in his eyes at least.
Jim!
Here's the weblink for Google Japan... http://www.google.com/intl/ja/
Have fun.
I don't even see Rosenblah's review as a review. I'm not even sure what it is. I imagine that if anyone who is watching a movie is taken out of it by another thought that has nothing to do with the movie, they probably don't like it. And since he opens by admitting that, it pretty much doesn't matter what he says afterwards. He didn't like it enough to be affected by it, so had nothing to say. But a man's gotta get paid. Even a critic.
Andrew: I really don't have any problem with Rosenbaum's opinions -- it's his abdication of logic and personal critical observation that I find disappointing. As for Eastwood, I have a mixed history with this films, too: I think "Unforgiven" is a great, moody film ("re-framing" [in the words of a friend and critic, Kathleen Murphy] the Western -- and Eastwood's career -- not unlike "Flags"/"Letters" do with the tradition of the war movie), but I find "Mystic River" unendurably phony and trite and awful and laughable and despicable and... (sorry -- no room to elaborate here!). "Million Dollar Baby" (as I wrote in early 2005) seems to me a real mixed bag -- containing moments that are heartfelt and poetic alongside moments (and characterizations) that are crashingly tin-eared and cartoonish. (After reading the stories upon which the screenplay was based, I wrote that I thought the movie's worst decisions were "sins of adaptation" by the screenwriter -- one Paul Haggis, with whom I was totally unfamiliar at the time. Then came "Crash"...)
Philip: Thanks. I think you're right. It's not a review, whatever it is. (And my Google reference was really just a joke -- a chance to put "rotten tomatoes" into some English-to-Japanese translation software and see what came out.)
Someone else (Emily Demattia) submitted this comment under Jonathan Rosenbaum's name, but he confirms that he wrote it on his blog (though he is not familiar with the submitter), so I am posting it with that understanding.
Jim Emerson can't even quote me correctly--claiming, for starters, that I called Shigehiko Hasumi a "close friend" (which I never would have done) rather than simply "a friend". He's the former president of Tokyo University as well as one of the best film critics writing anywhere, and I guess I'm guilty of not having browbeaten him for elaborations after he was kind enough to answer my email.
And, for whatever it's worth, according to him, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, far from being "little known in Japan" (as Bruce Wallace is quoted as saying in the L.A. Times, with Emerson's apparent approval), is, along with Baron Nishi, "quite well known by Japanese people." Of course I could have asked Hasumi to elaborate on that statement too, but I didn't--guilty as charged. But I'd rather believe what Hasumi says than what Bruce Wallace says.
JE: I apologize for my mistake. I quoted the piece correctly, but when I referred to it in my response I misread "critic and friend" as "close friend." I've corrected that now.
I can't respond to the contrasting statements about Kuribayashi, from Wallace and Hasumi, because Hasumi's opinion on this subject was not included in Rosenbaum's article.
What a silly, straw-man level exercise to undertake...address some Big Topic... "the death of film criticism", let's say, and use it as an excuse to pile on a colleague for their insufficiently deep review. Bury a reference to your own shallow review (ending with the breathtakingly glib line "Life or death, heroism or folly: It all comes down to which side you're on, and which piece of ground you're occupying, at any given moment in the battle."), to claim you covered your bases, hoping no one will actualy read said review.
Rosenbaum's piece didn't strike me as a detailed review...more a discussion of the film in the context of what the viewing public (in his perception) tends to see, and what (he feels) is different and daring with Letters. That's how he used his column inches, and it's not the first time he's done it.
Taking issue with this approach (and making it your shining example of why current film criticism is "crap") and proclaiming yourself to be a deeper thinker because you felt different things should have been emphasized and explored (and using the unlimited column inches of a blog to do so) is intellectually craven and suspect...but then again, when your cultural referents are rottentomatoes.com, "thumbs up" and Sting, it's not completely surprising.
Jim: it's not Rosenbaum's recent opinions I have a problem with either, but rather (what I view as) the lax and uninspired arguments he's brought to them - lax and uninspired by his standards, at least. Anyway, I don't want to pursue this criticism of a writer I greatly admire much further, not only because it depresses me but because my previous post here somehow wound up at the Chicago Reader site as well, making me look like something of a hit-and-runner.
Max might have been a little harsh, but I agree with him. I like you Jim, love the site - but I think you really did stretch on this one, and really unfairly hammered a colleague in the process.
Jesus, Jim, was that necessary? Disagree with Rosenbaum all you want, but that post really seemed to be a little on the "check out how much of an ignoramus Rosenbaum is." Not cool, Jim.
Wow, Jim, you're still really bitter about Rosenbaum's takedown of "Nashville," aren't you? :)
Here's the problem I see with your critique here, Jim:
"But I don't read Jonathan Rosenbaum to find out how a picture is being received in Japan, or anywhere else. I'd like to know how he sees the movie. "
I think you're guilty of attempting to define film criticism too narrowly here. Instead of a "typical" review, I see Rosenbaum simply taking a different approach: this time talking about the opinions of another critic from a different country who presumably has different viewpoint on the events expressed in the two Eastwood war films.
I don't see how this is an "incorrect" approach to a film review, merely one of many.
YOU might have wanted to read the review soelly to learn about Jonathan's analysis of the film; HE wanted to write something different.
I get letters from readers all the time telling me I made a mistake because I didn't mention such-and-such a point about a movie, because I didn't tell them what the movie was "about," or, my favorite, because I was "too opinionated" and so on. Hey, readers have their rights too, but as the writer, I'm going to write whatever the hell I want to about a movie. Sometimes that will involve mise-en-scene analysis, historical and cultural context, opinions from other critics, or even personal anecdotes if I see fit.
As a great philosopher once said, "You need the right tool for the job, Beavis."
If you've read any of Jonathan's work recently, you know interested he in film's place in the global culture, and his emphasis that context is essential in understanding a movie. One of the things I appreciate most in his reviews is when he admits to the limitations in his own knowledge-set, rather than pretending to be all-knowing.
This kind of review is a natural outgrowth of the work Jonathan has done in books like Movie Wars and Movie Mutations. If it's not your cup of tea, so be it, but I think your attack is way off-base here.
Wow. I'm dumbfounded. "One reason I wasn't sure what to think of "Letters" the first time I saw it was that I didn't know how it would be received in Japan."
You need to check with the Japanese movie-going public before you can proceed with an opinion? Grow a backbone or stop reviewing movies.
Christopher: I'm not bitter (and I stopped beating my wife just yesterday!), but I thought Rosenbaum's review (and he was writing in the context of a four-star review -- double-review, actually -- not a background piece or an essay) was insulting to readers, critics (so, that's double for me), and his dismissive "liberal" comment to be unfathomable. Still, I'm not attacking Rosenbaum, just specifically what he wrote in this piece. As I said, I've long appreciated Rosenbaum's writing, which may be why I reacted so strongly (and angrily) to this review, which I felt represented such a lowering of critical standards. (It would be bad coming from Jeffrey Lyons -- all the more shocking coming from Rosenbaum.) I appreciate your interpretation -- and that may well be what Rosenbaum meant, but it's not what he wrote. His words speak for themselves.
Jim,
At least you're spared the film critic for my local paper, who routinely shows up 15 minutes late for screenings, then writes glib, superficial reviews, giving virtually everything he reviews 2-out-of-four stars. If what Rosenbaum wrote in his Letters review is emblematic of the death of film criticism, his reviews are mummification.