Cannes Reviewing

I've been reading across many of the review sites covering Cannes, and I have to say, I think the quality of the reviewing is fairly appalling. Not too many James Agees out there! By the second or third day of the festival, many critics seemed fatigued by the whole business. Jadedness, a "been there, down that" tone, is not a very attractive quality in a writer; and alas for them, a number of these guys have it down. (I say "guys" because it doesn't seem that there are many women covering this event. That bothers me a tad more than the lack of women directors in the Main Comp, since I can't think of any excuses for it.)

The Letras de Cine crowd -- the European critics, but also other internationally-oriented writers such as Gabe Klinger and Mark Peranson -- seem to view their function as assessing a director's standing in the current cinematic stock market. (Mike D'Angelo runs his own little exchange, but he gives you the same feeling: "After despising the first two films directed by Carlos Reygadas, his third, Silent Light, landed in my top ten for the entire decade." His stock went up! Strike up the band!) I don't get any sense at all from them of the encounter between a person and a work of art. That's why I reference Agee above; as much as any film critic I can think of, he was humble before the screen. He could be scathing about what he had seen, but that was only after he had given it a shot; and he was much more interested in the cinematic experience than in the cinematic marketplace of money or reputation.

POSTSCRIPT: I laughed out loud at a commenter on D'Angelo's posts who wrote, "Critics tend to always grouse like this about festivals. 'Oh, its so damned hard to see three or four movies in a day and blurb about them.' Oh yes, some also complain about the weather, their hotel, the food, or having to *shudder* walk from screening to screening and wait in long lines. Whatever. Go dig ditches, bitches."

You know, I've had pretty much exactly that thought myself.