 I Heart Film Critics Once again I’m confronted by a movie that deserves to be explained, defended or derided based not on my original thoughts (if indeed any exist) but by criticizing the critics and criticism in general, by call and response. The movie is I ♥ Huckabees. My response is defense. The call is the failure of many mainstream critics to think, to ask questions. I ♥ Huckabees is a glorious disaster — glorious like a flood washing things anew for Noah and Co., as written by Vonnegut. The frantic comedy (“screwball a la Preston Sturges,” “heady a la Charlie Kaufman,” “blah blah”) is a mess of intent and re-intent, a stream of consciousness, a meditation in the Zen sense of the word that’s held together by band-aid edits and Jon Brion’s wall-to-wall score. But it’s a mess seeking to mean something. What’s better, it’s David O. Russell’s mess that, in the grander scope of The Movies, shows that difference is thankfully out there amid indifference — and with A-Listers in the cast. Kinda like Three Kings, no? Just what Huckabees seeks to mean or whether it means anything at all are not of issue here; the prize goes to movie daring. Russell allows the yin and yang sides of his coin to coexist, a first offense against the black-and-white of movie protagonists and antagonists. Even when it’s comfortably over, the movie seems to remain in the process of seeking meaning against all odds. |
Some of those odds are film critics. I left the movie wanting to see it again, a desire that Roger Ebert also claimed after his first viewing. It’s not something I’m usually fond of feeling, but in the case of a film as philosophically dense as I ♥ Huckabees, I wanted to delve a little deeper into what Russell has up his sleeve. Ebert, on the other hand, wanted his re-take to make his head stop itching. I was intrigued further by the glorious disaster; Ebert apparently gave up, perplexed even after that second viewing.
When it comes to perplexing movies, I wouldn’t normally argue with the man who wrote both Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. But is the fact that Ebert found Huckabees confusing the fault of the film? Or is it the viewer? Can someone understand a film about seeking the answers if they give up on the questions?
Huckabees has been a critically divisive film. This isn’t readily obvious — it appears to be an “indie” darling among the more pretentious — but it makes sense when you look where some of the critics are coming from: Few would expect Owen Gleiberman of EW (say it: “Ew!”) to enjoy, let alone understand the film, what with its hysteria and soul-searching in a culture of Wal-Mart/Old Navy/EW nothingness. And few should be surprised that the New York Times advertised the film for weeks before its New York opening, that Manohla Dargis gave it a favorable review, or that it gets regular ads on NPR. Nevertheless, it’s a little surprising that, after the Times’ love affair with the film, other bobo pubs balked. David Edelstein titled his screed “I Hate Huckabees,” while David Denby described the film as a “disaster,” though almost in the same affectionate way I have (almost, but not quite). Are these all really divisive and final verdicts, though? Again, the fault of whom?
Then there’s this oddity from David Ansen: “Unlike Altman or Scorsese, who have instantly recognizable styles, David O. Russell never takes you to the same place twice.” As if that’s a bad thing. Or as if Altman and Scorsese have had the same “style” for their entire careers; each of them has directed more than two or more films for every year of Russell’s life. Quibbling aside, however, Ansen leaves us with this thought-provoking (read: head-scratching) wisdom: “Ultimately, Huckabees doesn’t work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of ‘failure’ we could use plenty more of.”
Questions, Grasshopper. This is precisely the point. Or not. Or maybe. After all, “review” does mean to view again. Maybe more critics should do just that.
Various critics complain that I ♥ Huckabees favors philosophy to emotion or psychology (Edelstein among others). Yet — another question here — are these traits really disconnected? See also: Dustin Hoffman’s blanket theory, and remember that Freudian psychology is in Hollywood’s eyes merely pop philosophy, a method of explaining the hows and whys of a characters’ emotions. Additionally, there are the typical grievances critics harp on for the benefit of their readership’s lowest common denominator: too many characters, too many ideas, too much dialogue, a great cast but my God, I just don’t get it! To that last one, I ask, Have you tried? Or, Those problems are meaningless (though I deny being a Caterine Vauban-trained nihilist).
Cue the soapbox: Whether or not an audience’s reaction has to do with its audience’s flippant approach to watching a movie seems beyond most critics. Most critics, many of whom pride themselves as our surrogate audience, feel better placing blame on the film, or the most prominent name in its credits, rather than a lazy audience. It’s a conceit that breeds an irresponsible audience and thus irresponsible surrogate audiences. Because, you see, I ♥ Huckabees demands attention and thought. We aren’t expected to pay $10 for that.
Or so they want us to think. Thoughtless criticism — wholesale answers like “too many characters,” or my personal favorite, “boring” — is counterproductive, particularly when critics have been faced with a film that, despite faults, has thought behind it, demands thought from its audience and, in the end, is about seeking the meaning of life. If the purpose of a film critic is to explain and offer insight into cinema, simply calling a film confusing doesn’t cut the cheese. And it offers little incentive for a reader to consider how movies could possibly be better, how they could evolve as an art form or indeed change someone’s life — holding cinema to a low ideal that should really repulse “movieloving” critics. Simply, simple critics can get cinema stuck in a rut when they should really be helping to keep it out of one.
Even in this climate of bigger, louder and emptier, the critical establishment’s talking point of Charlie Kaufman is not off base. Kaufman has recently become quite successful writing movies that critics laugh at and are content to label “offbeat.” As we all know, success in movies is money, which means popular acceptance, and “offbeat” by definition should not be popular. This should get people thinking: there is something germane in this so called “offbeat,” to this thinking differently. Yet most critics will ignore those possibilities for a treatise on how a movie may make you feel for an hour and a half or so, or how loud it is, or how so-and-so looked better in such-and-such. Which is why it is important to note that New York Press’s oft-cranky Armond White steps to the plate with a label for the type of filmmaker who could be called “offbeat” and still speak to the masses. The term apparently comes from a friend of his: American Eccentric.
I rarely find White’s arguments cogent — as I’m sure he’d just love mine — but I am still compelled to read him and now want to get to know his friend. White classifies Russell as an American Eccentric alongside “Wes and P.T. Anderson, Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, Sofia Coppola and others” (to which I would add Kaufman), comparing the crew to the renegade brat directors of Hollywood’s hallowed 1970s. Each of the two generations has their respective urge to explore the American experience in the context of pop culture, and they act on that urge via film as an art form. Aside from the specifics of I ♥ Huckabees‘ philosophy, Russell’s approach of making a film with thoughtful intent (and thoughtful content), a film that demands attention and almost demands further viewing, is revolutionary during Hollywood’s current saccharine slump. If only the word could get out better. Thanks, surrogates.
Philosophies come and go and mutate and get recycled. Yet, in the evolution of our cinema, an art that AFI loves to remind us is only about 100 years old, having the cajones to spur an audience into head scratching is a good thing. Film critics should scratch on that.
