In this digital age, if you have a smartphone, internet and twitter – congratulations, you can be a critic!
Film criticism, in particular, has degraded from established critics reviewing the entertainment and emotional value of films to mass ratings on sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. The noise of the mass is drowning out genuine critics that give insight to the director’s thought process or the narrative’s underlying themes, bringing to attention details that casual viewers might’ve missed.
In an ideal world, there needs to be a balance between appreciation of the cinema we watch and constructive feedback for its improvement. Sadly, that’s not the case.
Film critics these days seem to focus less on the technical and plot of the film and more on who’s acting in it and who’s directing. A common complaint against film critics is that they focus on the trivial aspects of the film without ever having gone through the process of filmmaking themselves.
So what if film critics directed films?
Let’s analyze if these connoisseurs of cinema could walk a mile in a director’s shoes and make a film. This isn’t to dispute the fact that the job critics do isn’t important but instead highlight the practicalities of making a film and the challenges involved.
Theoretically, an esteemed critic would be well versed with the technical aspects of filmmaking and would know all the right shots to take and details to capture while shooting a scene. They would also have knowledge of the various sub-plots and overarching themes that writers would need to focus on to make a crisp storyline and engage the audiences. Finally, they would also be able to guide actors regarding their performance and point out all the areas where they can improve, pushing them just enough to get their best.
The most renowned film critics in the world might have the best technical understanding of cinema and its nitty-gritty details but when you start making a film; add locations, unpredictable weather conditions, actors’ squabbles, production constraints among various other factors to it and the ideal film you have in mind soon starts disappearing into thin air.
It’s not easy to execute hypothetical theories into practice and sometimes critics forget to take a step back and look at the whole picture (pun not intended) which can make their reviews hard to digest.
Until the Sun rises in the West, critics will do what they do best – criticize. And one can only hope that the nuances of a film’s essence aren’t lost in the pandemonium of predictable biases and the reductive formula of ratings.
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