Karina on SpoutBlog

On Friday evening at SilverDocs, I attended a panel on film criticism moderated by Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, and featuring contributions from critics David Edelstein, Lisa Schwarzbaum and Amy Taubin, and filmmaker/documentary programmer Thom Powers. In his opening remarks, Kennicott positioned the panel as a referendum of sorts on “Wanted: Documentary Critics”, a blog post by Powers in which he posed the question, “Auteurism had Andrew Sarris. Abstract expressionism had Clement Greenberg. Punk rock had Lester Bangs. Where is the equivalent voice for today’s documentary scene?” I was surprised that the conversation that ensued mostly skirted the issue of “where” contemporary documentary film will find its defining critic, and was instead weighed down by argument as to whether or not this is a valid question at all.

First, Powers clarified his position. “There’s been this growth of documentary film, and the old style method of covering it is no longer quite adequate,” he said. “Sitting up here on this panel, I have tremendous respect for what everyone is doing…When I talk about criticism I’m not saying that we need more people to give two thumbs up to documentary film. We need more rigorous analysis of this important part of our culture, that is playing more of a role in how we see the world.”

Edelstein and Schwarzbaum, the panel’s two weekly film critics, then discussed some of the challenges inherent to writing about nonfiction films. After Powers praised his review of Food, Inc as a work of advocacy, Edelstein admitted that he found it frustrating to write about a film like that, despite his admiration for it, because of what he called the similarity to “book reviewing” — relating the facts central to the film’s argument, he said, gets in the way of his writing style. “I’m usually too pretentious to do that,” he said, in the first of a series of self-deprecating remarks.

Shortly thereafter, Amy Taubin brought the talk back to Powers’ piece, stating her belief that the documentary ecosystem needs “specialized critics” who understand “documentary language.” The weekly mag critics disagreed, insisting that it’s the job of any critic to be able to read any film.  Edelstein, again, brought the problems of the entire subculture down to a mea culpa: “I don’t get to these films, or I don’t treat them with as much depth as I should. I want to be better.” Powers, again implying that it was never his intention to accuse general critics of shirking their responsibilities, responded, “One impetus for my essay was that there’s a lot going on in documentary that goes unnoticed. A specialist can give [these films] more brain space.”

Taubin argued that what the doc world needs is someone like Jonas Mekas, who singlehandedly created interest in American experimental film by writing passionately from inside that world, “not caring about conflict of interest.” But as Powers noted, the politics of the contemporary indie film scene are such that anyone with an investment in the making, curating, buying and/or selling of pictures cannot afford to write honestly about them for fear of souring relationships. This takes Powers himself off the list for potential documentary film criticism saviors; it would also eliminate many top shelf documentary bloggers, including filmmaker AJ Schnack and producer Pamela Cohn.

What, then, of the independent voices left on the web? As on most film criticism panels starring print critics, the topic of the internet was broached somewhat superficially. Both Edelstein and Schwarzbaum made comments to the effect that the web’s greatest strength is its unlimited space, with the former animatedly explaining that his editor at New York Magazine publishes “directors cuts” of his film reviews online, after they’ve been shortened for the print version. The panelists touched on that common frustration: what with all the things on the internet, how do you know how to find what’s good? Taubin expressed skepticism that there’s anything good to find. “Until you have someone with a real voice, who can attract attention,” she said, “There’s just a lot of people writing all over the place on blogs.”

But is the problem really that there are no standout voices, or is it that there is no massive cultural sign post behind them — as Sarris and Mekas had in the Village Voice, as Lester Bangs had in Rolling Stone and Creem — to tell people where to find them? The lack of institutions drawing attention to interesting film writing is indeed crippling criticism as both profession an cultural process. However, as the problem of “how to find things on the internet” is not one that seems to afflict those who participate regularly in the give and take of internet culture, I wonder if the remedy to that part of the equation could be as simple as showing up.

As a working critic sitting in the audience — one who, like Edelstein, would like to “be better” — I walked away frustrated that it seemed the real issues were being obscured by fear, can’ts, a lack of interest in taking chances. It doesn’t seem that subversive to suggest that the system of public discourse around documentary film is not working as well as it could, but there’s obviously a resistance to Powers’ proposed fix. If one critic became well-known for writing about documentary film, and thus helped to make individual films better known by giving them more attention and deeper analysis, could that change the landscape in such an earthshattering way that it would have a negative impact on the lives and livelihoods of non-specialist critics? I fail to see how it could have a negative impact on anything at all. I also fail to see how any critic writing about anything could become well-known at all in a media environment that’s collapsing brick by brick. It would be nice to have a conversation about how to give criticism more and larger platforms, rather than get bogged down in debate as to whether certain types of critics should exist at all.