Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do
iView Author: Josyula Srikant (Los Angeles, USA)
Email: jsrikant [at] gmail.com
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do- (B. Franklin)
Movie critics should not be a paid profession. How can one get paid for passing a judgment on someone? It just doesn’t make sense. Someone makes a movie. He puts a lot of work in to it. At least the guy is producing some tangible output. What’s the output for of criticism? Nothing. Does that mean we should keep our opinions to ourselves? Not really. But I don’t get the commercial aspect of it. Think about it, what qualification does one need to start criticizing. One does it based on his/her taste which is very relative.
Some of critics don’t make sense at all. The guy will go on first telling you the story of the movie and then say something like “ahh well the movie will do go in metros…the masses wont like them…” They also go as far as telling you what to do to like the movie like “don’t expect great action, don’t expect great direction, you will enjoy this movie thoroughly if seen with the family”. They might as well tell me how long and at what intensity I should shoot my piss in to the pot during the break while at it, for me to like the movie more.
.
I don’t say we don’t need critics we do. I mean I do. I have a few friends who I would discuss the movie with. People who share my vision of cinema and movie making. But that’s about it. I just don’t get the critics mania at all. After the movie comes out the first thing people say is “did you check the reviews man. They say it’s pretty good”. And our India mind is so fickle and gullible that it will be biased in a second.
The whole freaking critics business has just gone to dogs man. Who makes these people, I don’t get it. One day the guy will bash a decent movie and another day he will appreciate the same type of movie. I don’t get it. I mean does he see something written on my face (like I am an idiot). How can one be so obvious about it?
According to me a critic should clearly start with a disclaimer that tastes are relative. Someone calling a movie bad doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad and vice versa. A critic should clearly mention what he liked and disliked and most importantly why. He should be consistent with his previous statements and reviews thereby developing a pattern in line with his taste. In case he is not able to do so he should be aware of it and clearly mention what made him change his mind. A critic must be extremely honest because you are talking about someone’s work. Someone who may have dreamt about it for years and worked on it till his shit got dry. Last but not the least a critic should never ever get paid. Period.
Am I talking about some guy in a utopian world? Maybe I am. My heart goes out for all those people who have or will have to undergo somebody’s judgment who doesn’t know shit about movies, movie making and especially the critics business and who looks at it as a another way of making some money. You might say it below the belt but only one word comes to mind “parasite”.
Tags: criticism, film critic
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I second ur thoughts…. After all Benjamin Franklin was right :D
Ironically you are also criticizing critics…
Srikant,
1. Thanda paani pi.(Drink cold water)
2. Count 20-1 backwards.
3. Read some Champak jokes!
What do you have to say about someone like Roger Ebert?
Curious…
are u kidding me? it’s not easy to be a good critic. i know there are many bad ones (and most indian critics are absolute garbage) but the good ones have great knowledge about cinema both in its form and content. there are tons of movies out there and i certainly need to rely on someone to watch all of them and recommend me the good ones. since not everyone has the time or the talent to sit through all the shit that comes out every friday, the ones who are willing need to get paid to endure this torture. a good critic should be able to deconstruct a movie and analyze it in parts and as a whole. equally important is his eloquence. he should be able to transfer his ideas verbally or on paper to his audience. roger ebert (in his earlier days) is a fine example of a great critic. he gives every movie a fair chance, and most of the time i end up liking the movies he liked. i discovered a lot of good cinema because of professional critics. eg- chinatown, ghost world, kagaz ke phool, sahib bibi aur ghulam, monsoon wedding, fargo etc. i understand your frustration, but come on. being a good critic is tough and they deserve to get paid.
absolutely agree papaji. dismissing the entire fraternity of critics so nonchalantly is just not fair.
srikant – all saints?
@Srikant
Your write-up holds true only for Indian Critics,I have lived in Hollywood,Los Angeles ,i must confess you should meet some of the brilliant critics out there since u r there now, it will change your whole perception of CRITICISM, trust me on this !!!
GK
Movie critics are needed to let the world know about the movies. For a person like me, who rarely goes to movies FDFS, it is the reviews that give me an idea about the movies. Yeah the revus suck, but at least i have some basic idea of the movie. For eg, the revus on movie Surya S/O Krishnan( Vaaranam Ayiram in Tamil) were critical, but somehow i liked the story and watched it.
It is because of movie critics, that i have been exposed to movies like Taxi Driver, The Shawshank Redemption, The Insider, Glen Garry Glen Ross which otherwise never found a theatrical release in my place. I
I agree with you that most of the Indian movie critics suck big time. But there are critics like Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli, whose reviews i follow religiously, though at times, i dont agree with their views, especially JB’s review on Heat, one of my fav movies, which he just trashed.
It just doesnt confine to movies but to each and every field. Each and every one comments on Sachin when most of the people cant even jog properly. Business, Politics..everything is same. The underline point in today’s world is money. Everything is commercial. Period. And it is just not in India. It is everywhere. All across the globe and in USA itz big tyme. (Katrina was one of the many classic examples and presently Obama).
I know i have deviated from the topic but just trying to drive your attention to way we are living.
Srikant-
Yes a lot of critics go overboard – you are right about it.But asking as to how can a movie critic be paid for writing a review is way too much I think.Critics are there in all fields & most of them do it as their job- so that doesnt mean we say that it shouldnt exist as a profession.Rather we should stand up & demand better work from these critics.if you are doing it- I’m with you.
How would you react if someone would talk the same about say your profession?Would you just let it go?
everyone has undergo others judgment,if someone escapes it then he cant manage to excel in any area of ART
here is the commercial aspect ,a movie ticket costs 200 bucks + 60 popcorn/burger/coke ,and after that if I come out of the theater dejected that’s 260 bucks wasted, so if there are 1000 people like me watching 10 movies then that’s 260 X 1000 X 10= 26,00,000 Rs.
so it makes sense to pay a good reviewer say 26k per movie (assuming 1 reviewer for 1k people) and get a good opinion ,even if by probability he makes a correct judgement 50% of the times ,that’s 13,00,000 Rs saved against 260k wasted.
Its interesting that you wrote this today.
I read a very interesting quote few hours back –
” Critics are people who come after the battle is over & shoot the Wounded”
” Critics are people who come after the battle is over & shoot the Wounded”
I am of the opinion that only a film maker who has consistently delivered movies that are in the range of what one would call very goods to excellent, has the moral right to criticize movies make by others.
I mean we’ve seems what garbage some of the so called critics come out with, when they actually attempt to make a movie…
1st thing first
I agree with the famous statemnt “u sud only critique a movie that u liked” rest sud just be left with “i didn’t like it”………..
The way some of the critics do it puts the Reality Tv participants to shame…… i mean such harsh words………equally baffling is the statemnt by some film makers who will belittle or abuse the critics. If u can’t stand each other Just Avoid Thm and not Just Abuse Thm……. whatever you do plz spare us the agony …..we have heard too much of bullshit by our hon. politicians, reality tv divas.
Hope the esteem readers/writers of the site dont abuse me [:)]
I am sure there are critics in most professions. I am not talking about technical fields. Movie making is an art form in my opinion and we all know beauty of the art lies in the eye of the beholder. I personally like dark movies. I know a few good friends who would die for cheesy romance or slapstick humor. We all are entitled to our opinions and tastes. I also agree that the critics I LIKE help me a great deal in increasing my exposure to a lot of movies. Everyone has a critic in him. We all are opinionated. The sad part is when it gets commercial or if a critic becomes bigger than the medium itself. He tends to become powerful. No one should be presented with that kind of a platform where he or she can make or break your movie. I don’t think anyone should have a moral high ground when it comes to it. This is not some kind of philosophy. Critics are very important to movie industry. Sadly in Hindi cinema stars have become bigger than the medium. I don’t want the critics to head in the same direction. But stars do put in their hard work. What do critics do frankly? Just like Mainak pointed out they just wait for the movies to come out so that they can give their valued opinion. Almost all of us who write on PFC are in some way or the other critics. Frankly I would any day come to this site to get the feel about movies that to go to a profession critic. The only thing that motivates people to write on blogs like this is the love for movies. Also you are exposed to all kind of views. This kind of exposure has only made me appreciate a lot of movies I quite didn’t like the first time watching them.
@Srikant
But that is the beauty of CINEMA where you discover new meanings after every repeated viewings,YEAR AFTER YEAR ,that is power of this art medium,CRITICS the worldover and us will remain the same, at the end CINEMA SHOULD WIN and not the maker who made it or the critic who gave it a turkey or A 5star rating !!!
GK
Well, there sure are some bad ones, and I mean really bad ones…actually most of them are very bad but then you have people like Roger Egbert and even Rajeev Masand (to an extent) who watch the movie in its true spirit and then do what they have to. That is a real critic…you cannot compare one genre with the other…one sensibility with the other…you, am sure, read a lot of stuff on indiafm…forget about bollywood…for hollywood, you have Roger Egbert…please do go thru his stuff and write a sequel to this post!
I would dare say that even Raja Sen is good…though his rating mostly doesn’t match with his analysis
He gave SiK 3.5, and American Gangster just 3!
The idea of having critics is good in theory. An expert conversant with all aspects of a particular art, having a great exposure to the art to separate good from ordinary and having a very good taste guiding us in appreciating that piece of art or explaining why it is not such a good work …… sounds great! But what we get instead (barring a miniscule population of Rajeev Masand types) is the absolutely ordinary people with heavy biases who are reviewing movies to please their friends in the industry and who cannot be called experts by any stretch of imagination. eg – Mayank Shekhar of Mumbai Mirror or Khalid (Khadus) Mohammad of HT etc.