A review of a review

The New Yorker reviewed Les Miserables.

Predictably, it hated it, like every other popular (read nerdy) film that has been produced in the last year or so.

I think it's full of shit. The review is trite, offhand, obsessed with making clever remarks, and gives the impression that the gentleman reviewer took a notepad with him to the theatre, allowed his Inner Editor to come to the fore, and spent the entire time scribbling clever remarks without really watching the film. The result is a disjointed mess that makes the gentleman appear utterly ignorant of French history and of literature as a general field.

As I've rather disagreed with the New Yorker in many respects, over many movies, I do not think that this is unreasonable partisanship on my part. Les Miserables is simply the most recent example, and one that I know very well indeed, as Victor Hugo's book was pretty much the first book I learned how to dissect in a properly literary manner.

The gentleman who wrote the review for the recent movie, on the other hand, shows a complete and startling ignorance of the source material. This is rather distressing; the New Yorker is supposed to be a magazine that is generally well-educated, and Les Miserables, no matter what certain people may have to say about adverbs, is one of the greatest works ever produced in any language, and a piece that even now contains relevant and revolutionary sentiments. It is a view of huge social movements and issues through the eyes of a few; it is a story of small secret deeds of courage and love in dark places; and of quiet deeds of evil in the light. It is a vast, grand allegory with its feet planted in the muck of the streets. So when our gentleman review complains that, "...you can't help wondering if this shift into grandeur has confused his [the director, Tom Hooper] sense of scale. The camera soars on high, the orchestra bellows, and then, whenever someone feels a song coming on, we are hustled in close..." it is clear that he has completely missed the point. He then bemoans the lack of farce, accusing Les Miserables of "inflationary bombast".

What Les Miserables is is of its time. It is a work produced in the nineteenth century, and trying to update it to fit a modern audience's exacting tastes would ruin its charm and beauty. A certain amount of pedantic preaching is to be expected -- do remember, dear reader, that a work published in this period was expected to have some moral material if it was not to be labeled sensationalist. Sensationalism was far more damning then than it is now -- a quick perusal of Little Women should substantiate this nicely. Les Miserables is, at its heart, a moral tract, much as many of Dickens's works are. A good reviewer takes note of these things, and does not complain about a work based on the fact that its content contains things that he finds uninteresting.

However, our gentleman reviewer does not spend much time discussing either. He is far too absorbed in his own cleverness to pay attention to such small things. He comments, concerning Valjean's 19 years in prison, "...a punishment that he regards as unjust, though in fact it reflects well on the status of French baking. Had he taken a croissant, it would have meant the guillotine..." Though a bit of lighthearted frippery such as this is perfectly appropriate in many contexts, given the rest of the article's complaints about 'inflationary bombast' and so on, it takes on the unfortunate and hopefully inaccurate air of a jest borne out of pure ignorance of both time period and source material.

 There is a pattern in this column. If the film reviewed is a small film, an unknown film, the reviewer sings its praises to the sky; if it is a popular film, it is dismissed with offhanded amused contempt. An action movie is called brainless and foolish; something like Les Miserables is damned as bloated and pretentious. It seems that the magazine has a fear of enjoying anything vulgar, which renders it more Victorian in sensibilities than even Hugo.

I wonder how many of the reviews featured in the New Yorker are genuine, and how many are the result of office politics. It seems that no reviewer can hold his or her or their position on those last two pages and allow themselves to be genuinely moved by the material they watched; in short, a reptilian heart seems to be a prerequisite. I do not want reptilian hearts to shape opinions about movies; I do not possess a reptilian heart, and I go to the cinema to enjoy myself. It is too expensive to do otherwise.

I would like to take the gentleman who wrote this review to the movies. I would like to sit him down with a bucket of well-buttered popcorn and a soda of a size illegal in New York in front of a screen playing some kids' movie and tell him to turn off the inner editor and enjoy himself. I fear this would not be enough to cure this cold, calculating view of entertainment, but it's worth a try.