Baradwaj Rangan catches up with Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian’s chief film critic, who was at the Mumbai Film Festival mentoring future critics.
Do you think reviews are a kind of consumer report, or are they an art form?
They’re certainly not a consumer report. I can’t say whether or not you will like a film. I hate the idea that a critic is “reliable.” I’m not reliable. I’m not a Volkswagen. What kind of moron are you to think critics are reliable? I’ve been reading critics all my life. I’ve been reading Pauline Kael, Clive James, Christopher Hitchens – and it never occurred to me, even when I was 16 years old, to think of them as reliable. I knew I could rely on them to entertain me. I knew they were reliable in that sense. But I’m not out there road-testing microwave ovens – and I hope that, over time, people understand my various prejudices and idiocies and idiosyncrasies, and they may perhaps do the opposite of what I do. They may say, “Peter Bradshaw is such an idiot. If he likes something, I won’t. If he hates something, then I’m going to go and see it.” And that’s fine, fair enough.
Over a period of time, a critic tends to see a lot of the same kind, the same genre of films. What do you do to not sound repetitious in your reviews, having written about the same kind of plot or contrivances so many times before?
I don’t know. I think, intentionally or otherwise, I’ve cultivated a kind of goldfish lack of memory, a kind of willed forgetting. If you try to stack up everything you’ve ever seen in your mind, you’d go a bit mad. I don’t mind seeing another movie in a familiar genre. A good filmmaker can revivify the genre, make it live. It’s like reading poetry and going, “Oh my God! Another sonnet? Three quatrains and a couplet at the end. I get it.” I think the point is that sometimes it can be a great sonnet. Part of its charm and its accessibility is that you have understood it as a series of widely accepted generic points of reference, which make it acceptable to the audience. You yourself, as a critic, can anticipate that widely understood lingua franca. If one’s criticism gets stale, it’s not the filmmaker’s fault for making another Western or horror film. It’s your fault.
But do you do anything consciously so as to not sound the way you did when you wrote about similar films in the past?
I don’t know if I consciously do anything at all. I look for some tiny detail or quirk which kicks off my review. I sometimes feel that the introduction is the kind of spark that sets the whole thing off. I’m always happier in my mind when I think I’ve got the opening line. I don’t know what the other lines are going to be, but I think they’ll come naturally once I’ve got the 747 off the runway. And it’s the opening line that does that. It’s not the only important thing, of course, but it’s important.
What do you do when, five minutes in, you know this is going to be a rank bad film? After so many years, so many movies, you can kind of feel these things in your bones.
You just have to suck it up. Sometimes you know you’re not going to review a film. I’ve done this at festivals. You say, “I don’t like this film. I’m bailing out.” And then you hear your friends say good things and you feel you have to go back and watch it again. But once you’ve bailed out, you can’t review it. But that’s in festivals. Once I’m back in London, I’m the chief critic and I have to review six or seven films a week. And if you know you’re going to review it, you have to, out of a sense of respect for the filmmaker, watch it fully. There was a recent film – I can’t remember its name – that was very violent. I couldn’t take the violence and I just bailed out. I admitted as much in the review. As I get older, I’m more and more squeamish. But I will respect it if it is a good movie.
When you gave The Immigrant a bad review, the director James Gray took it personally. He called you “a failure as a critic.” He called you “corrupt.” How do you respond to something like this, which is unfair in a way because you merely wrote what you felt?
There’s a couple of ways I respond to that. I respect James Gray, and I respect the fact that he is higher than me on the totem pole. He is the creator, I am the critic. I’ve never had a single problem acknowledging that or saying that to anyone. The other thing is that I’ve always liked his movies. This movie is the first one I haven’t liked. I think that – and I don’t mean to sound patronising – he was reacting to some bad stuff in the cultural weather. All the American critics loved it, and then he had to come across a bunch of snarky Brits who didn’t – and I was not the only person who didn’t like this movie. I think that accentuated it. He was under a lot of pressure and I respect that. I was watching James Gray in the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, about Alfred Hitchcock’s conversations with François Truffaut. He spoke very eloquently and passionately, and it revived my admiration and respect for him. What I’ve been trying to do is broker some kind of peace process between him and me. I don’t have a problem with him. He let off steam. I didn’t have a problem with that. We live in a free society still. I don’t take it seriously. It’s not like I’m going to challenge him to a duel. I made a single factual error in my review, and he honed in on that. But even with that factual mistake corrected, I’m still not sure I would like his movie.
So what do you say to people who say that critics should go make a movie first?
Making a movie and writing about a movie are two separate techniques. I’m not saying equal techniques, because, as I said, making a film is more important than writing about a film. As it happens, in my humble way, I have published three novels and I have written a script. I wrote it ages ago in the spirit of experimentation, and there is actually some interest in it. Who knows? I hope this movie will get made. I don’t think a critic has to be a great filmmaker, although there is a great tradition of great critics who became great filmmakers, like Godard and Truffaut. Godard can say, “I’ve done your job. I’ve done it really well. And now I’m doing something better.”
Is there any film that made you really, really angry while watching it?
Yeah, Fair Game. It was about a case the CIA allegedly stitched up about a diplomat. The director, Doug Liman, is someone I really like. He’s very talented. But I thought there was something very, very pompous and self-satisfied about the film. It said we are the liberal good guys, and somewhere out there are the bad guys we should destroy. I come from a liberal background. I write for a liberal paper. But this was a very smug movie. I didn’t like Pan. It was kind of stupid, and there’s something parasitic about it. You’re using the established reputation of the Peter Pan story, and then doing a goofy backstory. This is the thing that everyone’s doing, this origin myth. And I just think, “Get your own ideas, dammit.”
What, in your opinion, is the fundamental difference between criticism in the pre- and post-Internet eras?
Firstly, there’s more of it, and it happens more quickly. I’m not sure there’s been a loss in quality. But certainly there’s more pressure and we’re all working harder. There was a time, particularly during film festivals, when I really wasn’t working that hard. I would wander around, I would go see a lot of movies, and write a roundup that brings in five or six of these films. Now, every single movie you see has to get an individual review. And there’s no hanging around – they need it the day before yesterday. When I first discovered I could do that, I thought it was great. I can write a review in a cafe on my iPhone. I don’t mind doing that in a crisis. I’m not too grand or too proud to do that. I don’t have to lie down in a darkened room with a wet towel on my forehead and think about it. I just crack on and do it. What newspapers want is site traffic. It’s like the ratings game on TV. If you publish the review of the new James Bond movie, how many hits do you get? That’s how they’re selling the ads. So there’s a lot more work for the critic. But I’m not convinced that there’s a loss in quality. It means that you have to know how to relax at the end of the day. You have to learn to switch off. No more phones. No more social media. No more hyper-instantaneous reaction. Now I will lie down with that wet towel.
Are there any genres or kinds of movies that you find especially tough to write about?
I found Bollywood tough to write about – again, because of the sheer amount of it. I had this conversation with this friend of mine. He’s a music critic. He thinks Bollywood is the death metal of cinema. If you’re a music critic covering death metal, you’ve got to get ready for a lot of work – because there’s a lot of death metal out there. And a lot of fans, who take it very seriously. Part of the reason I’m here is to reconnect with Indian cinema, both commercial and arty. I find it difficult logistically because it’s difficult to get prints in time for a review. The distributors can’t help you. Bollywood is great. I love it because it’s the only genre in the world that believes in the musical. They’re not ironic or self-conscious about it. The musical lives in Bollywood. It’s not like Hollywood doing Les Misérables and Russell Crowe coming on and he can’t really sing. It’s still an accepted genre in Bollywood, where they think, “This is where the songs can go.” It’s a great popular art form that Hollywood has neglected and abandoned.
So if you could be teleported to a different era of cinema, to write about it, would you choose, say, the golden age of the Hollywood musical?
I would love to be in New York of the 1970s, where you’d still have shouting matches between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. It was an era when criticism mattered. You took sides and everything ended in a crockery-smashing row. Now, nobody’s uncool enough or unsophisticated enough to get angry. I was thinking about this recently because the critic Penelope Houston died recently. She used to edit Sight & Sound magazine, and she was part of the kind of side-taking, head-butting tradition of not liking the French critics. She butted heads with them. She butted heads with the British critics who took their side. And I kind of miss that now. Critics can get angry with each other, or they can be short-lived quarrels between critics and filmmakers, but there are no rows. There isn’t a sense of this amazing thing that’s happening that the critics can champion, like Pauline Kael championed Bonnie and Clyde. A critic can create the circumstances in which a film like that can be seen.
Would you care to venture the name of a filmmaker you consider extremely overrated (or underrated)?
It baffles me. I think he’s kind of brilliant, but he took a wrong turn and he’s still not got back on track. M Night Shyamalan. Ages and ages ago, he made these movies we all loved, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. He made these really funny, smart, shocking, unexpected movies. And then he made these really eccentric movies that I didn’t like. You know from those first few movies that he’s really talented. But he seems to have taken a weird series of creative turns and I’m waiting for him to come back. There are a lot of British filmmakers that I think are wonderful, like Carol Morley and Clio Barnard. It’s wrong to say they’re underrated. But they deserve a better international reputation than they have.
Do you think critics have an expiry date?
I certainly hope not. I’ve got a mortgage to pay. I think a good critic can carry on and get better and better by learning. That’s the other thing. You never really stop learning. You’re always growing and developing – as a critic, as a writer. I think some critics get disenchanted with themselves, and some critics can lose their jobs through no fault of their own. I’ve seen that happen in London. I think as long as your readers are entertained by you, you’re still worth a shot.
An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Iswarya
October 31, 2015
Terrific interview. Could feel the “insider-ness” of all those questions you asked him. Would you care to put in your own answers to the same questions, something like BR interviews BR? 🙂
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Sadhana
October 31, 2015
Great interview. I really related to it. For example, i enjoy your reviews. You write really well. But when you like a movie, I begin to think ‘uh huh, he likes it. That means I won’t. :)))
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Anu Warrier
October 31, 2015
Seconding Iswarya – how about you answer the same questions, Rangan? 🙂 No, not snarky; I would really like to see what your answers to these questions would be.
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Akhilan
October 31, 2015
Loved this interview. As a Humanities/Social Sciences student, I can so relate to Bradshaw’s point about the importance of the introduction/ opening line when writing any piece. I feel exactly the same. Once I think I’ve cracked the opening couple of sentences of an essay, the rest of it just starts to flow organically. It really helps in providing a sense of direction/focus for both the writer as well as the reader in terms of where the paper is heading (or at least that’s what I assume until my professor returns with the same paper and deems it to be s**t) 😉
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cl
October 31, 2015
Brilliant questions. I like how you rephrased question 2 as question 3 to get a more specific answer. 🙂
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Supertramp
October 31, 2015
Rangan interviewing Bradshaw! The event in itself is an interesting thing. And good questions and some answers are expected ones only.
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Madan
October 31, 2015
Nice interview. Speaking from the other side of the fence as a ‘user’/reader of reviews, I think one does come to expect a certain internal consistency within what one has made out to be the reviewer’s general tastes in movies (or music or any other art form as applicable). Not that that is fair, either, because the smallest of things may tip the reviewer’s views against a film that, going by genre/topic and the level of execution, one would have expected him/her to like. But it does happen. I had read an outlier review of Shandaar which praised it as interesting so I had a hunch you would have something positive to say about it irrespective of whether or not you liked the film. I was not wrong there. If you had outright bashed the film, I could hardly hold that against you because (a) you are entitled to your views and (b) I haven’t watched the film! 😛 But I would have been a little surprised, for sure.
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Anand krishnajeevan
November 1, 2015
The story had the potential to be a blockbuster and they smartly executed it. They have packaged it as a mainstream commercial movie in the disguise of a classy movie. i have seen people declaring it as a classic movie (face palm) because anything slow that engages you is directly elated to a classic these days. we can’t deny the fact it is a bit overrated but it was entertaining and struck a chord with us.
I firmly believe that they wanted a out and out commercial movie and has largely succeeded in doing so. i think you expected them to stay loyal to the source material, but If you view it as a story inspired from real life it would have worked better. having said so it is heartening to see an outsider’s fresh perspective on this film
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tonks
November 1, 2015
The book I am reading currently is “Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews 1967-2007”. In his introduction the author writes about how he learnt as a sixteen year old not to waste time on inspiration for great beginnings but to write such that the reader suddenly jumps as if into the middle of a conversation. He says how all his reviews begin with the invisible words “So, anyway…..”.
He also mentions in this chapter how his editor told him that all readers “should have a fair chance of understanding most of what’s written” so he tries to write clearly avoiding jargon.
The book and his reviews work for me practically because they give a fair idea about the movie without major spoilers He clearly gives an opinion and a rating about it so it’s one way of choosing good movies one wants to catch up on. The movies are listed alphabetically and I’ve only just started reading but I already plan to watch “About last night”, “The accidental tourist” and “Across the universe”. And thought I’d skip “Adoration” and “Affliction”. So I like it that he makes it possible for me to easily make this decision.
But on the other hand, Ebert’s reviews do not give as much stand alone reading satisfaction as the reviews in this blog do, even though this blog is totally the wrong place to come to if one wants to know which movies to watch and which to let go.
And so I thought the following made sense too:
*At one end of the spectrum, there are critics who approach movies as art — works to be studied, analyzed, debated and (most importantly) enjoyed, but ultimately to be judged the only way they can be: subjectively, with meanings and values unique to each individual viewer. These kinds of critics are easy to identify because they’re so few: Anthony Lane in theNew Yorker, Stanley Kauffman in the New Republic, apparently the entire staff of Sight and Sound, and a debatable handful of others.
Ebert is, at heart, the other kind of critic, the kind that sees movies as products, like cell phones or refrigerators or spatulas. These critics consider it their responsibility not to inspire debate or thought, not to use their cinematic expertise to give the reader insight. Rather, they want to judge a film’s fitness for purchase, recommend that a moviegoer either should or should not spend his or her money on the product. These critics are easy to spot. Every newspaper has at least one. They use a lot of puns when they dislike a film. They usually employ a grading system — a letter grade if they want to seem really nuanced, a ten-star scale if they want to make only a passing nod to intelligence, four stars if they’re especially simple-minded*
Taken from this link :
http://googleweblight.com/?lite_url=http://therumpus.net/2010/10/all-thumbs-roger-ebert-and-the-decline-of-film-criticism/&ei=6_thp0v8&lc=en-IN&s=1&m=448&ts=1446394752&sig=APONPFkWywSeg7rYFW5YGYkvEHZ84Jiqhw
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Abhi T
November 2, 2015
They may say, “Peter Bradshaw is such an idiot. If he likes something, I won’t. If he hates something, then I’m going to go and see it.”
Guardian message boards are ALWAYS full of comments like that. Makes me laugh. Other thing they accuse him of is writing a review fill of spoilers.
PB is a decent critic and I seek his views out when movies release here in the UK
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Rahini David
November 2, 2015
I have not seen that many English movies, but what I have noticed on reading Ebert’s review of those movies is that I disagree with him most of the time.
I almost completely disagree with this critic regarding BBT but still enjoy the blow by blow account he gives for each episode.
I read Balaji Balasubramaniyam’s reviews almost as soon as I started browsing the web and initially found that I agreed with almost everything he said. As time went on, I started feeling he was a bit too kind to masala in a way I cannot be and more specifically cuts Rajinikanth too much slack. But he dutifully jots down his thoughts and I cannot help but admire the honesty of that. His spoiler policy is most rigid and he never gives anything away that is not already in the trailors. He is as reliable as any individual critic can be and avoid jargon completely. Much as I like hanging around here, it is BB’s reviews that I read before I buy that ticket. Such reviewers may be teased for making a laundry list of sorts. But that laundry list is not without its takers.
Not sure how long I have been reading BR, but it must be more than 5 years. Oh I have learnt many things if not whether or not I should be watching a particular movie he chooses to wax eloquent about. I like to say that BR’s reviews are not actually reviews but articles on the particular given subject. It is highly advised you watch the movie first and then hobnob in BR later. Most importantly, for people like me who used to like Tamil movies as a child, but have almost no access in the present day, BR’s reviews are a godsend.
As for Peter Bradshaw, I have never read his stuff. But I totally enjoyed reading this interview. Especially about his not being too proud of writing using a mobile in a cafe. I remember BR mentioning in some review that he wrote the entire thing on a Blackberry or something.
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Rohan Nair
November 2, 2015
“Bollywood is great. I love it because it’s the only genre in the world that believes in the musical. They’re not ironic or self-conscious about it. ”
Is this actually true by the way? I had opportunity to look at posters of Turkish popular cinema recently, and it certainly seemed very similar to Bollywood in content/style/accessibility etc. Whether or not they have songs I don’t know.
And what about popular cinema in other parts of the world, such as West Africa? Again, seen some clips, and quality wise it really sinks to the depths (like B grade Bombay films). But do they have songs?
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Ram Murali
November 3, 2015
I enjoy reading the works of a wide variety of critics. My all-time favorite, of course, is Roger Ebert. I really enjoyed his English and more than anything else his childlike enthusiasm and sheer love for the movies were such endearing qualities.
The one pastime of mine over the past year or so ever since I discovered the link is to look at old “Indian Express” reviews of movies from the 80s and 90s:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=P9oYG7HA76QC&dat=19500104&b_mode=2&hl=en
I find it extremely enjoyable to read the reviews of movies like Agni Natchathiram and Keladi Kanmani from the time they were released. I had once shared this with BR who too, really enjoyed reading the AN review… I find it quite amazing that the reviews of both Thalapathy & Guna were largely negative… Such a pity that reviews of movies like Nayagan are missing 😦
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tonks
November 3, 2015
It is highly advised you watch the movie first and then hobnob in BR later.
Absolutely agree. It’s a pleasure to read this blog after seeing the movie. The review and the discussions underneath, put forth so many varied thoughts and points of view, that you may not even have considered before, they really enrich you. Sometimes I watch the movie first, read this blog and have to revisit the movie again to better appreciate facets I may not have noticed at first viewing but that were pointed out here. (happened for me with Piku and Kaaka Muttai)
Luckily I usually know when I’m two lines into BR’s review, if I want to watch the movie or not. If I decide to, I save the review reading for later because once I’ve read the review it takes away some of the suspense and anticipation of a first time viewing. This happened for me with Mad Max fury road that I watched after (and solely because of) reading the review posted here and the wonderful discussion beneath, on the very last day it played in our town.
Most importantly, for people like me who used to like Tamil movies as a child, but have almost no access in the present day, BR’s reviews are a godsend.
Totally identify with this too. One major reason I like this blog so much is the nostalgia it evokes.
My all-time favorite, of course, is Roger Ebert. I really enjoyed his English and more than anything else his childlike enthusiasm and sheer love for the movies were such endearing qualities.
Even though I consider BR much the better writer, I agree there is something about Ebert’s writing that is endearing. I also really am grateful for his rating and lack of major spoilers. In my opinion, both types of critics mentioned in the link I posted earlier, have their own usefulness, for readers.
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Venky
November 4, 2015
Lovely interview. I have a question. When you meet a fellow critic, how do you give those subtle signals that convey that you know your trade at the back of your hand. Knowing you intimately through your blogs since time immemorial (at least, it feels so), I know that you aren’t of the kind who would go and pompously throw references and what not to “impress”. But, I am sure you would want to set a powerful context in such a dialogue, that you are here to have an intense dialogue, which adds meaning through the depth of engagement. I am curious. Say, you are meeting someone who hasn’t read any of your works. How do you establish your context?
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brangan
November 4, 2015
Venky: I’m not sure there’s a conscious process here. But in any field, you can figure out whether someone knows his stuff, right? It’s in the way you talk, you get the references (let’s say he mentions a movie; you may add something about it) and a lot of such little things.
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Venky
November 4, 2015
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I understand these things are more of an unconscious process. I’ve read some where this quote, often attributed to Picasso ““when art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” I wonder what happens when film critics get together in parties. Would it be something like a Apple Fanboys (or fan girls) gathering where they talk about the cool new movies which are in the post-production phase, and why they can’t wait to see the upcoming release by this trailblazing director.
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Ram Murali
November 4, 2015
@brangan & @venky – good discussion there. That’s something that I was curious about when reading CWMR. I could see that the conversations got more natural and chatty as the chapters went on. And by the time, you had hooked up with him on a conversation on “Kadal,” one could sense that any residual thawing was now complete!
@brangan- would you mind giving us a peek into any difficult conversation with any industry folk (you don’t have to mention names) where you have felt the need to explain yourself in no uncertain terms and ensure that you had gotten the respect you deserved?
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Venky
November 4, 2015
@ Ram Murali. Yes. My assumption here (and I may be wrong) is that more often, film-makers from Chennai, with whom you might socialize in parties at Tajs/Le Meredians approach their craft with a raw, visceral sense of cinema and may not be comfortable with the basic threshold level of intellectualization that is needed for a conversation with a critic. How do you break ice in such situations? Do you feel compelled to remove your “critic” hat in such situations?
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bart
November 5, 2015
Neat interview.
One-line punches, tongue-in-cheek humour, a simile or a metaphor, play of words, references or nods to similarities from past et al are what I look forward in your posts and you are “reliable” in that. It may not be the checklist ticks, an open rating or even your opinion/ approval that is available in your reviews. Like PB says, “I knew I could rely on them to entertain me. I knew they were reliable in that sense.”…
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newbie
November 8, 2015
Pleasant surprise reading this excellent interview. Roger Ebert was my favourite English or international movies critic but since his death, I rely mostly on The Guardian which is how I have gotten to read a lot of Bradshaw’s work. This interview provides lovely insight into his thought process – and into yours too I must say if we are to read anything into the questions you have posed…
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