Friday, September 14, 2012

Thoughts on Reviewing Agitprop Documentaries

On last Sunday’s show I reviewed 2016: Obama’s America, a documentary purportedly analyzing President Barack Obama’s influences in order to define Obama’s worldview. Directed by Dinesh D'Souza and John Sullivan, the film concludes that Obama possesses a post-colonial, anti-capitalist ideology that drives his administration's policies.  As I stated in the review (available in the Sounds of Cinema review archive), agitprop documentaries are usually hailed or condemned depending on whether they confirm or conflict with the petty partisan allegiances of the viewer. But the problems with 2016: Obama’s America go beyond politics and it is an ugly piece of pseudo-intellectual nonsense. The process of reviewing this picture made me think about the challenges and goals of film criticism which are especially pronounced when tackling a film like this.

What I do on Sounds of Cinema is not that different from what journalists and political pundits do and like them I have to be concerned with accuracy and fairness. As a film critic my integrity is everything as it is the only reason people should put any stock in my commentary. For the most part this means I follow a few simple guidelines: see as many films as I can even if they involve genres, actors, or filmmakers that I do not enjoy, clear my mind of expectations about what the film is or should be, watch the film all the way through before judging it, avoid reading reviews by other critics before seeing a film and continue to avoid them until after I have generated a complete draft of the review.  In the process of forming a judgment about a motion picture I focus on what the filmmakers aim to do, how well they do it, and assess the value of the filmmakers’ intents and accomplishments. These guidelines have served me well and act as controls to ensure my conclusions are sound and fair.

One of the criticisms that I sometimes encounter as a critic is a charge of false elitism in which I’m reminded that “It’s only your opinion.” That is true: my reviews are articulations of my opinion but I will argue, as any critic must, that my opinion is a good one. My judgments are rooted in a broad appreciation of cinema from non-narrative art films to Hollywood blockbusters and they are informed by an education of cinematic form, theory, and history. With the controls that I’ve placed on my method, I’ll gladly set the arguments of my reviews against anyone else’s (although preferably later reviews as opposed to those I wrote eight years ago when I started this show).

But when it comes to a film like 2016: Obama’s America I always approach reviewing it with a sense of both responsibility and trepidation. Despite the methods that I have enacted to control my judgments there is an inherent degree of subjectivity involved in reviewing films. Agitprop documentaries, especially those about political subjects, are going to appeal or collide with my own political and ideological opinions. At some level this is true of any film. Whether it is a documentary, a comedy, or a horror film, the personal politics of the viewer always come into play. Every piece of art is an expression by the artist of how he or she sees life, or at least one facet of it. Whether or not we determine a piece of art to be “good” is based in part on whether we accept that expression as true or not and that is largely dependent upon how the artist’s point coalesces with the ideology of the viewer. Even if I somehow tried to strip value judgments out my reviews I’d be reduced to commenting only on form but not function; I could write about the quality of the filmmaking craft but I wouldn’t be able to comment on what those things mean which is exactly what astute readers should want from both artists and critics.

Reviewing a film like 2016: Obama’s America is intimidating because it requires me to be much more conscientious and rigorous about how I evaluate it. In this case, approving or disapproving of President Obama may predispose me to like or dislike the film; in the interest of full disclosure, I have mixed feelings about Barack Obama’s presidency but more than likely I will vote for him this November. But if that is the only criterion upon which I evaluate the film then I am no different from the partisan apologists who crowd the airwaves and my credibility as a film critic is diminished.

Reviewing this film is categorically different from reviewing Obama and his presidency. A documentary whose perspective I ideologically disagree with can be well made and ethically argued and as a critic I have to acknowledge that. The reverse is also true; in my review of Fahrenheit 9/11 I commented that Michael Moore’s filmmaking is exceptional but the director has a tendency to jump to conclusions in his argumentation; when I reviewed An Inconvenient Truth I noted that the argumentation was solid and the information was important but it wasn’t much of a film.  As it is, the cinematic merits of 2016: Obama’s America are uneven as the sound is often poor and the dramatic recreations frequently look ridiculous. But the more serious problems with the film are found in its arguments which are intellectually dishonest and appeal to underlying racial prejudices in the American electorate. As I concluded in my review, there is a serious conservative documentary to be made criticizing the presidency of Barack Obama but this is not it.

The other source of my trepidation about reviewing a film like 2016: Obama’s America is not about me but about my audience. We are in an age in which the media is so fractured into ideological camps that anyone can seemingly find the perspective that suits him or her. Does your regular film critic say that 2016: Obama’s America is dishonest? Well, just do a Google search and eventually you’ll find someone who says otherwise.This kind of ideological fracturing has the effect of rendering facts moot but it also has the broader impact of creating echo chambers in which bad ideas and poor arguments are insulated from criticism. This has a deleterious impact on the culture as it sabotages the marketplace of ideas which requires a robust and open discourse. This isolationism especially threatens critics. Like the journalist, the critic must speak truth to those in positions of power (i.e. filmmakers) but critics must also be prepared to confront audiences and point out the problems of the movies that they love. An environment in which critics operate in fear of losing their audience or of being marginalized by a meaningless political label can have a chilling effect on criticism.

With these issues hanging over my head, I considered simply ignoring 2016: Obama’s America. But that would be a cowardly decision and if critics at large decided to avoid these kinds of films it would enable unscrupulous filmmakers while leaving the movie-going public without a discourse that will allow them to evaluate these films. In that case nobody wins. The only suitable answer is vigilance on my part as a critic but also on your part as consumers of film and of film criticism. After all, part of the joy of cinema is found in arguing about movies with fellow cinephiles and the more intelligent the debate, the bigger the joy. The purpose of criticism isn’t for me to tell you what to think about a movie but to role model how to think about it and hopefully supply a framework through which we can all better appreciate the movies.

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