Critical Aesthetics and Critical Ideas

DCist reports that Munich, director Steven Spielberg’s Tony Kushner-written take on the Mossad revenge assassinations that followed the slayings of 11 Olympic athletes, has won top honors amongst the Washington Area Film Critics Association. I won’t see this film for a few more days, and I’ve already written about the film’s controversial moral equivalence, so I’m not going to speculate directly on the film. But I will say that I think it’s important for serious film viewers to be willing to separate a film’s aesthetics and its ideas.

This is not the only way to view a film, and I don’t want to suggest that there are films whose aesthetics aren’t altered by their ideals. The Constant Gardener is my go-to example there, a very good film that could have been far better if it weren’t so painfully sure of itself. I’d also include Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda in that group, as its vision of love as some sort of uncontrollable, outside force – a wind that we cannot help but let sweep us along – removes the primary dramatic issue surrounding conflicts of the heart, which is that love is a choice. As for films made better by their ideas, I’d argue that Minority Report’s distrust of big government security states lifted it from being a reasonably good sci-fi thriller into a quite good one (no classic, but worthy of repeat viewing), and that The Incredibles, which already stood atop greatness, was rocketed into the celluloid stratosphere by its emphasis on individual achievement and talent.

But it’s also possible for a film (or any piece of art or writing) to be an exemplary piece of craftsmanship and advocate a unequivocally wrong message. Erin Brockovitch, for example, might have been a typical anti-corporate message film, but Steven Soderbergh’s stylistic mix of early 90s indie tropes and French New Wave lifted it from ho-hum tract to filmic excellence. Even The Matrix, with its pseudo philosophical undertones that suggest that the mind is the true arbiter of reality and that all societal constructs (including, I suspect, morality and civility) are really just systems of control to be rebelled against, is just a brilliantly original film from an aesthetic perspective. Who in the world would’ve thought to blend comic book origin stories with dystopian science fiction, bondage gear and Woo-esque martial arts action? And yet that blend seemed so fitting, so natural, that The Wachowski Brothers have arguably had more impact on Hollywood filmmaking than any other filmmakers to debut in the last decade. Their view of reality (or lack thereof) might have been bunk, but their presentation – their craftsmanship and delivery – was outstanding, and deserved to be recognized for it.

The question when watching a movie doesn’t always have to be, What does this say and do I agree? Just as often, it’s important to ask, What does this say and how well is it being said? Agreement isn’t necessary for appreciation.