Culture

Slumdog, Benigni and a critic's right to recant

March 04, 2009
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No-one would deny that the Oscars have a direct effect at the box-office, but they aren’t so intoxicating as to change the mind of a stalwart critic, whose austere role is to disdain such vulgar display. Or are they? Step forward the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, this year’s winner in the category of critical recantation. Bradshaw’s original review of Slumdog Millionaire described it as “overpraised,” “wildly silly” and unreflective of its own subject matter. Then, with the onslaught of its Oscar success, the Guardian’s forthright movie-man changed his mind—declaring his previous views to have been merely “friendly scepticism,” and conceding that Slumdog really had delivered “the shock of the new.”

When there is no pressure, Bradshaw gives the impression of being a reviewer whose job it is to épater le bourgeoisie, alerting Guardian readers to films that don’t provide sufficient seriousness or social criticism. He recently defended his views on Stephen Daldry's Oscar-nominated The Reader from an angry attack by none less than its screenwriter, David Hare. Bradshaw showed that he could depart from general consensus and stick to his guns (while bending a bit here and there). But, when the pressure is up, his criticism can wobble.

A few years back, Bradshaw notably excoriated the silliness of the first two parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the Guardian: the first "resembles from certain angles nothing so much as a 178-minute electric mandolin solo," while the second was a "watchable, distinctive, if over-extended FX spectacular. Nothing more." What, then, had changed by the time the third part came out? The Return of the King was shot simultaneously with the previous two. Its story, style, effects and acting entirely of a piece with the prequels: it was simply an extension of one movie. Yet it ended up with a four star eulogy and the verdict that "with enormous energy and a passionately exacting eye for detail, Jackson has made the regressive-romantic legend live again. He has given the Tolkien myth a turbo-charged rush into the 21st century." How? All that was different was the increased momentum of the film’s popularity (including fans who sent hate-mail to Bradshaw), and its eventual Oscar triumph.



Then again, why shouldn’t a reviewer change his mind under such influences? A critic serves an audience just as a movie does, albeit on a smaller scale. One may quite legitimately assess audience reaction and reconsider one’s views as a result. The Independent’s Anthony Quinn did so a few years back, recanting—in the opposite direction—his misguided praise for Roberto Benigni’s sickly, “uplifiting” 1997 Holocaust tale, Life is Beautiful. As Quinn explained it to the Guardian, "David Denby's incandescent review of it in The New Yorker" had put him right on the matter.

Indeed, Mumbai itself may have changed its mind about Slumdog Millionaire. Having at first been affronted by the “slumdog” insult, the Oscar results seem now to have been taken as a compliment to a city and a nation. If a country can change its mind because of Hollywood praise, all credit to a movie reviewer for doing the same… Surely? Except that, while it would indeed be silly to suggest that the film has a duty to be a work of social criticism simply because it is set in a Mumbai slum, there is nevertheless an uneasy contrast between Slumdog's narrative euphoria and the dark realities of the milieu from which the story springs. Such is the pact that every pauper-to-prince yarn has, since time immemorial, made with the underlying truths of human suffering. The more Slumdog reaps rewards, the more its central tension comes to feel problematic. In this case, though, popular ambivalence seems to have got both things right: that it is at once a remarkable movie and one that manifests an unresolvable inner difficulty.

Every work of art changes in accordance with its reception. The films that British newspaper reviewers actually have influence over are neither the big hits or complete flops, but those domestic productions which hover between potential success and possible failure. It’s just a shame we don’t have more film reviewers capable of anticipating or leading, instead of merely trailing, the crowd.