De kemels van 

Pauline Kael

                                 

Afgezien van de Amerikaan Roger Ebert, is er wellicht geen filmrecensent waar zo naar opgekeken wordt als diens landgenote Pauline Kael. Beiden zijn intussen overleden: Ebert stierf in 2013, Kael reeds in 2001. Over de doden niets dan goed, zegt men, maar ons moet het toch van het hart dat wij de filmrecensies van Kael zwaar overroepen vinden. 

Roger Ebert.

Ebert zat er ook wel eens naast in zijn beoordeling van films. Zo gaf hij de magistrale western Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) van Sergio Leone slechts 2,5 (op vier) sterren, vond hij het onderschatte tragiromantisch drama Ryan's Daughter (1970) van David Lean slechts 2 sterren waard, gaf hij ook slechts 2 sterren aan het maatschappijkritische meesterwerk A Clockwork Orange (1972) van Stanley Kubrick en aan de iconische horrorklassieker The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) van Tobe Hooper, miskende hij de waarde van Roman Polanski's cultklassieker Le locataire (1976) door deze fascinerende psychologische mysteriethriller slechts 1 ster te geven en af te kraken als "not merely bad-it's an embarrassment (...) it's unspeakably disappointing", ging hij compleet de mist in door Blue Velvet (1986) van David Lynch de grond in te boren en deze briljante psychoseksuele misdaadthriller slechts 1 ster te geven (bekijk een videoclip met Eberts kritiek op Blue Velvet hier), gaf hij slechts anderhalve ster aan de nochtans uitstekende komedie Raising Arizona (1987) van de gebroeders Coen, en vond hij het briljante psychoseksuele misdaadmysterie Lost Highway (1997) van David Lynch slechts 2 sterren waard. Daarom vinden wij ook Eberts reputatie als de beste filmrecensent aller tijden niet helemaal verdiend. Maar hij had wél een schitterende pen, gaf blijk van groot inzicht in het filmmetièr, en zijn missers waren uitzonderingen. Niets daarvan kan gezegd worden van Pauline Kael. 

Polemische zelfpromotie

In tegenstelling tot de sporadische missers van Ebert, waren de talrijke kemels van Kael niet louter misverstanden die voortvloeiden uit blinde vlekken in de appreciatie van uitdagende films, zoals bijvoorbeeld Eberts emotionele bezwaren tegen gewelddadige scènes. Terwijl bij Ebert altijd de films centraal stonden, ging het in de recensies van Kael onrechtstreeks vooral om Kael zelf. Haar argumenten om een film af te breken of de hemel in te prijzen waren vaak zo kunstmatig en vergezocht dat zij vooral wilde aantonen hoe origineel, eigenzinnig en moedig haar zienswijze wel was. En hoewel er op zich niets mis is met filmbesprekingen waarin de persoonlijkheid van de recensent doorschijnt en hij/zij sporadisch een autobiografische anekdote vertelt, vermits dat nu eenmaal onvermijdelijk is in een discipline die ook de persoonlijke visie en smaak van de recensent weerspiegelt, overschaduwde Kaels arrogante en aandachtszieke ego vaak de films die zij besprak. Haar recensies staan bol van allerlei provocerende en tegendraadse uitspraken (met inbegrip van ad hominem beledigingen aan het adres van cineasten en acteurs), die vaak meer zeggen over haar eigen snobisme, pseudo-scherpzinnigheid en twistzieke zelfpromotie dan over die films. Of in de woorden van de Amerikaanse auteur Alan Vanneman: “All her life Kael wrote as a brilliant schoolgirl, straining for ‘insights’ and exulting in ‘nuances’ that no one else noticed (because they weren’t there). She had to be deeper, more profound, and more shocking than anyone else, which led her to the same sort of pretentiousness she ridiculed in others.” Op die manier verborg Kael, die het kijkplezier van haar lezers bovendien heel vaak verpestte met schaamteloze spoilers, dat zij in feite veel minder verstand had van het medium film dan haar (onterechte) status als één van de meest gerespecteerde en invloedrijke filmrecensenten suggereert.

Pauline Kael.

Gebakken lucht

Geukkig zijn er intussen steeds meer cinefielen die Kaels oeuvre doorprikken als gebakken lucht. Zo noemde de New Yorkse auteur Alex Sheremet haar hier terecht "one of film’s worst and most ridiculous critics (...) for all she’s written, and has been written of her, Pauline Kael was not much of a critic, combining the worst flaws of Roger Ebert (over-reliance on emotion) with none of his writing ability, and a pointless viciousness and personal vindictiveness that — had it been well-worded — could have at least been fun. It is not, and as the sudden implosion and inevitable decline of her progeny Armond White shows, it pays more to be right than righteous, a difference few people ever see, and fewer still can ever act on." 

Dat blijkt ook uit onze demythologiserende bloemlezing van Kaels absurde kemels hieronder:

Bloemlezing 

Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Citizen Kane (1941) van Orson Welles: "it isn’t a work of special depth or a work of subtle beauty. It is a shallow work (...) it is conceived and acted as entertainment in a popular style (...) so overwrought in style as to be almost a Gothic comedy. What might possibly be considered tragic in it has such a Daddy Warbucks quality that if it’s tragic at all it’s comic-strip tragic. The mystery in 'Kane' is largely fake, and the Gothic-thriller atmosphere and the Rosebud gimmickry (though fun) are such obvious penny-dreadful popular theatrics (...) without much resonance, and certainly without much tragic resonance. (...) The conceptions are basically kitsch; basically, 'Kane' is popular melodrama—Freud plus scandal, a comic strip (...) full of flaws". Bekijk een filmfragment uit Citizen Kane hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The Red Shoes (1948) van Michael Powell en Emeric Pressburger: "Blubbery and self-conscious (...) high kitsch". Lees onze eigen recensie van The Red Shoes hier en bekijk de hele film hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The Searchers (1956) van John Ford: "It's a peculiarly formal and stilted movie (...) it isn't very enjoyable (...) The lines are often awkward and the line readings worse, and the film is often static (...) many crude and corny touches (...) Ford's attempts at comic relief are a fizzle". 

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Vertigo (1958) van Alfred Hitchcock: "stupid". 

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Blow-Up (1966) van Michelangelo Antonioni: "reminds one of so many naïvely bad experimental films (...) Antonioni, like his fashion-photographer hero, is more interested in getting pretty pictures than in what they mean. But for reasons I can’t quite fathom, what is taken to be shallow in his hero is taken to be profound in him (...) pompous platitudes (...) so much confused symbolism and such a heavy sense of importance (...) this movie is so ill-formed (...) simply exploits the ready-made symbolic meanings people attach to certain details and leaves us in a profound mess. (The middlebrow moralists think it’s profound and the hippies enjoy the mess)". Bekijk de hele film hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) van Stanley Kubrick: "it’s fun to think about Kubrick really doing every dumb thing he wanted to do, building enormous science fiction sets and equipment, never even bothering to figure out what he was going to do with them (...) stupid stuff (...) a kind of super sci-fi nut’s fantasy (...) amateur movie (...) the most gloriously redundant plot of all time (...) It isn’t accidental that we don’t care if the characters live or die; if Kubrick has made his people so uninteresting, it is partly because characters and individual fates just aren’t big enough for certain kinds of big movie directors. (...) It's a monumentally unimaginative movie". Lees onze eigen recensie van 2001: A Space Odyssey hier, bekijk de trailer hier en een filmfragment hier.  

- Pauline Kael over het onderschatte meesterwerk Ryan's Daughter (1970) van David Lean: "a cheap romance (...) gush made respectable by millions of dollars 'tastefully' wasted (...) The emptiness of 'Ryan's Daughter' shows in practically every frame". Lees onze eigen recensie van Ryan's Daughter hier. 

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk A Clockwork Orange (1971) van Stanley Kubrick: "it has no depth (...) done in such a slow, heavy style (...) self-important (...) corrupt (...) an abhorrent viewing experience (...) offensive (...) it has no shadings. Kubrick, a director with an arctic spirit, is determined to be pornographic, and he has no talent for it. (...) terrible performances from everybody but McDowell (...) portentous (...)  Many of the dialogue sequences go on and on, into a stupor of inactivity. (...) at times you feel as if you were trapped in front of the frames of a comic strip for a numbing ten minutes per frame. (...) the purest exploitation (...) sucking up to the thugs in the audience". Lees onze eigen recensie van A Clockwork Orange hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The French Connection (1971) van William Friedkin: "It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks. There's nothing in the movie that you enjoy thinking over afterward (...) sloppy plotting (...) full of holes, but mostly you're too stunned to notice them (...) total commercial opportunism (...) meaningless (...) the movie can be seen as justifying police brutality". Lees onze eigen recensie van The French Connection hier en bekijk de trailer hier. 

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The Exorcist (1973) van William Friedkin: "It's an obtuse movie (...) A viewer can become glumly anesthetized by the brackish color and the senseless ugliness of the conception. (...) in the worst imaginable taste (...) unpleasant (...) it’s entirely mechanical and impersonal (...) there's nothing the actors can do with the juiceless stock roles (...) tiresomely moralistic (...) It’s all so tired that we can keep going only on fresh atrocities. (...) the picture is in a slugging, coercive style. (...) As a movie, 'The Exorcist' is too ugly a phenomenon to take lightly. (...) of no taste and no imagination (...) can’t muster up any feeling (...)  Neither the producer-writer, William Peter Blatty, nor the director, William Friedkin, shows any feeling for the little girl's helplessness and suffering, or for her mother's. (...) Aren't those who accept this picture getting their heads screwed on backward?". Bekijk de trailer hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Badlands (1973) van Terrence Malick: "draggy art (...) so cold and formal (...) condescending (...) An intellectualized movie (...) so preconceived that there's nothing left to respond to (...) I didn’t admire it, I didn’t enjoy it, and I don’t like it".

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Barry Lyndon (1975) van Stanley Kubrick: "By Kubrick’s insistence that this is a piece of wisdom that must be treated with Jansenist austerity and by his consequent refusal to entertain us, or even to involve us, he has made one of the vainest of all movies. He suppresses most of the active elements that make movies pleasurable (...) It’s a coffee-table movie; we might as well be at a three-hour slide show for art-history majors. (...) Obviously, Stanley Kubrick does not have a gift for sensual fury (...) he’s indifferent to the possibilities in the interaction of images and doesn’t build his sequences by editing (...) inert (...) the music might as well be embalming fluid. (...) it’s essentially a bloodless, elongated version of a thirties costume picture (...) I wish Stanley Kubrick would come home to this country to make movies again, working fast on modern subjects — maybe even doing something tacky, for the hell of it.". Bekijk een filmfragment uit Barry Lyndon hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Days of Heaven (1978) van Terrence Malick: "The film is an empty Christmas tree: you can hang all your dumb metaphors on it. (...) The movie suffers from too many touches, too many ideas that don't grow out of anything organic."

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The Deer Hunter (1978) van Michael Cimino: "enraging, because, despite its ambitiousness and scale, it has no more moral intelligence than the Clint Eastwood action pictures. (...) Cimino doesn’t know how to reveal character, develop it, or indicate what’s going on in a human relationship. (...) a small-minded film (...) Cimino’s technique has pushed him further than he has been able to think out. His major characters don’t articulate their feelings; they’re floating in a wordless, almost plotless atmosphere, and their relations aren’t sharp enough for us to feel the full range of the film’s themes. Too many of the motifs are merely symbolic — are dropped in rather than dramatized. At times, we feel that we’re there to be awed rather than to understand." Bekijk de hele film hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Tess (1979) van Roman Polanski: "The movie is a sustained feat of male breast-beating (...) you’re watching nothing. (...) The picture is tame (...) The story hasn’t been dramatized (...) Everything is subdued, blended. (...) Polanski's 'Tess' is Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' under sedation." Bekijk de hele film hier en een filmfragment hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk The Shining (1980) van Stanley Kubrick: "though we may admire the effects, we’re never drawn in by them (...) When we see a flash of bloody cadavers or observe a torrent of blood pouring from an elevator, we're not frightened, because Kubrick’s absorption in film technology distances us. (...) he keeps the scenes going for so long that any suspense dissipates. (...) by the climax, when we’re running around in the hedge maze on the hotel grounds, the rhythmic sameness has worn us down. It’s like watching a skater do figure eights all night, or at least for two hours and twenty-six minutes. (...) We go to 'The Shining' hoping for nasty scare effects and for an appeal to our giddiest nighttime fears—va­porous figures, shadowy places. What we get doesn’t tease the imagination. Visually, the movie often feels like a cheat (...) Kubrick uses Nicholson in the most obvious way. (...) There’s no surprise in anything he does, no feeling of invention. This is true of everyone in the film (...) since we are not drawn in, we’re not effectively dis­oriented—just fed up. We wait for revelations—the events that will connect the different types of parapsychological phenomena we’ve been observing— and since we don’t get those revelations, the picture seems not to make any sense. So when, at the very end, we’re hit over the head with reincarnation, it has no emotional resonance. It just seems like a dumb finish. (...) we don’t know how to read Kubrick’s signals; it may be that he simply doesn’t know us well enough anymore to manipulate us successfully. Again and again, the movie leads us to expect something—almost promises it—and then disappoints us. (...) We’re starved for pleasure at this movie". Bekijk de trailer hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Raging Bull (1980) van Martin Scorsese: "Jake says, 'You dumb f— k,' and Joey says, 'You dumb f—k,' and they repeat it and repeat it. And I think. What am I doing here watching these two dumb f—ks? (...) there’s nothing under the scenes—no subtext (...) the way the story is told Jake’s life pattern doesn’t make much sense (...) Even the black and white is macho (...) banality (...) loses the lowlife entertainment value of prizefight films (...) aestheticizes pulp". Bekijk een filmfragment hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) van Steven Spielberg: "there’s no exhilaration in this dumb, motor excitement. (...) it isn’t beautifully made (...) klunky music (...) the script doesn’t seem worked out. (...) The actors are mostly just bodies carrying pieces of plot around. They sound as if they were ordered to read their dialogue on the run (...) 'Raiders' is timid moviemaking: the film seems terrified of not giving audiences enough thrills to keep them happy. (...) plot for its own sake, dissociated from character or drama (...) pulp-repulped (...) Spielberg fumbles a lot of his action sequences (...) some of the episodes are simply tired (...) Seeing 'Raiders' is like being put through a Cuisinart—something has been done to us, but not to our benefit.". 

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Blade Runner (1982) van Ridley Scott: "we're always aware of the sets as sets (...) what we see doesn't mean anything to us. (...) Ridley Scott isn’t great on mise en scène (...) we’re not caught up in the pulpy suspense plot (...) this film seems indifferent, blasé (...) The dialogue isn’t well handled, either. Scott doesn’t seem to have a grasp of how to use words as part of the way a movie moves. 'Blade Runner' is a suspenseless thriller (...) At some point, Scott and the others must have decided that the story was unimportant (...) 'Blade Runner' doesn’t engage you directly; it forces passivity on you. (...) it's just something unpleasant or ugly. (...) Rutger Hauer brings the wrong kind of intensity to the role (...) the whole movie gives you a feeling of not getting anywhere. (...) inertia made glamorous. (...) the movie doesn’t pull the plot strands together (...) musty (...) this movie loses track of the few expectations it sets up, and the formlessness adds to a viewer’s demoralization—the film itself seems part of the atmosphere of decay 'Blade Runner' has nothing to give the audience (...) It hasn’t been thought out in human terms. If anybody comes around with a test to detect humanoids, maybe Ridley Scott and his associates should hide. With all the smoke in this movie, you feel as if everyone connected with it needs to have his flue cleaned." Lees onze eigen recensie van Blade Runner hier en bekijk de trailer hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Fanny and Alexander (1982) van Ingmar Bergman: "the conventionality of the thinking in the film is rather shocking. It's as if Bergman's neuroses had been tormenting him for so long that he cut them off and went sprinting back to Victorian health and domesticity." Bekijk de hele film hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk Once Upon a Time in America (1984) van Sergio Leone: "Leone doesn’t bother to develop the characters (...) Leone’s vision of Jewish gangsters is a joke." Bekijk de hele film hier en een filmfragment hier.

- Pauline Kael over het meesterwerk GoodFellas (1990) van Martin Scorsese: "Is it a great movie? I don’t think so. (...) What’s missing? Well, there are no great voices. The script, by Pileggi and Scorsese, isn’t really dramatized (...) Scorsese doesn’t weight the incidents dramatically; he leaves the themes, and even the story, lying there inert. (...) The picture has scope rather than depth. (...) the three major hoods, played by Liotta, De Niro, and Pesci (...) don’t have a strong enough presence. (...) these sociopaths are conceived shallowly, the way they used to be in B pictures. (It wasn’t just the low budgets that were evoked by the term 'B picture'; it was also the unmemorable characters.) (...) these actors seem too old for their parts (...) this picture doesn’t have the juice and richness that come with major performances. It has no arc, and doesn’t climax; it just comes to a stop." Bekijk de trailer hier en een filmfragment hier.

- Pauline Kael over de commerciële draak Dirty Dancing (1987) van Emile Ardolino: "you come out of the theatre giggling happily."


Joeri Naanai