The Art of Criticism 6: Art and Objectivity

 ...All the same, if you say you dislike "The Godfather" or "Shawshank," I can't say you're wrong. The one thing you can never be wrong about is your own opinion. It's when you start giving your reasons that you lay yourself open. Many years ago there was a critic in Chicago who said "The Valachi Papers" was a better film than "The Godfather." "Phil," I told him, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion. Only rarely does it stray into objective fact. When you said 'The Valachi Papers' was better than 'The Godfather,' that was an error of objective fact." -Roger Ebert

All the recent bellyaching about Inception has again led many to criticize those reviewers who gave the film a negative review. This, of course, has opened up a whole can of worms about the value of the film reviewer (often incorrectly equated with a critic), of having dissenting opinions, and what qualifies as a valid opinion. Roger Ebert gives a nice little defense of his profession (above). Yet, I can't help feeling as if he's dancing around the solutions. He's certainly right when he states, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion." The problem though is when he tries to bring objectivity into the equation. Briefly, objectivity is "mind-independent" or free from any judgments made by an entity. This excludes Science, Religion, Literature, Film, etc, etc. The only things it doesn't necessarily exclude are Mathematics and Philosophy, the only fields where actual "discoveries" are made (not "inventions"). Basically, I point this out in reference to Ebert's quote from above, "only rarely does it stray into objective fact." What exactly is an "objective fact" and how is it different from a fact (and what does this have to do with anything?)? I'll tell you:


Ideally, a fact would be objective, in fact most people think that a fact is objective. Then they say things like, "it is a fact that I am made up of atoms" or "it is a fact that I am smarter than you" or "it is a fact that the earth was created 10,000 years ago." Basically, people call things "facts" that are based on the scientific method, their own judgment, or even the judgment of others. None of those things is objectively true, although some may have a high probability of being correct (remember that: neither science nor religion is empirically true, the world would be a better place if everyone realized it... I'm not saying the world would be a better place if they didn't exist). So, in common usage a fact is merely probably true... what does this have to do with film criticism? It has to do with how objective any opinion about film can be, which is to say, not at all. Everything is subjective, we just happen to share some of the same subjective experiences. We've all seen several movies and can thus understand what editing and framing do to a movie without really thinking about it (most of us never do).

That most people have shared the experience of seeing a few mainstream films like Titanic, Avatar, Star Wars, and a smattering of others says something about our collective expectations for any movie we might wander into. To take the recent example of Inception (the genesis of both Ebert's article and this one), most people haven't seen a Lynch or Bunuel film, not to mention Solaris or 8 1/2, so expecting them to know how dreaming has been explored and examined before is not fair. Those reviewers who are writing for an audience that doesn't see many films shouldn't try to criticize the film on those grounds. On the other hand a reviewer who is writing for an audience with a deep knowledge of film (yet still probably a shared and specific one, even as it is more numerous) should make those references.


To make more clear my viewpoint: a review is an opinion about about a particular film intended for a specific audience. There cannot be an incorrect opinion about a film. If you find that a particular reviewer does not agree with you most of the time, then find a new reviewer. If no reviewer shares your taste, find a new way to pick out those films that you want to see. The truth is that we need a way to decide what films or books are worth our time. That is the value of the review, but it isn't criticism. Spending a lot of time arguing about the value of a particular reviewer is a waste of time too, and it says a lot about the state the film community that what a reviewer writing for a mainstream audience in, say New York Magazine, says can bring out such an uproar. The film is worth arguing about, not the review.