Page Two

Showing no embarrassment, I offer the director's cut of last week's column. Long past deadline and with the piece already way too long, last week I stopped and cut to fit. But I hadn't finished working out my thoughts. It turned out I had to, so expect a couple of repeated sentences and rehashed ideas.

The sorry state of American film criticism is not exactly a revelation, but cruising the Net for Secondhand Lions reviews made it so painfully clear. My prejudices are obvious: A fan of Tim McCanlies as writer, director, and person, I loved the movie. Whether critics didn't or did like it wasn't of concern; the problem was the kiddie-pool shallowness of most reviews, which tied insipid thoughts to arbitrary conclusions.

The filmmaker worst served by critics, as I argued last week, is Quentin Tarantino; the reviews are more about a cultural phenomenon than they are about his films. And, regardless of their take, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 reviews made it clear that the film is about nothing.

The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, I felt a burst of undiluted cultural electricity racing through my body, firing my mind. Once, these film-ignited explosions were a regular occurrence. I was so much younger then, working my way through the generally acknowledged and not-so-widely agreed-upon great films. I was also more innocent, optimistic, and passionate. Pulp Fiction re-excited my passion; I fell in love with film all over again.

Writers seem actually scared to admit too much affection for Tarantino's films, as though the over-the-top impact of his work somehow detracts from it. Rather than thought, they offer tired variations on the accepted critical cant. Sure, he quotes from other movies, but Tarantino's movies tell very human, character-driven stories. The cultural referencing allows his characters to breathe in the real world far more effectively than do stiffer dramas drenched in theatrical ideas, set in neutered environments. Yet compare the reception of Kill Bill to that of Mystic River.

The latter has earned rave reviews, some beyond ecstatic. Right up front, I have to acknowledge that I haven't yet seen it (trust me for a bit here). Brian Helgeland is a brilliant, evocative screenwriter. Clint Eastwood is among the most interesting of working directors, and though many of his directorial efforts have done middling to deeply disappointing box office, there have been a number of hits, including Unforgiven, Space Cowboys, and The Bridges of Madison County. Eastwood's legendary status allows him to make exactly and only the kinds of films he wants to make. In his heyday, he'd swap a Dirty Harry performance for a directorial project, but even now he still keeps working. Uniquely uninterested in dramatic pacing or taut narrative, Eastwood's best works create atmosphere and explore how his characters function in an uncomfortable world where they don't, nor want to, fit in. The Outlaw Josey Wales is the masterpiece exception that proves the rule, but that may be because Eastwood replaced scripter Philip Kaufman as director a week into the shoot. Given his directorial obsessions, Eastwood is a fine choice for this novel, and probably improved on it.

I passionately hated reading Mystic River, even though I'm a fan of Dennis Lehane's detective novels; they capture the atmosphere of working-class Boston effectively but feature outlandish action, making them surreal as well as ripping reads. Let me make it clear that Mystic River was an incredibly well-reviewed, bestselling novel that many readers loved. It is exactly the kind of novel I'd expect of a genre writer getting "serious": Eliminate detectives and action, emphasize character and atmosphere, be very very dark. But after the first 10 pages, everything that follows is painfully predictable.

There is a type of narrative I used to label "immigrants evicted from their apartment" (not necessarily involving immigrants, eviction, and/or apartments). The air of doom starts at the beginning, only thickening as the narrative unfolds. The only surprises are how things prove ever more hopeless and any revelations artificial -- the world is a dark and dangerous place.

Most people look to tragedy, more than comedy, for meaning. A happy ending is invariably suspect, ringing false, while well-done tragedy almost always seems real. This comes from life. I'd suggest most of us have more good times than bad, and certainly more good times than tragic. The best of times, however, are always haunted by the at least subconscious sense that they are just preludes to a fall. Even if we don't experience the worst, we always anticipate it. Life is pain, even when it is not painful.

Tragic times are never tinted, much less saturated, with a sense that something better is coming. Verbally, we may reassure others or ourselves of this, but we never quite believe it. In a movie, we know a happy ending is of the moment; the lovers, finally reunited, will wake the next morning with one farting in bed. Our sense of the real world suggests that any ending glow is an illusion: In a month, probably, they'll be fighting; in a year, divorced. Tragedy provides closure. We know there is more to come in the characters' lives, but the atmosphere is not misleading; we are not being sold a world that our experience indicates will implode. Mystic River is probably a masterpiece of mood and character. Given Eastwood's skill and the extraordinary cast, this is easy to believe. At the movie's end, however, unless it is radically different from the book's, what have we learned? Is it anything but a catalog of the obvious -- that childhood shapes adulthood; trauma's impact is often not noticeable and never really fades; economic status and family are life predictors? Wasn't it obvious before the first shot that violence is never far away in any human community (and is especially close to the working class/working poor), that we are trapped in our lives, that tragedy is constantly snaking under the soil on which we live? This is not to dismiss or trivialize the film, but to complain about the quality of film criticism.

On September 11, what had been known became unknown. The hatred-obsessed few caused death and destruction seemingly beyond their abilities, certainly beyond our comprehension. This country's billions of dollars of military equipment provided no defense against angry men plotting in caves.

But terror unanswered destroys history and erodes society, rendering its victims impotent. Deeply perverted, almost-anonymous, nationless enemies dispersed around the world are as a poison gas; their lack of definition intensifies their menace: Evil, to be vanquished, needs a physical presence, places to bomb, men to kill. President Bush intuitively understood this and acted.

More than 80% of Americans supported his invasion. Not because of imminent threat, weapons of mass destruction, or desire for regime change, nor to further freedom, birth democracy, or for a new Middle East. No, it was for vengeance, to get the enemy as they had gotten us -- crazed, blood-lust redemption for our unbearable humiliation. Not just vengeance, but vengeance so massive as to defy comprehension. Crotch-holding, ass-kicking, overwhelmingly awe-inspiring military macho-strutting to let the world know not to fuck with this country. If you do, we wanted to make clear, then we could and would strike back, beyond law or reason, with the most vast military arsenal the world has ever seen (this message worked better for us as deliverers than for those for whom it was intended, but that's another story). Somewhere between 50% and 70% of the population still believes that Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11, not because of the administration's manipulations or right-wing media's distortions, but because they have to believe that the enemy, easy to find, is now conquered. Kill Bill, a celebration of vengeance and violence, holds a mirror to us and to our nation, showing what few want to acknowledge. A sleek, rapid depiction of violence -- the elements out of which it grows and is constructed -- Kill Bill is deranged madness, as the Bride seeks justice and peace through the most extreme retribution. Set in a world designed to accommodate such outrage, it depicts rituals observed, the rules of the obscenely violent obeyed, the morality of no morality defining actions and relationships as endless reservoirs of blood are spewed, sprayed, and gushed across the screen.

Mystic River may be a masterpiece, but it is a work based on and illustrating long-frozen social constructs; economic, racial, and national restrictions; and an understood prevalent order that defines each person's role. Rather than challenging or revelatory, it is traditional and, though tragic, inherently reactionary.

Kill Bill is immediate, pumping at one with the crazed heart of the modern world, the fixed verse poem of a people close to going insane. In a time when the unspoken desire for vengeance dictates severe actions and divides the nation's people, a film of vengeance has no meaning? American film criticism should go on welfare; it has little to do with film, let alone culture, politics, or the world in which we live. In the New Yorker, David Denby found Mystic River a rich masterpiece but in looking at Kill Bill saw nothing. Again, the film was serving as a mirror in which not only Denby was looking.