Damon Wise
London
Freelance film journalist, festival whore and and general all-round groovy guy.
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Comment on: The trouble with critics
I completely agree. I thought the Noe film was shockingly overlooked, and I was taken aback by the glibness of the reactions to other movies this year. Full praise to Von Trier for making a movie that didn't just push for an intellectual reaction, it demanded one. I saw the later Antichrist screening at the Bazin, and the laughter there seemed completely forced: the movie was *working*, but there were a bunch of people who just had to announce their presence at the screening (I often wonder who these people are; for a festival that makes one jump through so many hoops for accreditation, a lot of amateurs seem to slip through the net). Now, given the festival's obsession with news coverage, this kind of thing is only to be expected: best film ever or worst film ever, best Cannes ever or worst Cannes ever. But what surprise me this year, though, was the amount of "So what?" It strikes me that critics at Cannes are no longer looking to discover or learn, they are demanding to be impressed, and that, I would say, is not a very tenable position given the circumstances you outline in the opening paragraph!
