Vague Thoughts With Anu

Film Critics aren’t Biutiful (or Why I Hate Today’s American Film Critics)

I am in absolute awe that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu’s masterpiece (yes, masterpiece) Biutiful, isn’t getting the praise it deserves by American movie critics. I’m not talking about the general public, I’m talking about the people that snub their noses at The Expendables and crap themselves over Winter’s Bone.  

Winter’s Bone? Has a movie never been made about the isolated and impoverished lives of Midwesterners? Has a script ever been so banal? How many ways can a critic write tour de force?

Dear film critics, this is an open letter to you. You are all off your rocker. You don’t know what it means to like a movie for a movie’s sake. You buy into the hype, into the marketing, into everything else that is NOT storytelling and filmmaking, and then you try to sway intelligent American people to believe you are the be-all end-all of good taste.

You like a movie, then it gets “overhyped” and then, oh wait, now you hate it? What happened to all those critics that loved Inception?  Turns out us stupid common masses liked it, too, and now that you think of it, it wasn’t so great.  That’s not how movies work. It’s like the hipster mentality has taken over film critics, and they can’t tell a good movie from their arse hole. 

Biutiful  is a tornado of a film. The clouds wash over you from the first scene, and from there, you’re swept away in a “tour de force” of performance, cinematography, direction and wonderful, heartbreaking storytelling. Not all movies are uplifting. Some are depressing because life is depressing. There are beautiful moments in this movie, just as in life, but for some people it is bleak and hopeless. And sometimes death is the only peace one can hope for. 

And for those critics that say they love the likes of Bela Tarr and Ingmar Bergman, who praise Roy Andersson and Lars Von Trier: you don’t love depressing, you just love being called an “art house” critic with “fine” taste. All those directors have made depressing as hell films, but you love them because you’re supposed to love them. But because Inarittu isn’t as obscure or decidedly art house, you shit on Biutiful because it is too depressing? Because you’ve seen it all before? I cried like a baby in Biutiful, and I couldn’t sleep at all that night. You guys are idiots.

Gene Siskel would be rolling in his grave.