Who’s More Cynical?

Kenneth Turan’s piece on the cold, cynical nature of current art-house films conveniently ignores many recent releases that don’t fit into his rigid and simplistic thesis (“New Cinema’s Heartless Beat,” Dec. 2).

In the past few years there have been many sincere and profound explorations of the human condition that have found their way into art houses, from Keith Gordon’s “Waking the Dead” and Dan Cohen’s “Diamond Men” to Kurt Voss and Allison Anders’ “Sugar Town.”

Granted, none of these terrific movies reached the large audiences that “Kids” or “Chuck & Buck” did, but if Turan is so convinced that young audiences are cynical and jaded, why doesn’t he try to turn them on to the movies that might open their minds and hearts a little rather than simply railing against the films they already know about?

The fact that he spends three-quarters of his article talking about what he hates and only refers to more positive films in the second-to-last paragraph indicates Turan is the biggest grump and cynic of them all.

JIM HEMPHILL

Los Angeles

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The nihilism of the hip/indie/boutique productions is a little more advanced than Turan realizes. It is partly the result of auteurism in its decadent phase meeting the permanent adolescence that the ‘60s bequeathed those born after. It is also in part the clumsy adoption by the hip filmmaker of foreign exploitation styles from Asia and Europe that further privilege the visceral.

The contemporary high-budget production generally inflates the old Hollywood low-budget exploitation film (dinosaur pictures, mummy pictures, science-fiction, crime dramas) through a kind of marketing brinksmanship that is yielding dwindling returns. (These films incidentally elevate the anonymous second-unit director to true auteur status.)

The critic ought to grade the pretentious filmmaker harder on these issues. “Gladiator” was a far better summer action film than “Memento” was a film noir, even though the gladiator’s human back story was pro forma, sketched in with sepia-tinted Kodak moments.

But even that is preferable to nihilism.

JOE CARDUCCI

Laramie, Wyo.