Critical tightrope

The year is barely a month old and already it’s open season on movie critics. Usually this is one of the few times of year when Hollywood pays lip service to its beleaguered critical brethren, relying on their hosannas and top 10 lists to market Oscar contenders.

The indie tribe just had its annual gathering at Sundance, where critical approval can often persuade wary acquisition executives that a “difficult” film is worth buying. It’s also a time of celebratory awards fests, such as the recent L.A. Film Critics Assn. banquet, where Jack Nicholson, accepting the best actor award for his role in “About Schmidt,” slyly explained that when first told of his honor, “I didn’t know what kind of event this was and, oddly, no one could tell me.”

And yet film critics have found themselves squarely in the cross hairs, under attack for what their detractors say is their pointless elitism. Variety editor Peter Bart blasted away in a recent column, relegating critics to three categories: the “pop culture is yucky” school, the “obscurantist” school and (my favorite) the “I admit to brain damage” school, which, as Bart puts it, would explain “why Brian De Palma movies continue to adorn so many critics’ lists.”

He was followed by conservative talk show host and critic Michael Medved, who bemoaned in USA Today the “yawning chasm” between critics and moviegoers, saying, “It’s tough to avoid the conclusion that critics intentionally emphasize their differences with ordinary moviegoers.” He described “The Hours” as “profoundly depressing” and criticized the L.A. Film Critics Assn.’s decision to give its best supporting actress award to Edie Falco for her performance in “Sunshine State,” a film Medved dismissed as “painfully obscure.” Medved claims that honoring these films sends a message to the public that says “we know something you don’t know.”

These attacks have elicited several spirited critical responses, including an inspired rant from Salon’s Charles Taylor, who at one point wrote, “Were this the Warren Report, we could simply dismiss Bart as the Lone Ignoramus.” But the naysayers, however misguided, have a point: There is a wide divergence in the tastes of film critics and moviegoers, perhaps more than ever. Despite a tidal wave of rave reviews, “Far From Heaven,” “Adaptation” and “Punch-Drunk Love” all have suffered from lackluster box office performances.

And the gap isn’t limited to film. As a recent Variety story pointed out: “With reality shows and family sitcoms dominating the Nielsen ratings, the disconnect between TV critics and couch potatoes has never been wider.... This season in particular, viewers seem to be shrugging off critical raves with a collective ‘Who cares?’ ”

Much the same applies to pop music, with the 2002 critic top 10 lists dominated by albums from Beck, Bright Eyes, Wilco, Tom Waits, the Roots, the Hives, Flaming Lips, Ryan Adams and Elvis Costello, none of whom came close to selling 500,000 copies.

So what gives? Should critics really worry about staying in sync with the masses? Should they start grading on a curve? No one speaks more eloquently on this subject than film historian David Thomson, author of “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,” an irreplaceable collection of idiosyncratic film essays whose revised fourth edition was published last fall.

Thomson sees critics as educators, not as elitists. “The critic isn’t the ordinary viewer -- it’s our role to be different,” he says. “One of the things critics are hired to do is to say, ‘Have you heard of this? Do you know the shop is serving something else to eat?’ A lot of critics truly think the best films they saw were at festivals and special screenings, not the ones marketed on thousands of screens.”

Thomson believes we live in an era in which the vast majority of moviegoers regard movies as box office events, not as works of art. “It seems pretty obvious that the Monday-morning box office figures have a bigger impact than the Friday reviews,” he says. “It’s easy for critics to appear superior or ironic, but I would argue that there’s not really a lot in mainstream films that lends itself to searching inquiry.”

I suspect that much of the critical hand wringing over the depressing state of mainstream film is more a function of age than of intellectual snobbery. Many of today’s critics, who began their careers in the 1960s and 1970s, have little patience or identification with special-effects-laden comic book films or lowbrow youth comedies. Thomson acknowledges that his view of films has been dramatically influenced by seeing movies in recent years with his two sons, now 8 and 13.

“I very often feel that I’m going for the love of seeing my kids have a good time, like going to the zoo or the circus,” says Thomson, who at 61 isn’t much older than many of today’s leading film critics. “You obviously have a problem when you have a generation of critics in their 50s or older reviewing movies that are aimed at people in their 20s or younger. It makes about as much sense as asking people in their 50s to review a roller coaster ride.”

Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly’s influential TV critic, has similar sentiments about his peers, who have heaped derision on the popular reality-based programs. “A lot of my colleagues are middle-aged white guys who have no idea why younger audiences are fascinated by ‘Bachelorette’ or ‘Joe Millionaire,’ ” says Tucker, 49. “It’s not elitism so much as a generation gap and an unwillingness to bend certain long-standing critical prejudices about scripted material versus reality. ‘Bachelorette’ is pretty darn compelling, and it seems very shortsighted to close your mind to it just because it’s a reality show.”

Music critics have championed bands for years that never sold a lick. Has anyone but a rock writer ever listened to a Jesus and Mary Chain album more than once? But the gap between critics and young fans was never wider than during the late 1990s, when a generation of manufactured teen idols -- surely you haven’t already forgotten the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears already -- spread an outbreak of mass depression among critics.

The teen mania provoked considerable soul searching. “There was definitely a disconnect between critics and the audience,” says Philadelphia Inquirer music critic Tom Moon. “You really had to check your assumptions. It turned everything you thought you understood about the aspirations of young performers on its head.” From Elvis to Eminem, rock critics have always identified greatness with artists who radiated a barbed outrageousness, something that was entirely missing from the pop fluff dominating the charts.

“It was a huge jag in the culture, a totally different kind of work than what we were used to celebrating,” says Moon, 42. “We’d always get pounded with mail from fans, saying ‘Don’t dismiss our beloved Backstreet Boys!’ I remember being so relieved when I first heard Michelle Branch and I thought, ‘Finally, here’s an artist whose melodies weren’t manufactured in a factory in Orlando, Florida.’ ”

It’s no wonder being a critic is often a lonely pastime. Ezra Pound once dubbed artists “the antennae of the race,” yet critics rarely get credit for fulfilling much the same role, gently prodding audiences to open their minds to new ideas. The job comes with a built-in set of contradictions, since critics are supposed to serve as advocates for what’s provocative and fresh, yet they can forfeit much of their credibility if they lure audiences too far afield. Ask anyone who went to see “Eyes Wide Shut” or the recent “Russian Ark” after reading the rave reviews.

This is not meant as an endorsement of Medved’s moralist scolding. (He recently advised parents to shun “Kangaroo Jack” because screenwriter Steve Bing is a playboy and raises money for “strident Democratic propaganda.”) Nor is it a ‘throw-the-rascals out’ indictment of middle-aged critics. Pauline Kael had just as much intellectual verve in her 60s as in her 30s, something I would also say about Times pop critic Robert Hilburn, who, like Kael, is a hugely influential figure among younger critics. But it’s one thing to be distressed by a dumbed-down popular success, another thing to treat it with knee-jerk contempt.

Thomson, for one, finds it invaluable to see a movie with an audience, which led to the revelatory experience of taking his 13-year-old son to see “Jackass: The Movie.” “Everyone was having a ball,” he recalls. “I never lost the part of me that says, ‘Good God, look at this dreck!’ But I found it quite funny too. We should never forget that movies are made for an audience. If you went to see an Abbott and Costello movie in a side chapel of a cathedral, you might think they’re vulgar and silly, but see the same movie with 500 guys on a troop ship, busting up laughing, and you’d have a different point of view.”

After all, critics start out like many of us, as people who, in Kael’s famous phrase, lost it at the movies. If they forget why we all gather in the dark, they’re in danger of losing the sheer exhilaration that made them fall in love with movies in the first place.

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The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have ideas, questions or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.

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The people’s choices

These are the top 10 box office films of 2002 (based on total domestic gross, including 2003 to date).

1. “Spider-Man”

2. “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones”

3. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”

4. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”

5. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”

6. “Signs”

7. “Austin Powers in Goldmember”

8. “Men in Black II”

9. “Ice Age”

10. “Die Another Day”

Source: Exhibitor Relations Co.

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The critics’ choices

According to the Moviecitynews.com Web site, these were the 10 most critically acclaimed films of 2002, ranked in order of most appearances on critics’ top 10 lists:

1. “Far From Heaven”

2. “Y Tu Mama Tambien”

3. “Talk to Her”

4. “About Schmidt”

5. “Adaptation”

6. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”

7. “The Pianist”

8. “Chicago”

9. “Spirited Away”

10. “Gangs of New York”