Congrats to both too.

I'd say the same thing about Ebert, except you can only read his reviews AFTER seeing the film (unless you like knowing the plot twists ahead of time...)

One of these days, I'll have to make it through one of those 500-word reviews.

When you review a movie the reader will in turn review the review and thus necessarily be reviewing you as well.

But aside from a more or less sophisticated understanding of the techniques used to make movies the reviewer can only take out of a film what he or she will have already put into it: their self.

Thus, a review is subjunctive.... a reflection of how you view everything outside the theatre as well. Mentally, emotionally and psychologically.

It encompasses your philosophy, politics and ethical values....your cultural and historical framework....your experiences, relationships, traumatic insights and intuitive epiphanies.

They all come together in the here and now and propel your words. And the words you choose now are not likely to reflect the words you might have chosen 10 years ago...nor the words you might choose ten years from now if you watch the film again.

That is the part of a review that is essentially ineffable. And it is ineffable because there is no way in which you can convey to others all that came before you in life leading up to the review. In fact, it becomes more nebulous still when you finally acknowledge that you cannot not even grasp your own changing point of view over the years with any degree of....objectivity?

george walton

Kaufmann is a great movie critic, probably the best writer on film in the US today.

His work reminds of that of Manny Farber another great critic.

god you are tiresome, iambiguous.

take a break, please.

iambiguous,

"Thus, a review is subjunctive."

So, a review is "contrary to facts at present"?

Far be it from me to critique grammar (I make more than my share of mistakes), but this bad boy really stands out.  I mean, I would understand if (get it? get it?) someone intended to write "subjunctive" but accidentally typed "subjective" instead--but making the opposite error strikes me as hilarious.

I think TNR posters should try to maintan an objunctive perspective.

jacksondyer writes:

god you are tiresome, iambiguous.

take a break, please.

George responds:

Ask yourself this:

Who is more pathetic, someone who writes tiresome prose....or someone who keeps reading it?

Now, unless you are forced to monitor my drivel in conjunction with, say, a job you got enforcing Dick Cheney's Patriot Act, I'm guessing the problem is yours, not mine.

On the other hand, thanks for that reference to God. I'll use it on the resume I'm sending to Barack Obama.

george walton  

prendergast writes:

iambiguous,

"Thus, a review is subjunctive."

So, a review is "contrary to facts at present"?

Far be it from me to critique grammar (I make more than my share of mistakes), but this bad boy really stands out. I mean, I would understand if (get it? get it?) someone intended to write "subjunctive" but accidentally typed "subjective" instead--but making the opposite error strikes me as hilarious.

George responds:

Subjunctive. Hey, sorry about that. I was born and raised in a thesaurus.

Still, the subjunctive tense does come up rather frequently in the philosophy venues I visit. It's related to what is called the "subjunctive conditional" or the "subjunctive mood". Especially in conjunction with the myriad existential quandaries posed by folks like Camus, deBeauvoir, Sartre, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Schopenhauer. But I suspect you don't show up much in philosophy rooms, right? Prendergast isn't a name I'm likely to forget.

Seriously though, a subjunctive frame of mind [as I used it above] is defined in Webster's dictionary as "in grammar, designating or of that mood of a verb used to express condition, hypothesis, contingency, possibility, etc., rather than to state an actual fact: distinguished from imperative, indicative.” .

What does that mean?

I'll give you an example. Suppose we are discussing abortion. Now, the word "abortion" as a medical procedure is something most reasonably intelligent adults in the English speaking world will agree about. No one is going to say it means harvesting grapes, right?

But suppose the discussion turns instead into a debate about the morality of abortion. Is abortion moral or immoral? Here the language we use soon becomes an agglomeration of objective and subjective points of view. In other words, we cannot grasp epistemologically all that can be known or not known about the moral parameters of abortion. Instead, when we discuss it our language betrays emotional and psychological inflection...it exposes all of the uniquely personal experiences we have. Contingencies, in other words. Contingencies related to what we have been taught, books we have read, teachers who have influenced us etc. This preclude a coda that can be encompassed [as Kant put it] "imperatively and categorically". Kant, of course, obviated the subjunctive mood philosophically by subsuming it in God.  

But I don't believe in God. Subjunctively, as it were.

georgewalton

Mr. Walton:

Lengthy, pretentious compositions in inappropriate forums piled high with words that already have synonyms but were nonetheless created so that the word's creator can claim to have discovered, defined, or invented a novel concept in human experience are precisely why many intelligent people have an unfortunate but understandable disdain for those who proclaim themselves as philosophers.

That is to say, your actions make actual thoughtful people look bad.

And you made me agree with jacksondyer, which pains me.

I am grateful to Kaufmann for bringing attention to movies and books that I would have overlooked.  I remember his beautiful tribute to Takashi Shimura, which made me rush out to find "Ikiru", which led me to other Kurosawa movies and to other great Japanese directors.  Thank you, Mr. K.

Mr. Walton:

Lengthy, pretentious compositions in inappropriate forums piled high with words that already have synonyms but were nonetheless created so that the word's creator can claim to have discovered, defined, or invented a novel concept in human experience are precisely why many intelligent people have an unfortunate but understandable disdain for those who proclaim themselves as philosophers.

That is to say, your actions make actual thoughtful people look bad.

And you made me agree with jacksondyer, which pains me.

George walton responds:

Talk about subjunctive!!

Your psychologisms may be ironic, of course, but I suspect they are not. Is there an official guidebook that distinguishes appropriate from inappropriate, thoughtful from thoughtless, pretentious from sincere discourse in here?

Or is this just something you KNOW?

And I bent over backwards, by offering prendergast a specific example of what I construe to be subjunctive discourse.

Now, if you feel it was inappropriate, thoughtless, and pretentious why don't you take the time to illustrate how a more intelligent point of view would differentiate the denotative meaning of abortion [the meaning you would find in a dictionary] from more connotative assessments regarding the ethical parameters of performing or having an abortion done.

george walton