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| Gemma Arterton and Ian McKellen in The Critic |
Director Anand Tucker and screenwriter Patrick Marber's 1930s period drama The Critic, sees Sir Ian McKellen step into the shoes of Jimmy Erskine, the chief theatre critic of the Daily Chronicle newspaper. The most feared critic of his time, he seeks to entertain his readers with scathingly witty takedowns of any actor or production that fails to meet his standards.
After the death of his father, David Brooke (Mark Strong) takes over the Chronicle. He and Erskine immediately clash as he tries to make it a family-friendly newspaper. He lets go of some of the old guard writers, and makes a simple request of Erskine: "Be kinder." The veteran critic can't abide it and, after being arrested for homosexual transgressions, he loses his job. In order to take back power from Brooke, he makes a deal with actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), who he harshly reviewed but recognises as having talent, and sets in motion a devious plot.
Anand's previous credits include the 1998 biopic-drama Hilary And Jackie, about the distinguished cellist Jacqueline du Pré, the 2005 love triangle drama Shopgirl, with Steve Martin adapting his own novel, and the 2010 romantic-comedy Leap Year, starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. His television credits include, the 2009 TV movie, Red Riding: The Year Of Our Lord 1983, the crime-thriller Rogue (2013-17) and the 1930s period drama, Indian Summers (2015-16).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Anand discussed rediscovering ]Alien's intimate aesthetic, the motivation behind art, film criticism's class system, and how society carelessly creates its own monsters.
Paul Risker: Isabelle Huppert, head juror at this year’s Venice Film Festival, has expressed concerns about the future of cinema, owing to its current “very weak” condition. In the past year, there have been discussions about how cinema is no longer the dominant art form. Do you share Huppert's concerns, and what are your thoughts about the crisis of cinema's diminishing dominance?
Anand Tucker: Even when I was lucky enough to make my first film, thirty years ago, all I've ever heard is the noise: "Cinema's dead… It's a crisis; it's all over… We're bollocksed." Here's the thing, cinema is always evolving. It's a technological-driven art form, so, of course, it's always going to change. And it's going to change with the pace of technology. It's going to be constantly disrupted, that's the nature of cinema full stop - it's not a heritage industry.
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| Gemma Arterton in The Critic |
Apple Vision Pro is the future of cinema, and I've never been more excited about what cinema could be. This device here, has literally given me the most intense cinematic experience of my life. I'm a cinephile, but rewatching Sunset Boulevard or Apocalypse Now in that incredible cinematic experience, I was crying when I first put it on.
There's a new spatial filmmaking that's embedded in this device that Apple and Black Magic are developing. It's not about me anymore and this next generation of filmmakers are going to be making films spatially, but they're going to be films with cuts and edits. They're going to have a whole extra dimension to work in, and it's so exciting.
It's hard for old dogs like me who are trundling along that only have one bag of tricks. Why can't things be the way they always were, and, of course, we're worrying about paying our mortgages and school fees, but this is the movie business. So, no, I'm really excited. Am I worried about paying my mortgage next year? Yes [laughs]. Am I worried about the future of cinema? No [laughs].
PR: We're a culture built on storytelling and one constant is our appetite for stories.
AT: It's all about the means of distribution, from the printing press onwards, or it's about the pipes and how you get the stuff to people. The pipes also dictate what form the stories will take, and in the end, you have to go and tell the stories for the people that want them.
PR: There was a time when a theatre critic could make or break a play. Film critics have exerted an influence, but never to that extent. The Critic is a reflection on how times have changed and criticism both in theatre and cinema has evolved.
AT: Well, what's interesting about the Jimmy Erskine character is that he believes in the transformative power of art. You could say in an old-fashioned way, but he believes that art has a power, it matters, and that there should be standards. They may be his standards, but if he doesn't cling to those, then what's the point?
Art is important, whether it's theatre or cinema. We do it because it's how we connect with other people, and it's how we know we have. It allows us empathy through windows into other people's lives. That's why we come to these shared experiences and that's what all art tries to do.
A good critical work is art. It's writing, and it is at its best when it illuminates another piece of work in a way that you maybe haven't seen. It takes you into its corners, and it shows you new things. Or, it actually says, 'Life is short, so you may not want to waste your time on this because you've got how many movies in your life that you could watch?' And furthermore, it's important because not everything is a masterpiece.
Every film is a failed disastrous attempt to reanimate a Frankenstein piece of the debris from all your dead dreams you've gone through from the script to the shooting. Then you hope the shambling thing that ends up on the screen has some life to it, or not. But it can always be better, and you can learn. Life is a process of learning, and so, the issue is like what we were talking about with cinema, it's about distribution.
[…] In the early days of film criticism, Philip French, Derek Malcolm and Pauline Kael could have a big influence, but now everyone's a publisher. It's very tricky to understand what the role and function of a critic is. That's an interesting debate because what makes movies work in the world now is more of a vibe or a feeling of consensus on the internet.
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| Alfred Enoch and Ian McKellen in The Critic |
I do think that within the business, which is still functioning in an old-fashioned way out of festivals, reviews in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety or Screen Daily matter. And those reviewers matter within the business because they set the bar where the buyers will buy or not. But it almost bears no relation to what's happening and how a movie might or might not be received in the world. I think it's complicated.
PR: Erskine can be scathing in his criticism, but when a play or a particular performance touches him, he will write a gushing critique. There are two distinct sides to his personality that expose the contradictions of his persona. The film isn't interested in whether he's good or bad, and that challenges us as an audience because we instinctively seek to judge.
AT: Even if someone is critical of something or says horrible things, if you know that they're writing because they love it, then okay. It's when it's just cynicism or what we would now call clickbait.
The truth is, Jimmy Erskine is someone who has lived with and had to hide his secret all his life. He's a seeker who is after truth in art, but he has to hide the truth of who he is because it could literally cost him his life - everything he has built. If you live with that for long enough, you end up having an awful lot more to lose. There's the William Blake poem The Sick Rose:
- O Rose thou art sick.
- The invisible worm,
- That flies in the night
- In the howling storm:
- Has found out thy bed
- Of crimson joy:
- And his dark secret love
- Does thy life destroy.
Basically, it's saying the rose is beautiful, but at its heart, once the worm has gotten in... Jimmy didn't put it there, but it's there [nonetheless]. I guess the question the film asks you is, we've all been in that place where we suddenly come upon a situation, where if we throw someone under the bus it would be better for us and our family, but it would be bad for them - what do you do? And in Jimmy's case, it literally is a matter of life and death, or is it?
He has lived with the anger, and it has calcified in him - the anger of being bullied by the state, the world and the culture. He's a man who loves his assistant, but does he love him enough at that point? And he sees Nina Land, the actress. No one else in the film sees her, but he sees right into her soul. She knows he sees her and there's that weird love story. So, he's capable of that, but what does he do with it?
Hitchcock said: "The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture." It's a lesson we learned with this film because we struggled with an iteration of the ending where, interestingly, the villain wasn't true to himself. We were trying to grapple with the darkness that a character like that can go into or not, and where an audience wants to go and what they can or can't take. I wish I'd read that Hitchcock quote sooner.
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| Ian McKellen in The Critic |
PR: A cautionary quote I've always loved is that we create our own monsters. Watching The Critic, it struck me that those that are seen as the villain are able to manipulate because of the villainous society with all its prejudices.
AT: Absolutely, and listen, the world is full of terrible pressure, especially the capitalist world where it's dog eat dog, and we don't exist in relation to our fellow people. I don't believe all people are bad, but there is a segment of the population that can have strong narcissistic tendencies. You put those people into a situation where that's encouraged, like the corporate structure that rewards narcissistic behaviour, then of course you're going to create monsters.
The movie business created Harvey Weinstein. There's a narcissistic monster if you ever saw one. He was capable in some ways of seeing beauty in cinema, but at the same time, he didn't see any of the people around him or have any empathy for them. The corporate structure and the world of moviemaking allowed his narcissism to flower, and indeed rewarded it to the point that he was a monster. So, it's complex, but you're absolutely right, and it's a good quote.
PR: Throughout the film, beauty and ugliness are in stark contrast and are captured in the jarring performances. In your director's statement you describe the actors' faces as being like landscapes. There's a beautiful texture and detail to their facial performances, that communicates beyond their words.
AT: There's a sequence where Nina Land has the fear [on stage] - she can't do it. She's had her first encounter with Jimmy, who has been awful about her, and she knows that he has seen her despite everything. In the end, that's the last person she should turn to, but she does turn to him in desperation. The camera is so close to both their faces that you're studying a landscape - their faces are a kind of John Ford western landscape.
There are moments when it takes a long time before you'll see the glint in Ian McKellen’s eye, and it's quite frustrating, but then when you catch his eye, that pulls you in. I don't know if a lot of audiences would have the patience. I'm grateful that you saw it and felt it because I think these are things that cinema can do, but it requires a certain level of patience.
I was watching Ridley Scott's Alien again, on my Apple Pro obviously - fucking amazing. I had forgotten how many incredible close-ups that movie is structured around. There are so many big anamorphic close-ups that you forget because a lot of films are television-influenced. It tends to be mids and mid-wide and movement in frames, and faces are hard to look at for a while. It can become confronting, especially if you feel the person's humanity, and it's an awful thing they're saying. As you say, that's very jarring.
The Critic was released theatrically in the US by Greenwich Entertainment and in the UK and Irish cinemas by LionsGate on Friday 13th September.
