I quite like Kermode despite my initial skepticism. I remember him as the rocker playing the bass in Jonathon Ross’s band in one of his Channel 4 shows. He was such a striking (and, yes, just a little odd) figure that he was instantly memorable, resembling a slightly chubbier Chris Isaac.
Then he was a film reviewer and then… Well, he was *the* film reviewer at a time where there weren’t that many reviewers deserving the title. It was after Barry Norman had retired and the BBC were having its usual nervous breakdown about naming a successor.
And because it was the BBC, run by nobodies who had done nothing and knew nothing, they didn’t appoint a successor. They just gave the gig to the awful Winklewoman, she of the equally awful fringe, who knew bugger all about movies but was a “face” who could read an autocue and act all frothy. She could front the Film show whilst poor knowledgable schmucks without a name (and would never be allowed to get a name so long as talentless hacks were frothing all over these shows) did all the hard work of watching and judging movies.
All of which is to say: I didn’t mind Kermode and sometimes quite liked him. He wasn’t Mark Cousins or others with a bigger footprint in “serious” cinema, but he knew his cult classics and championed The Exorcist probably a bit too much for his own good.
I still enjoy his reviews when I read or hear them. I own a couple of his books, one of which is even signed which is usually a good indicator that I’ve held somebody in esteem.
All of which is my long-winded way of noting that he hated Megalopolis with a passion. Here’s what he actually said:
“He didn't have any nasty money men standing over telling him what to do and the result is, I think, not only his worst film, worse than Jack, but one of the worst films I have ever seen: bloated, indulgent, pretentious, and unbelievably dull. I mean it says at the beginning it's a fable. It's not. It's a folly and not even a grand folly. Just a folly.”
It carries on in much the same vein. The entire spirit of the review was negative, with that kind of loathing that reviewers sometimes enjoy tapping into. It can be fun to demolish a movie and, make, no mistake, some movies deserve our scorn. I’ve written some blistering pieces in my time on some truly awful films. See the last Transformer’s movie for an example.
Yet, still, the whole segment sat uneasily with me.
I accept that Kermode hated the movie, but I wonder what he thinks his role is as a critic.
All movies are not equal, and not all filmmakers deserve our respect. Respect must be earned, and if you’ve done that over a long career, as has Coppola, I think he deserves to be judged a little more soberly. Creativity is difficult. Sometimes it seems impossible, especially in the context of the cinema where your limitations are magnified a million times.
That’s why, as a critic, I long along decided to try to treat art for what it tries to achieve as much as what it does achieve. I’m generous not because I’m kind but because I’m unwilling to knock people for trying to be different in a medium that’s difficult. You can be scathing without being mocking. Does Kermode presume that Coppola didn’t know what he was doing or that he just completely missed his goal? Or that he wasn’t serious about his ambitions? Or he didn’t have the basis of a good idea?
To put this crudely: does Kermode think he understands Coppola’s art better than Coppola?
To put it even more crudely: does Kermode not recognise that he might simply be wrong and might be making a monumental arse of himself by being so arrogantly flippant?
You see, I’m struggling to conceive of a situation where Coppola doesn’t enter into making this movie with some honourable intent of making great art. And Coppola has made enough great art. The three Godfather movies (okay, let’s just say the first two but the third isn’t as bad as the baying mob suggested), Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation would be enough to define him as one of the cinema’s great directors. He deserves that much credit. Whether he succeeds or fails is not the issue. The critic’s job isn’t to laugh at a failure (or take some kind of impish delight in being annoyed by a film). It isn’t to scorn an artist for trying to create something different, new, or… well, it doesn’t even matter what they’re trying to create.
Coppola has enough credit in the bank to give him some respect. This isn’t a franchise movie made by a committee out to rip off the public. Feel free to insult those movies, those sad excuses for filmmakers. Want to talk about recent bad movies, let’s talk about The Meg 2.
To mock Coppola now for making an outrageously singular film is like laughing at Picasso for first showing his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Back in 1907, Picasso was mocked – even reviled – at the time for a painting now considered one of the finest (certainly one of the earliest) examples of the modernist movement. I’m not saying that Megalopolis will ever achieve that level of acclaim, but, you know, it just might. It deserves more thought and a little more introspection. Again, Coppola deserves at least that much. Love the man or hate him, he’s at least proved enough in terms of cinema to be considered worthy of a little damn respect.