Jonathan Baumbach
THE KAEL BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS
It
surprised me to discover that I had read all-not almost
all but all-of the essay-reviews in this 478-page collection· which
covers a three-year period of Pauline Kael's
New Yorker
film-going,
when they originally appeared in those glistening pages. That's
testimony of some sort-of curiosity and interest if not unequivocal
admiration. Kael is mostly a pleasure on a week-to-week acquaintance,
particularly on films toward which the reader is indifferent or tending
toward her viewpoint. She writes with energy and wit, has retained a
generous sympathy toward the new, is as sharp as any of her fellow
assassins in needling the pretentious and inept. Yet these pieces, like
most occasional journalism (movie reviewing is a subgenre of both
journalism and show biz), don't survive rereading. The book as a
whole, because of its inordinate length and the piecemeal quality of its
judgments-there is no informing esthetic vision to sustain haphazard
and eccentric particularities-seems overwrought and dated . Even the
very best journalism beyond its moment can seem like o ld news .
Journalism is the operative word here. The pressures of deadline
over an extended period of time lead inevitably to shortcuts of precon–
ception and formula. Feature journalism-TV news coverage is the
most blatant example-is concerned not with anatomizing an event
but laying claim to its most newsworthy aspect and presenting that as
if it were al l. Kael does her own version of such benign distortion. She
tends to take a facet of almost every film she reviews-a performance,
an unsung scriptwriter, some barely related private obsession-and by
elaborating on a marginal perception, gives it disproportionate impli–
cation. The event of the film is displaced by the performance of the
reviewer. The most attractive movies to review are the ones that lend
themselves to the most amusing and dramatic (and newsworthy) pieces.
The medium, its own best subject, becomes a determining factor and
consequently shapes and modifies standards.
~EELI
G . By Pauline Kael. Atlantic-Lillie Brown. 12.95.
