Pauline Kael’s Repetitious Muse

During a 1994 Time Magazine interview, Quentin Tarantino, still riding the success of Pulp Fiction revealed one of his greatest influences as a director. He described someone who was “as influential as any director was in helping (him) develop his aesthetic.” While it is common for directors to revere other award winning directors, Tarantino did not have Stanley Kubrick or Martin Scorsese in mind. Rather, he was speaking of a film critic; the late Pauline Kael.

One would be hard-pressed to find a more acclaimed film critic than Kael. One of the most influential, as well as polarizing, American critics, Kael made a name for herself while writing for the New Yorker. Over her career she accumulated as assembly of loyal followers, both in the general public and in the field of film critique, while also leaving a cluster of irritated critics envying her success. However, just like the films, actors and directors she based her career on, she was not without flaw.

One can argue to what length Kael consistently accomplished her obligation as a critic. As her career matured, she became increasingly involved with the business side of Hollywood, even working as an executive consultant for Paramount. Combined with several suspicious critiques, most notably a glimmering preview of the 1975 film Nashville; it becomes difficult to have faith that Kael’s later work was consistently unbiased. One must ask if these articles were merely temporary lapses in an otherwise stellar career, such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather III, or a larger plague of well-concealed flaws.

Kael has been accused of capturing movies, and through her critiques, making them her own. She has also been chastised for writing about anything but the actual movies she is reviewing, for illustrating correlations that are produced in her mind rather than the director’s. For instance, in her review for the film Top Gun she referred to the movie as “a recruiting poster that isn’t concerned with recruiting but with being a poster.”

According to Oscar Wilde, “To the critic, the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes”. In making a movie her own, Kael was not only exercising her right, but also her responsibility as a critic. Much like a novelist or songwriter uses external beings or situations as muses for masterpieces, Kael merely utilizes the movies she reviews as her muse.

Kael has also been criticized for the repetitive nature of both the word choice and structure of her work.
This claim seems inconsequential because movies themselves are among the most repetitious forms of art. When one talks of a director’s “signature style,” whether it be Hitchcock’s suspense or David Mamet’s fast-paced, witty dialogue, it must be pointed out that these styles were crafted solely through similarities and repetitions throughout the course of careers. Further, a vast majority of Hollywood films follow the same distinct structure. Because the movie industry flourishes on repetition and structure, it seems unfair to chastise a film critic for the same thing.

With the recent migration of film critiques from newspapers and magazines to the more convenient internet the death of the journalistic film critic may be imminent. The internet is a place where anyone can post a review of a film regardless of qualifications, and where discussions on message boards have replaced the weekend movie headlines. With this in mind, Pauline Kael’s place in American culture has become exceedingly important in assuring the America will never forget the once hallowed Hollywood critic.