Films and Feelings

     Someone show me another business as enthusiastic for its own self-deprecation as Hollywood.      From affectionate self-parodies like Singin' in the Rain to darker reflections of the movie business like Sunset Boulevard , Hollywood has kind of built its empire on ridicule of itself. And why wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to pay admission to feel like they're in on the secret: that movie magic is just smoke and mirrors? That silver screen titans actually have the most fragile egos?       But these are not revelations, and I don't think they are intended to be. Hollywood doesn't really care about displaying its own pettiness and internal rot because it knows that all just makes for good entertainment.  A t some point, this all stops feeling like a joke that we, the audience, are in on. At some point, it all stops feeling less like a confession and more like gloating. At what point, then, does the joke turn on us, the enablers of...

  Film has this weird thing called “emotionality” that sees itself at the center of a lot of haranguing in the critical discourse. There is a sort of classism in dialogue that privileges film as a purely cerebral space, detached from all things base and emotional. If your interests in film tend to err on the side of passion or elation, you have probably been on the receiving end of patronizing glances from those who consider themselves more discerning because their favorite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey . Tyler Sage, another film critic I follow, said it best when he described emotionality’s close cousin, “sentimentality " : The Godfather (1972) “These days, if you are one of these types who likes to opine knowingly in the public sphere – say, a highfalutin film critic – it's one of the most powerful aspersions there is. ‘I just found it so sentimental ,’ … [and] you can be certain no one will contradict you, because to defend sentiment is akin to admitting that you're l...