Siempre me ha llamado la atención el trabajo de crítico de cine. Sobre todo desde que me contaron que los críticos de grandes publicaciones nacionales iban gratis al cine, a expensas de la redacción para la que trabajasen. Al fin y al cabo, nadie paga por hacer su trabajo, sobre todo cuando han de devorar varias películas a la semana. Aunque bueno, seguramente estén enamorados de su trabajo. Yo al menos lo estaría.
But be careful, let’s not confuse the term “critics of major national publications” with “great critics.” Not much less. In fact, it’s quite possible that the worthwhile ones are hidden away on your little personal blog instead of being read by millions of people daily. At least in Spain, the critics of the national newspapers leave a lot to be desired, getting lost in their own words, verbiage like sheep and releasing such a high number of cheesy adjectives that it endangers the understanding of the text. Let’s see, for example, what these two elements think about the last movie I saw, Black Swan (Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, 2010):
“Aronofsky tells this fearsome story with a powerful visual sense, with suspense, with unease. […] That is why it is even more enervating that in the end this murky universe becomes a cheap grotesque, a hollow effect.” (Carlos Boyero: El País Newspaper)
“Aronofsky seems to have achieved here the perfect synthesis of his poetics. […] He proposes an immersion, without handholds, into the depths of a fractured subjectivity. […] The final climax conquers the greatness of the ineffable: an apotheosis of pure cinema” (Jordi Costa: Diario El País)
Seriously, what do they want? Is so much strange verbiage necessary to express half an idea? Abuse of a thesaurus is not always a good idea, especially when you are trying to add weight and embellish a text that is not enough. Anyone would dare to say that they are nothing more than graduates or graduates in Journalism, that they have been pigeonholed in the film section and want to show the world that they have learned a lot of words but that they have nowhere to write them. Let them learn something from their American counterparts:
“The film is so damned silly in every aspect that you can’t help but admire Aronofsky for daring to be so, so absurd” (Kirk Honeycutt: The Hollywood Reporter)
And period. You get it, right? Well that.