<em>Variety</em> film critic Dennis Harvey speaks at UMMA on Thursday
Recently, Harvey spoke with AnnArbor.com about his time at U-M and the changing nature of film criticism.
Q: Did you come to U-M with the intention of studying film? A: Film was definitely a huge interest of mine. In fact, in high school I already was doing some free-lance reviews for local papers in Grand Haven and Muskegon. And so, particularly at that point in time, Ann Arbor was heaven on earth if you were a film buff, because not only were there all the regular commercial and art house theaters, but there was an incredible system of film co-ops and repertory screenings, etc. and so on. So that any given night of the week, there would be anywhere from three or four to eight movies playing on campus, ranging from Hollywood classics, foreign films, recent art house films, cult movies, on and on and on. So it’s safe to say that if I could have majored in going to movies, my grades probably would have been better than they were. Because that’s certainly how I spent a lot of my time.
Q: What are some of your favorite films this year? A: I’m going to dazzle you with the obscurity of (my choices). … The majority of what I cover for (Variety) is non-mainstream, American independent films, documentaries and foreign films. Which, for me, is ideal. I think I would get bored more quickly if I were only covering mainstream film. But among movies that I’ve seen this year, some particularly good ones have been “Séraphine,” which is a French film about a mentally ill painter in the early 20th century, which is a really excellent biographical drama. And there’s “Sita Sings the Blues,” which is a wonderful animated feature, which actually, for complicated legal reasons, you can watch for free online already. … And there’s a film with Woody Harrelson that’s coming out shortly called “The Messenger,” about U.S. Army personnel who have to notify families of deceased soldiers, and that’s very strong. The ‘Star Trek’ movie was a lot of fun. That’s not the kind of thing I normally get too excited about, but that was about as good as that sort of thing gets.
Q: Given the current struggles of newspapers and magazines, it's getting progressively harder for critics to get paid for their work. What would you tell young men and women who wish to pursue a career in film criticism? A: It’s really hard to know what to tell people who, in any form, want to get into journalism unless it’s non-print journalism. … In a sense, it’s easier than ever to be a critic because of the Internet, but doing that professionally, let alone getting paid for it, is of course a harder prospect than ever before. It’s just hard to know at this point what the future of journalism and criticism and print media in general is. I don’t think it’s going to go away entirely, but it is in a transitional state at present.
Q: Are you ever taken aback by the intense and personal nature of some reader responses to your reviews? A: Part of it is just the climate that we live in, which is also reflected in reality television and some other phenomenon in that. The discourse has kind of gotten down to everything being about a winner/loser; you’re a good guy or you’re a total idiot. So a lot of it is easy to ignore just because there’s so much mudslinging that goes on on the Internet, so it kind of encourages the least sophisticated responses. I think of a lot of commentary that you get about reviews on the Internet — well, the Internet itself is like the world’s largest bathroom wall. People just scrawl the most base thing that comes across their mind, and it’s legitimized because it’s a public forum. Which is not to say I’m not interested in people’s responses, but a lot of the time, it seems to be that 2 a.m. mudslinging contest kind of thing.
Q: There's often a large gap between how critics see a film and how the general populace responds. Do you think this is partly because critics see so many films that their perspective is different? A: That’s part of it, in that when you see such a volume you probably have a tendency to become more bored with and critical of the formulaic nature of a lot of mainstream films. Another part of it is, as many people frequently lament, or certainly critics do, the overwhelming focus of the Hollywood mainstream in recent years is, to a large extent, is to move toward CGI-laden fantasy films based on toys or comic books, etc. The studios are right, to a large extent, in saying that those just aren’t movies made for critics. They’re certainly not irrelevant to critical discussion, but it’s a very limited critical discussion that you wind up having over and over again in exactly the same way about different movies. So I think as Hollywood’s idea of … what its audience is interested in continues to narrow, there’s less for critics to say about particular films.
Q: I think a lot of us romanticize a film critic's job. What is the toughest, or least favorite, part of your work? A: To a large extent, I get to have more choice in what I review than probably a lot of critics do. So the dread of having to review the latest Rob Schneider movie or something like that generally isn’t a major issue. … My least favorite thing is that, now that the quotas for reviews at festivals has been so drastically reduced, a lot of my job winds up being looking at movies in order to decide not to review them. Because it used to be that we would go to a festival and review everything that hasn’t been reviewed before, every feature film. And now, there are very strict quotas. … So there’s a struggle between trying not watch a huge number of movies in order to review and get paid for very few, and, at the same time, wanting to be fair and find the best possible movies in that number to review without just arbitrarily skipping something for lack of time.
Q: What was it about professor Hugh Cohen and his teaching that caused you to keep in touch with him all these years? A: He’s just a very gregarious and personable guy, as a teacher and friend, and is very interested in what students have to say. And he has interesting, catholic tastes in movies. … He’s this famed Ingmar Bergman scholar, and yet, the first time I saw “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was in Hugh’s class.
Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.
PREVIEW The second annual Hubert Cohen Film Criticism and Film Scholarship Series Lecture at the University of Michigan Who: Film critic Dennis Harvey, U-M alumnus and film critic for Variety magazine. What: A discussion of the current state of film criticism and tribute to his former instructor, Hugh Cohen. When: Thursday, Oct 29 at 7 p.m. Where: Helmut Stern Auditorium at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 S State St.