Though I have heard critics deny it, most criticism – even that delivered by the most learned reviewers – is shaped by personal perspective. Even, maybe especially, the great New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael had her pet peeves.
In her review of the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film La Notte, for example, Kael railed against what she saw as the filmmaker’s penchant for creating what she called “cardboard intellectuals.” By contrast, while writing about Sam Peckinpah’s ultra-violent 1969 Western The Wild Bunch, she wrote, “The bloody deaths are voluptuous, frightening and beautiful. Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western.”
I’m not saying that Kael was wrong on either count. Or that she was right. I’m simply saying that her opinions reflected her own personal views on what cinema is and what she thought it should be.
I wonder how Kael would have judged the two movies that I saw last week: Paul Greengrass’ historical study The Uprising, and Danish filmmaker Suzanne Bier’s comedy/fantasy/drama Practical Magic 2.
I’ll be honest about my own movie tastes. I am much more inclined to like historical films, especially those written and directed by filmmakers I admire such as Greengrass. Conversely, I try to avoid most movies of the rom-com genre, especially any involving witches. And I would do so even if the work were directed by another filmmaker whom I admire, in this case Bier.
So, no one was more surprised than I was when I left The Uprising thinking of my late brother Randy, who was a student of English history. I imagine that his reaction to Greengrass’s film could be summed up in one word. And that word would be a simple, “Ugh.”
In what is Greengrass’s attempt to capture the life and times of people living in 1381 England, the overarching tone is something that Heath Ledger’s Joker character might address with his trademark phrase, “Why so serious?”
Yeah, life back then must have been grim. But rather than approach the real so-called Peasant’s Revolt with even half the epic sense that Mel Gibson managed to give his 1995 film Braveheart, Greengrass settles for building his predictable and overly dramatized film around an everyman played by Andrew Garfield simplistically identified only by his occupation: “Ploughman.”
I was equally surprised when, a few days later as I sat in AMC’s Dolby cinema to watch Bier’s Practical Magic 2, I felt the dark mood that The Uprising had put me in begin to abate. Because even though it, a sequel to the 1998 original Practical Magic, has its serious moments, overall it felt to me like a pleasant stroll on a sunny Hawaiian beach.
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as the Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian. And the two are still under the family curse cast by an ancestor decreeing that anyone whom either sister loves will die. The added complication is that Sally has two 20-something daughters, Kylie (played by Joey King) and Antonia (played by Maisie Williams). And in an attempt to protect them she hasn’t divulged anything about the curse – or even that they, too, are witches.
All of which causes trouble when Kylie does indeed fall in love, her intended gets seriously injured and she travels to England, the site of the original curse, to fix things. In short order, both Sally and Gillian chase after her.
And yes, this plot, too, is predictable. Dark forces do intrude on the family’s happiness, and sacrifices are made. But Bier keeps things moving along easily enough, depending on the talents of her cast – especially Bullock but also Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing – to, no pun intended, charm us.
Maybe I just needed some sunshine after watching Greengrass’s heavy-handed exercise in solemnity. Maybe Bier bewitched me. Maybe both are true. Whatever, Practical Magic 2 gave me a bit of much-needed escapism. And while she might not have admitted it, I think deep down Pauline Kael would have agreed.