Let's Just Be Friends: Directors I Don't Love

I hate hating films and I’d rather not do it, but I don’t intend to lower my standards and I don’t think Hollywood has any immediate plans to raise theirs. Fortunately I’ve trained myself to smell crap from a long way off, so having my bile rise due to a film I outright loathe is pretty rare. Far more often is a reaction of mild dislike or unimpressed ambivalence.

Having these negative reactions to collectively reviled films is neither unexpected nor particularly bothersome to me, but I am often troubled by failing to connect with a famous or highly-praised work. This happens to everyone, though never with the same set of films, and by now we should have all learned to just accept these differences of opinion and move on. Of course, we don’t. We get angry, frustrated and defensive. We start flame wars, disseminate diatribes and log into our favorite review aggregators to correct people about how “boring and stupid” their favorite films are.

Every once in a while you see someone trying to work through their dislike for a film without resorting to the usual rant rhetoric. Rarer still is the reviewer who can break things down into the specific subjective and objective elements that turn them off and analyze them with honesty, humility and insightfulness. Nick Davis over at NicksFlickPicks is one such reviewer. I've found myself reading his great review of “The Travelling Players” several times over the years and relating to his description of the special pain and embarrassment that come with being a film critics and admitting that you don’t like a highly-praised or long-canonized film:

“Even fessing up to an underwhelmed reaction is only a first step, frequently compromised by the self-abasing rhetoric of bad break-ups: the problem isn't you, Orson, it's me (even though it's totally you, you know I think it's you!) For all I know, Edward Yang's Yi Yi (A One and a Two...) and Hou Hsaio-hsien's The Puppetmaster really are sublime experiences, but I found them dull dull dull. Still, there's that cautious inner voice, bred by the desire to learn and to be challenged, nourished by the Time Out Film Guide and the National Society of Film Critics, that urges appreciation even when it isn't fully felt. Maybe it's true that that which bores us but does not kill us really does make us stronger? Is it true that some cinema is just good for you, despite the medicinal taste?”

In addition to inspiring this series, I’m also borrowing Nick’s metaphor of bad break-ups. Hence the title “Let’s Just Be Friends.”

However, instead of looking at specific well-regarded films that disappointed me, I'm going to look at well-regarded directors. Usually I can find one or two films with the sparkle of brilliance that leaves others rapt, but some auteurs just don’t earn their reputations in my eyes. These cases are usually rare enough for me that I can find close facsimiles I prefer, and it recently struck me that this could be useful tool for figuring out why some directors just don’t click with me.

So as part of a new series I’m going to stand pairs of directors next to each other. One will be a famous director I don’t connect with and the other will be a similar director I prefer. One of my goals is to make this an interesting confessional and analytic experiment rather than just a whiny rant.

As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to prefer spotlighting great unsung films/filmmakers rather than wasting words tearing apart what I don’t like. Combine that with open-mindedness, a willingness to extend the benefit of the doubt and a natural desire to focus in on the best aspects of every film, and you can see how I get disproportionately positive about cinema. In that spirit, I want to emphasize that the directors I single out are not necessarily artists that I “hate,” just ones that I don’t love. We can still be friends.

One last point. I have not seen every film by any of the directors in this series and I am far from being an expert on their careers. To ensure that I’ve given each director at least a fair chance, I’m restricting my choices to those auteurs for whom I’ve seen at least five films.

I acknowledge that in many cases I just “don’t get it,” but I’m not content to leave things there. I’m endeavoring to run these comparisons honestly and intelligently. I’ll try to be explicit about whether my critiques are a matter of my taste versus their talent. If you are an adamant fan of these directors, your insights and rebuttals may help enlighten me, especially if presented in good faith. Nevertheless, I welcome any comments regardless of their temperament.