‘The Critic’: A Journalist, an Actress and a Blackmail Scheme
A review of ‘The Critic’, by Anand Tucker; BKStudios, 2023.
The critic serves at least two purposes: first — the lesser — she tells the public what they might like and dislike, and so helps them to use their time and money more efficiently; second, she appraises what the culture is generating, and so aims to throw light on what Matthew Arnold called, in the preface to Culture and Anarchy, ‘the best that has been thought and said’.
So she serves the public, not the creators; and to misunderstand this is a mistake. It is one reason why art is seen by some to have become inaccessible: the art world consists of critics, creators, curators and collectors talking to themselves about themselves. When the pandemic hit, many food critics announced they would no longer give negative reviews. As a Spectator piece argued lately, this has only served to lessen the value of food criticism in the West. Some say art is wholly subjective; I reject this. There is wide cross-cultural agreement on what is beautiful, for instance, in music or in visual art. And in narrative art in particular (which can include music), we rehearse feelings and gain in emotional intelligence. Art matters.
The critic serves the public, not the creators; and to misunderstand this is a mistake.
All of this context is missing from The Critic, a film about a powerful old theatre writer (Ian McKellen) whose acerbic reviews start to rub the new proprietor of his newspaper (Mark Strong) up the wrong way. Jimmy Erskine, critic for the Daily Chronicle, believes himself untouchable, unwisely flaunting his relationship with his black male secretary at a time — 1934 — when homosexuality was illegal, racism was rife, and the fascist Blackshirts of Sir Oswald Mosley were growing in power in England. His complacency, rooted in vanity, is unwise precisely because Jimmy has much to lose. In fact he lives a charmed life: leisurely breakfasts in bed, boozy lunches at his club (with the other dinosaurs at the newspaper), regal treatment at whichever theatre he is attending that evening, and the occasional sex party at his Bloomsbury flat.
Needless to say, pride comes before the fall; and, after writing an especially scathing review, that fall, or a potential one, arrives. To hold on to his privileges, Jimmy takes drastic action: luring the struggling actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton) into a scheme of blackmail. And so hubris is the theme. Erskine’s defiance of his proprieter, who only asks him to be kinder in his reviews, and of those, like his secretary, who care about his wellbeing, puts him on a path to nemesis. Like all tremendously vain people, he is a coward. He tries to run away from Nina when she attempts to confront him about his excoriations of her work.
But such analysis, which evokes Greek tragedy, dignifies the film more than it perhaps deserves. It is deeply flawed. There are basic historical mistakes — the name of the newspaper at the heart of the story is sans serif — sub-plots that never really deliver, vague and fleeting mentions of the social and political context (the rise of fascism, for instance) … Ian McKellen is too good for it. And though I leave almost every film I see thinking that it could have done with a good haircut, for once, I think a film ought to have gone on a bit longer: the ending is terribly rushed and unsatisfactory. The acting, at least, is good. And the plot is sound. That is the vexing thing. It is the way in which the story is told — its failure to set the scene, its tendency to rush from event to event, an absence, really, of necessary detail that would have helped to ‘fill out’ the picture— that undercuts it.
There are basic historical mistakes, sub-plots that never really deliver, vague and fleeting mentions of the social and political context. Ian McKellen is too good for it.
I suppose, refracted through the lens of queer criticism, we might just about argue that Jimmy’s flaws stem from his treatment by society as a gay man in an interracial relationship; and that his savage criticism of what that society generates in the form of drama amounts to a lashing out at the world that has pushed him to the fringes. I find that tenuous, for Erskine is a thoroughly unlikeable guy who enjoys all the privileges — and more — that are enjoyed by his straight counterparts. Given the chance to be decent, he never takes it; and at any rate, at the age of at least 80, he ought to be held accountable for himself in my view.
It is a shame that The Critic misses the mark. Its cast—McKellen, Strong, Arterton, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Lesley Manville—is strong. The plot is strong. And how many films have you seen that revolve around a (deliciously vicious and hedonistic) critic? But miss the mark, I am afraid to say, it does.
