Man, Nathan Lee is ON FIRE. My new critical hero, who previously wowed with his gaga reviews of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Black Snake Moan (sample quote: “[Christina Ricci's] the white-hot focal point of Brewer’s loud, brash, encompassing vision of the soul’s dark night survived, peering into the dawn. That’s right, haters, I said ‘vision.’) hit another home run this weekend, with this New York Times op-ed on spoilers. It’s so good that it’s hard to pick just one section to blockquote, so here’s an attempt to condense some of the best stuff:
I wouldn’t dare unmask the secrets in the movie A History of Violence out of respect for the artistry of David Cronenberg and the integrity of his booby-trapped plot, but there isn’t a single frame of The Number 23 I wouldn’t mock in great, guiltless detail for the simple reason that I find it extremely silly. A spoiler requires something to spoil and someone to take offense at the spoiling, and I’m confident that my readership does not include humorless scholars of the Joel Schumacher oeuvre.
Our obsession with spoilers has a diminishing effect, reducing popular criticism to a kind of glorified consumer reporting and the audience to babies. People outraged by spoilers should avoid all reviews before going to the movies or reading the book they’ve waited so long for, because the fact is all criticism spoils, no matter how scrupulous.
My stance on spoilers is similar to Lee’s, but that’s been documented sufficiently. So let’s do something else. Everyone’s talking about Lee’s op-ed, up to and including Brian Lehrer, my local NPR morning talk host, who invited Slate’s Dana Stevens on the show this morning to chew over Lee’s piece (Lee, apparently, didn’t return Lehrer’s calls). At one point on this morning’s segment, Lehrer asked Stevens if critics in ye olden days had taken care not to spoil major plot twists, such as those within Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Stevens said she didn’t know. I then spent 45 minutes on the internet attempting to answer that question.
I could only find three reviews of the original Psycho on the internet, but I think they represent a decent cross-section of methods, opinions and outlets. Of note: two out of the three reviews note that critics have been asked not to reveal the film’s ending. One of these the reveals the kinds of plot details that could get a contemporary critic scalped. The third review, by Bosley Crowthers of the New York Times, is at once the most respectful of the film’s secrets (he reveals the identity of the killer as Norman’s mother, but refrains from revealing the identity of the mother, and the least impressed (”his denouement falls quite flat for us,” sniffs the master of the royal first-person plural.)
Variety and the San Francisco Chronicle were less careful. A review attributed to Paine Knickerbocker spends several paragraphs detailing plot points (Marion meets with her lover, Marion steals the money, Marion buys a used car) before exercising restraint: “No more of the action may be disclosed here. But violence follows, and then a skillfully paced interrogation by Martin Balsam as an affable but determined private eye.” Is it less of a crime to tick off each menial plot pint than to reveal the really good stuff?
Finally, Variety. A review attributed only to “Variety Staff” pledges not to expose spoilers, and then totally does anyway:
Hitchcock uses the old plea that nobody give out the ending — “It’s the only one we have.” This will be abided by here, but it must be said that the central force throughout the feature is a mother who is a homicidal maniac. This is unusual because she happens to be physically defunct, has been for some years. But she lives on in the person of her son.
I’ve always hated spoiler alerts with a passion. But jesus christ — to say you’re *not* going to reveal a plot secret, and then immediately reveal the plot secret? That’s just dirty play.
The Oxford Film Festival took place over the weekend, and if you follow film blogs, chances are the only thing you know about the event is that Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells had so much trouble with the wireless internet in his hotel room that he threw a fit, refused to attend a panel for which the festival had flown him out to appear on, threatened to leave town, then decided to stay when the festival put him up in a new hotel. This incident has made Wells the target of a ton of criticism — on Twitter, in the comments on his own site, on other blogs. And with good reason –– as Eric D. Snider put it, “This is ungentlemanly behavior of the worst order, Wells. You should be ashamed to have wasted the festival’s time and resources so childishly.” Fair enough.
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