Yep.
Critics.
There's a reason they're critics.
They've failed at everything else because they lack vision and judgement.
But god knows they can get jobs with any major media outlet.
Oh, and let's not forget who John Podhoretz is...
A former presidential speechwriter and ultraconservative commentator. He's not even really a critic. Just someone who thinks people are interested in what he has to say because he was a presidential speechwriter and is an ultraconservative commentator.
Podhoretz's main problems with Bergman's film seems to be not Bergman's dark vision, but that he didn't extol the absolute virtue of the American way of life. He could have maintained a dark vision, that sin is forgivable, but that the ignored the American ethos and didn't kow tow to the superiority of American film, society, economy, and democracy. That's a sin that can't be forgiven.
Podhoretz's great sin is believing that for something to have value, it has to compare positively to the "It's Morning in America" campaign. If it in any way detracts from or contradicts the rosy glow that that Reagan ad campaign attempted to create for the American people, it has no value, or it is bereft of any value that it once had. That's tragically transparent when Podhoretz says that Bergman's 1982 retirement came just in time because Bergman had nothing more to say. In Pohoret'z brave new iconoclastic world only the positive has value, only shallow messages of the underdog always triumphing have merit. It's a personal vision that, in its own way, is also now bereft of an tenancy in the current world.
Just so we don't think that John Podhoretz is the absolute vox populi, let's take a look at the words of those whose visions aren't quite as.... clouded... by personal ghosts of religion and Republicanism... a life based in definitive black/evil and white/good.
By Bill Gibron
POPMATTERS.COM
Article Launched: 07/31/2007 03:01:11 AM PDT
Swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman, right, during the shooting of "Fanny... (Associated Press)«1»HE HADN'T made a theatrical motion picture since 1982's "Fanny and Alexander," vowing to retire after completing the highly autobiographical project. He spent his later years dabbling in theater and working in television in his native Sweden. He even penned a few screenplays, some directed by his son Daniel, others directed by friends and former lovers.
Yet it's clear that, even in his absence, the influence and importance of Ernst Ingmar Bergman, who died Monday, to the language and art of cinema remains as solid today as it did when he first splashed onto the international stage some six decades ago. With a creative canon that spans considered masterworks such as "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "The Seventh Seal" (1957), and "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973), he almost single-handedly defined the whole foreign film/art-house genre. While many others can also claim part of this title, Bergman remains the consummate example of personal and professional philosophies folded into one another and presented -- openhanded and openhearted -- for the world to witness.
Like a select few famous names -- Kurosawa, Fellini, Hitchcock -- that actually helped to evolve and develop the technical and aesthetic merits of film, Bergman was a true motion picture visionary. Some might argue with that determination, viewing his stark, darkness-driven efforts as generic and plain, or worse, gloomy and dull. But with his reliance on extreme close-up, static tableaux, and monochromatic contrasts,
He captured perfectly both the bitter cold of his numb Nordic home as well as the often hidden yet simmering emotions of its people.
Some considered him the consummate actor's director. Others viewed his work in far more metaphysical, even ephemeral, terms. In true contrast to the pictures coming out of other countries -- Hollywood's sensationalized pulp fictions, Italy's earthy neo-realism, France's deconstructing new wave -- Bergman boiled down his awful early childhood (his Lutheran minister father was a haughty and strict taskmaster) into melancholy expressions of man's place within God and nature's overall design. In doing so, he elevated ennui into something close to epic.
The battle between religion and reality was essential to his creative concerns. He mused on faith, the power of personal belief, the notion of mortality versus the promise of an afterlife, and the distinct tug of war between living, dying, and dealing with both. He could be arcane and obtuse, making his points with symbols and noticeably non-sequitur imagery, yet he considered himself a rather forthright presenter of existence's larger mysteries.
Whatever the case, few directors can claim influence over modern-day moviemakers as diverse as Wes Craven (who based his 1972 breakthrough "The Last House on the Left" on Bergman's 1960 "The Virgin Spring") and Woody Allen, and yet such was this director's strength that even the most divergent of artists could experience his work and take away something very personal, and very purposeful, from his oeuvre. Names as significant as Robert Altman and Andrei Tarkovsky more or less based their careers on his influence.
For some, his seminal effort remains 1957's existential masterwork "The Seventh Seal." An unusual narrative focusing on a medieval knight, fresh from the Crusades, traveling back to his home only to discover a country ravaged by plague, it offered the allegorical imagery of the hero -- a golden Max Von Sydow -- playing chess with a white-faced, ghoulish Death. The stakes? The champion's life. The motive? The meaning of life. In between, Bergman used clever iconography and fresh perspectives (a traveling caravan of circus performers, the ceremonial burning of a witch) to express the ongoing struggle between existence and the end, the significance of survival and the promised bliss in shrugging off this mortal coil.
Very theatrical, almost Shakespearean in his approach, Bergman often stated that it was his belief in the intuitive relationship between actor and director, one where both worked together to achieve a greater, grander end, that marked the success of his films, not the ideas or issues they raised. "Seal" certainly celebrates both.
Yet the 1960s and '70s remain Bergman's main decades of artist triumph and acclaim. He won two Oscars (out of a total of three) for best foreign film -- for "The Virgin Spring" and 1961's "Through a Glass Darkly" -- and would go on to receive nine more nominations over the course of his time behind the camera. His name became synonymous with the growing movement toward the incorporation of world cinema in the discussion, and along with other noted names mentioned before, formed the basis for much of the film scholarship of the era.
For all the considered and/or perceived perfectionism onscreen, Bergman remained a decidedly incomplete and flawed figure in his personal life. Married five times -- four ended in divorce, the last with the death of his wife from stomach cancer -- he fathered nine children. A man of complicated political views, he waged a rather public battle with the Swedish government over charges of tax evasion (he eventually left the country for Munich until 1982, when he returned to make "Fanny and Alexander").
While some considered him warm and kind, others noted a tendency toward high-strung behavior and a quick temper. Often, his interpersonal problems were blamed on an early life overloaded with discussions of sin and confession, allegiance and conformity. As much as he fictionalized his life through his films, Bergman truly remained forever linked to the emotional complexity and mental malaise found in his characters.
And now, with his passing at the age of 89, the last legitimate old-school cinematic giant has fallen. He follows other luminaries into the realm of legend, and eventually through time, into the epiphany of myth.
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