Ever since I began to think seriously about writing on film, I’ve been intrigued by Armond White. Is he, as many have said, a troll, someone who takes the contrary viewpoint in order to exasperate others? He is a pedigreed film critic with a master of fine arts degree from Columbia. He certainly knows film. So, does he honestly dislike such universally-adored films as Toy Story 3 or is he trolling? After listening to a recent interview of his, I honestly believe he did not enjoy Toy Story 3, and what’s more, I believe he is probably incapable of enjoying any movie that that the rest of us want to see. He has studied himself into a bubble where he cannot relate to a single other human being on the subject of cinema, and he has become an irrelevant nuisance. In his interview with SlashFilm.com, Mr. White was asked what working critics he admired. His answer? None. His is the only voice that matters in that bubble. The man is so removed from normal human experience of the cinema that he cannot relate even to his fellow critics, many as educated as he is, and he is lightyears away from connecting with casual moviegoers. In the U2 song “City of Blinding Lights,” Bono sings, “The more you know, the less you feel,” a phenomenon that I fear affects many educated film critics but none so much as Mr. White.


Lately I’ve been reading several books on film theory, not to be confused with film criticism. The goal of film theory is to look at the techniques used to give form and meaning to individual films in order to develop a generalized theory of all film and the way people relate to it. Much of what film theorists write about is common-sense shrouded in impenetrable, esoteric nomenclature. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that movies can be art, but it took film theorists nearly half a century of  theorizing to be certain of the fact. While the need for a theoretical standard by which to create and evaluate movies is clear, much of what goes by “film theory” is really meaningless psychobabble, the employment of which is impossible in the marketplace of modern movies. Mr. White is steeped in film theory to be sure, but his worst flaw is that he’s just mean.


One telling quote from the interview came when White rambled on about the state of “intellectual anarchy” that he believes film criticism is in today and ended up calling for an age limit on film criticism.

 

“I think really, there should be no film critics – okay, let’s change the age – there should be no film critics younger than 30. Because before that you don’t know enough about art, you don’t know enough about life. And I repeat to you, I started out as a young person interested in writing about film, but really really really, I know more now than I knew then.”

 

Ludicrous. I can’t believe the old curmudgeon would really say such a thing. In the history of the world, how much great art has been created by artists under thirty? Mozart’s best work was done before his thirtieth birthday. Springsteen made Thunder Road when he was 26; U2 made Joshua Tree when they were 27. To bring the argument closer to home, Spielberg made Jaws before he turned 30, and Orson Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26. If such art can be created by artists under 30, then surely critics of the same age are capable of meaningful criticism. And if we young critics aren’t allowed to practice our craft in the arena of real thought, how will we have improved by the age of 30? Why would anyone aspire to be a film critic knowing he couldn’t do real work until he was 30? Or a better question, why would anyone aspire to be a film critic like Armond White–hateful, cynical, lonely, and irrelevant?