S1 E3 What goes into writing a film review?
Guess what delayed my third post? An assignment. Of course. It was for a different subject — film appreciation. What makes it so interesting is the fact that my blog was initially intended to be a film review page. But not only did that not happen, it’s still a task I have been unable to achieve completely. So why don’t we look at what its like to review movies for a class, or even otherwise?
And before I begin, I think I say this on behalf of every film student and professional reviewer out there — our work is not to sit and watch movies with popcorn in our laps. See, that is what half the people I know, and all of my family believes; just watch a lot of movies and write what you saw, how hard can it be?
Well, as much as we’d like that, it’s not entirely true. Yes we watch a lot of movies and we have to write about what we see but that’s merely a fraction of the actual work. The most important part? Research and understanding of the background context. Not knowing any of it would probably not hamper your understanding of the movie, but really getting the background and the larger context adds a depth to the meaning that can only be experienced.
The reason your favourite page or coloumn catches details in frames that did not exist for you is because they watched that movie twice or maybe thrice before they decided to give their opinion. And it’s not like rewatching your long cherished movies, no. In the place of popcorn, we sit with paper and pen, pausing every few seconds to write down that thing we noticed, or the thoughts on a particular scene, a reference from somewhere that just crossed our mind and literally everything we can. And no, you can’t write everything at the end, because then you just remember the supercut. Supercuts make recommendations, not reviews.
But that’s not it. We read up about the director and their previous works; all of the major cast and other contributing artists, the trivia that shaped the movie for what it was and a hundred more technicalities that made up your experience of living that story with the characters.
And after that, when we finally sit down to write the actual review, we’ve a thousand thoughts running through our mind. (That’s true for any kind of writing though.) We’ve watched a story, but how do we tell ours? It’s not like writing a summary, because nobody wants that unless someone specifically wants that.
There’s a lot of trivia, but which one makes the cut? All that backgrounds about the artists, maybe they’re not relevant to the movie. Then what is? And how does it really matter if I think the movie was amazing but you don’t believe me? A review is a story too, but its the story of our experience, of what it was like to be a part of the journey and not necessarily the journey itself.
And about that review assignment I had to submit? I couldn’t finish it. I have the pointers and my thoughts all written down, but this was a good movie. Kumbalangi Nights. And it’s a lot more difficult to do justice to good movies, because it’s just disrespect if you don’t even try to write a review as good as the film itself.
