Kael Review

Kael Had Passion, Communication
By Jessica Maas

Film critic Pauline Kael wanted to write the way people talked. In an interview with Francis Davis, she said, “I didn’t want to write academic English in an attempt to elevate movies, because I think that actually lowers them. It denies them what makes them distinctive.” Kael’s philosophy showed in her work; in the opening lines of a review of “The Witches of Eastwick,” she wrote, “Jack Nicholson entertains himself in The Witches of Eastwick: he snuffles and snorts like a hog, and he talks in a growl. And damned if he doesn’t entertain us, too.” Her use of accessible language to communicate effectively and her passion for film made Pauline Kael a great film critic.

Kael translated movies to page with a clarity that allowed them to be re-created. In a review of “Busybody,” she wrote, “There’s a scene in Silkwood in which Karen and the other employees of the Kerr-McGee plutonium and uranium fuel plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, are having lunch, and Karen, who likes to titillate her co-workers by showing them how freewheeling she is, nuzzles close to one of them – Drew (Kurt Russell), her lover – rubs his bare upper arm with her fingers, and them, swinging her hips and moving from table to table, starts to take a bite of somebody else’s sandwich.” She made characters come alive, and the language she used is both user-friendly and fun to read.

Her reviews were often overly lengthy, though. In her opening of the review of “Busybody,” she wrote, “Meryl Streep gives a fine performance as Karen Silkwood, considering that she’s the wrong kind of actress for the role.” Kael continued to jab at Streep throughout the review, and at the end she returned to her for the entire 231-word concluding paragraph to make the same point. She was less-than-succinct, a trait that can cause readers to get bogged down in one point and lose interest.

But Kael also displayed an independence and “no excuses” attitude that represented her passion for film. On numerous occasions she gave films bad reviews because it was her true opinion, even if she’d previously enjoyed the actor or director’s other work. In her interview with Davis, she said, “It’s always painful to get to know a director, because they almost always take it personally when you don’t like a film. No matter how much you loved their other work, a negative review takes precedence in their thinking.” In other cases, she gave great reviews when every other critic panned the same films. Her passion for film made it her duty to be honest in her review, and she was, regardless of personal feelings or what other critics were writing.

In the introduction to his interview with Kael, Davis mentions she wrote a blurb for a book he’d previously published. She wrote, “He’s a very impressive critic. He doesn’t pin fancy phrases on his chest; he gets at what he responds to and why – you feel you’re reading an honest man.” Change the gender, and Kael could’ve been writing about herself.