Reaching Critical Mass
We’re lucky enough to be writing about a medium that billions enjoy watching, so what’s stopping us from developing it into a medium that billions enjoy discussing?
Anders Wotzke
Before I could even spell the word “critic“, I was one. Just ask my mother who, upon returning home with a trendy new hairdo, was met with a look of utter disdain from a pint-sized version of yours truly, adamant that she return to the hairdresser and “cancel it!” While I like to think my critical appraisals have evolved to be more considered since then, they remain just as honest and passionate, albeit less about the cut of someone’s hair and more about the cut of someone’s film. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I became enamoured with the moving image, but I can vividly recall the film that coerced me into becoming a critic: Christopher Nolan’s MEMENTO. Never had a work of art left me with such an uncontrollable urge to understand it, dissect it, discuss it and, fatefully, write about it. I’ve since had no say in the matter; film criticism is now an obligation, not a choice.
At first, I teased my newfound appetite for film analysis as a writer for The University of Adelaide’s student magazine “On Dit”, each trip to the cinema offering welcome respite from my double degree in Media and International Studies. Next, I took to the internet where I began to develop my critical voice as an editor, contributor and video presenter for the website “Cut Print Review”, using humour as a means to lure the movie-going masses into thinking critically about film. Since then, I’ve been accepted into the Online Film Critics Society and have become an award-winning member of the Australian Film Critics Association, granting me the credence necessary to turn my passion into a career.
Admittedly, film journalism is hardly the most sensible career path to undertake in Australia, a place where local critics tend to be the first shown the door during any mass media restructuring, and local filmmakers tend to seek out international approval before daring to take on the Hollywood-obsessed market back home. In my stomping ground of Adelaide, South Australia, I could count on one hand the number of film journalists who attend the weekly press screenings, and on one finger the number of whom earn a comfortable living doing so. But while the scarcity of critical voices in mainstream media is discouraging, the rising number of young and talented film conversationalists emerging online is nothing short of inspiring. Embracing and enabling this new generation of e-critics is vital to the continued existence of film as a platform for stimulating discussion, as is keeping film discourse an inclusive activity, not an exclusive one. The way I see it, we’re lucky enough to be writing about a medium that billions enjoy watching, so what’s stopping us from developing it into a medium that billions enjoy discussing?