A Place at the Table
For me, the biggest special effect in Ivan Reitman’s GHOSTBUSTERS II wasn’t the walking Statue of Liberty at all, but a plain delivery-pizza box seen in one of the scenes. How I dreamed of a pizza like that.
Michal Oleszczyk
Seemingly passive, based on an endless cycle of watching and reflecting upon what one has just seen, film criticism seems a supremely enviable profession. However, watching movies all the time can be as much of a drudgery as anything – unless it‘s fueled by some sort of inspiration that would turn it into a quest of self-discovery. The language we use to describe movies – to pin them down, or at least to render an impression they leave us with – inevitably testifies to who we are and how we respond to the world around us. If we’re attuned enough to how our own language shifts over the years, film criticism can become a true platform of self-knowledge.
By engaging with movies, we engage with things as abstract as societies and cultures, but also as concrete as actors’ bodies or physical objects shown upon the screen. Having grown up in communist Poland, I can still remember vivid impressions made on me by Hollywood films – literally everything in them seemed exciting and colorful. For me, the biggest special effect in Ivan Reitman’s GHOSTBUSTERS II wasn’t the walking Statue of Liberty at all, but a plain delivery-pizza box seen in one of the scenes. How I dreamed of a pizza like that; how I mythologized the world in which pizza like that even existed…
Polish cinema of the last twenty years has been trying to come to terms with the 50-year period of communist enslavement, and so far has achieved only partial success. As we still wait for great Polish movies that would help us understand our collective identity, the world of Polish film criticism is divided by a sharp generational split: the older critics rely almost entirely on print outlets, whereas the young cinephiles eagerly embrace social networking as means of making film criticism a communal experience.
We are witnessing a time of enormous change in film criticism – and I firmly believe it is one for the better. The mere fact that I can discuss new movies via Facebook or Twitter with my friends from around the world is incredibly enriching. The whole world seems to have become one huge round-table, capable of seating thousands of people passionate about cinema. It’s strangely comforting for me to think that our conversation goes on every hour of every day and night, bringing us all together and inviting to shape the world in new, exciting ways.
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