I Don't Know About Movies

Popular opinions on movies

BY: Michael Scott

I know about movies. Probably more than the average person, but far less than plenty of other people.  I know about movies because movies are something I’ve chosen to pay attention to. Most conversations I have with people end up swinging over to movies at one point or another. My favorite thing about movies is that most everyone loves them. A few of them at least. They can be major parts of people’s lives, bringing people together or setting them apart in big ways.

Sometimes, a curious thing happens in these conversations about movies. The person I’m chatting with attacks him or herself with a seemingly harmless phrase: “I don’t know much about movies…” or something close to that. If they know I’m a film student or we’ve been talking for a while they’ll sometimes say that they don’t know as much as me. But they do. They’ll discredit their opinion based on their belief that they’re not an authority on movies. But they are. Everyone is an authority on every movie they’ve seen. A six-year-old’s opinion of Citizen Kane is valid because everything that everyone has ever said about any movie is his or her opinion, and is just as valuable as Roger Ebert’s. The only difference being that Roger Ebert has seen thousands more movies than the average person.

So what I say to these self-deprecating folks is this: “But those movies made for you. You know everything you need to know about those movies to talk about them.” Imagine that you’ve just left an art show that really didn’t “speak to you”. You were invited by and went with your “art enthusiast” friends. They loved the show and are raving about all the pieces and they ask you what you thought. You could tell the truth and say “I just didn’t get it,” but you just have this feeling that you missed something, that the art was made on some higher level that you don’t understand. This is almost never true. If something is on display and accessible to you, then you are invited to interpret it and that interpretation can’t possibly be invalidated on the grounds that “you just haven’t seen her early work” or “you really should watch his student films, then you’ll understand his recent stuff”. That type of statement is pure and certified bull.

             My point is that I may know more about how movies are made than some of the folks I love to talk to about movies, but if anything, their opinions are more credible than mine because they’re closer to the audience side of filmmaking. This is important because, with few exceptions, movies are made for audiences of moviegoers. Not audiences of filmmakers. So when you hear someone who may be a “film enthusiast” say something awful about a movie that you love, it doesn’t make your opinion any less valuable. It just makes you a different person from them. So if you don’t care for Citizen Kane or Forrest Gump, please don’t be afraid to say so. Who gives a damn if it’s a “classic”?

             Movies bring people together and set people apart, and you can bet that if you say “I really didn’t like Pulp Fiction” you’ll be met with shocked gasps and people proclaiming their opinion as fact. Truth be told, some of those people won’t even like the movie as much as they think they do, and their gasps will be powered by the opinion that they only have because it’s the opinion of most other people. Movies are made to be seen by everyone who can make it to the theater to see them, or get them at home when they come out on DVD. The only difference between you and the most renowned film critic in the world is that he or she has seen many more movies and has bothered to write about them.