Just Calling a Film Pretentious is Prudish and Lazy

Is there a lazier shorthand in our discussion of movies than pretentious? It’s a word bandied about so casually yet seemingly so inconsequentially, used to describe everything from cinematography to score. It’s use, I think, not only begets its meaning too occasionally, but is also seen as something so bad that it can often qualify as the sole reason to dislike a film.

Credit:Winston Hearn/Flickr

Pretentiousness is ‘a false note of objective judgment,‘ writes Dan Fox in the Guardian. ‘When it rings we can hear what society values in culture, hear how we perceive our individual selves.’ Fox, in his book in defence of pretentiousness argues that anti-intellectualism, far from thinking of itself as against elitism in culture is in fact the real snob in the cinema (and anywhere else, for that matter).

The dictionary definition of the word is to affect greater importance onto something that is actually possessed. When we call a film pretentious, we are in essence saying that it thinks itself more important than it actually is: It’s ideas outweigh its execution. That’s fair- and often warranted- but to paint a film with the brush of pretentiousness without justification is lazy, smug and reeks of superiority.

The pretentious-o-meter exemplifies this perfectly. Ever wanted to find out how pretentious your taste in movies is? Well, lucky for you, this handy web tool is here to help. The site collects user reviews of a film collected from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, measuring them against its critical reception to generate a score. If audience opinion tips over critical reception, then the film is given a mass market percentage, if it gets it the other way around: pretentiousness score. Finally, pretentiousness made simply calculable; a Rotten Tomatoes for rhetoricism!

Except it often seems to miss the mark. Knocked Up is given a 96% pretentious rating, while Ranker’s number one most pretentious movie ever, Eyes Wide Shut, scores 50% mass market.

It is a bit of fun, and a symptom of -rather than the cause of- our attitudes towards pretentiousness. If we don’t get a film the same way a critic does then it is pretentious, but if we like a movie and someone else doesn’t get it the same way that we do, then they’re just plain wrong.

I’m not saying films aren’t pretentious or that we can disagree with critics. I’m saying instead of using the word as a loaded and vague shorthand, it needs to be justified. If a film commits the error of the p-word, then at least explain at what it is trying to grasp at that it sees as so important and how it falls short of reaching those lofty heights. It’s not unreasonable to ask, I don’t think, for an evaluative component here. Just using the word pretentious without explaining why is akin to saying something is good because it is good, or that ‘brexit means brexit’. Yes, that might be the case, but how is it that it is the case? Is that too much to ask, or am I being a bit pretentious here?

One final point. Is pretension, as trying to aspire to something more important than is actually reached, not the core of any artistic ambition? Let’s use the example of mother! (47% pretentious) that was accused of being so ostentatious to the point that it received the much vaunted F cinemascore form moviegoers. Cinemascores are measured from how an audience reacts to a film on its opening weekend, with lower cinemascores reflecting poorer word of mouth from a film's core demographic- those most likely to watch a movie as soon as it hits cinemas. Mother! Is only the 19th movie to score an F, joining the company of films like disaster movie and In the Cut.

Mother! is, as even those who don’t like the film agree, an ambitious undertaking. It’s the work of a filmmaker trying to express an emotional, political and biblical statement in a very unconventional and often confusing way.

‘I was very sad and I had a lot of anguish and I wanted to express it,’ Aronofsky told Esquire.’Filmmaking is such a hard journey. People are constantly saying 'No' to you. And to wake up every morning and get out of bed and to face all those 'No's,' you have to be willing to really believe in something.’

Most art aspires to something that it cannot achieve because often, like Aronofsky, the artist truly believes in what they are doing. How would art progress otherwise, if not for people bold enough to push its boundaries? Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey divided critics upon its release because its audacity outstretched its value. ‘For all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story,’ said American critic John Simon at the time. Kubrick was trying too hard here to go for the jugular.

Yet 2001 undoubtedly lasts the test of time as one of most influential films ever made. Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese and countless other filmmakers have all said Kubrick’s classic had a profound impact on their careers. It proudly sits in 6th place on this years Sight and Sound greatest films of all time list. It’s ambition is its source for its inspiration. As Orson Welles said: ‘every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.’

Of course, we do see pretension in the intellectual bluffs, the fakery and the deceit that make us as spectators feel like we’re being played. But it is the task of the critic- and indeed anyone who chooses to evaluate a film- to separate the fraud from the true virtuosity.