Pauline Kael, Alive in her Writing

“Movies are a popular art form, and they can mean a great deal to us at the time” (Davis, 73). The American public relies on films to relay important messages about all aspects of life, and they have the power to make great impressions on their viewers. Who else is more important in relating these on-screen messages to the public than the movie critic? Over the past 50 years, Pauline Kael has served as an example of the witty, relatable criticism that film critics respect and esteem to this day. Through her energetic language and writing style, “lowbrow taste,” and appreciation of pop, it is easy to see why her criticism has come to be so highly regarded.

While some critics like to use pretentious language with long, exaggerated diction, Kael prefers to “write about movies the way that people actually talked about them on leaving the theater,” what she calls “the language of movies” (46). For example, in her review of Top Gun, Kael describes Tom Cruise’s performance, writing “he speaks in a little-boy voice and looks such a Nautilized, dinky thing.” Her exciting, life-like descriptions make her writing very readable; people can understand what she’s talking about and laugh about it with her, as if mocking Cruise’s “diminutive” appearance with a friend.

Kael’s “lowbrow taste” also makes her reviews more alluring to her readers. She is unaffected by bias or predetermined preferences; she will give any movie a chance to be great. For example, she says, “so many people find a romantic movie… frivolous and negligible. They don’t see the beauty in it” (37). Kael makes her readers feel it is OK to like films that have a seemingly trivial subject. This is apparent in her criticism of Schindler’s List. She is not afraid to pan a movie, even if it is a sore topic to criticize. According to Kael, a weighty content matter does not necessarily make for a good film. In fact, she is quick to appreciate a more “light-hearted movie,” contending that “we’ve become a heavy-handed society,” that we expect a film to be “medicinal” in some way, rather than just entertaining (99).

Kael also has an amazing ability to contextualize the films she watches, applying them somehow to society. By doing this, she is able to cast her own opinion and make comments about the film’s societal implications. In her review of Funny Girl, Kael uses examples from the movie to explain how it does away with society’s “ugly-duckling myth” and instead portrays the backward message that “talent is beauty.” It is easy to see why Kael is “often accused of writing about everything but the movie,” but her applications of the film’s message serve to enhance her reviews, again making them more relatable.

Kael’s reviews are a refreshing combination of everyday, lively language and fearless opinion. Her ideas are straightforward and unaffected by outside sources. Kael is absolutely herself in her writing and takes pride in being able to express her ideas to her readers in a way that is interesting and easily understood. Kael states, “I love writing about movies when I can discover something in them- when I can get something out of them that I can share with people” (96).