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You could almost hear the sound of scalpels being sharpened on the Lido as the critics gathered the most scabrous of remarks. The verdicts are in for Roman Polanski’s The Palace, which premiered at the 80th annual film festival in Venice last weekend, and the reviews are deliriously, excruciatingly bad. “A laughless debacle,” said Variety of Polanski’s latest, a black comedy about hotel guests at a New Year’s Eve party, starring John Cleese and Mickey Rourke. “A ghastly, flaccid hotel farce,” wrote The Guardian. “An eye-scorching atrocity,” said The Times. A “series of terminally unfunny jokes,” said the Financial Times.
The Palace has landed on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregation site, with a stunning zero score. It’s an ignominious honour for the 90-year-old director who once carved a new cinematic language with such masterpieces as Repulsion and Chinatown.
The reviews are perhaps an inevitable outcome for a director whose work is now mired in his reputation. In 1977, Polanski pleaded guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”, but fled the US to avoid sentencing. His continued veneration by the film industry — he was awarded a French César for best director in 2020 — has been a source of embarrassment and anger for some time. With The Palace, Polanski has gifted us a get-out: we no longer have to defend the movies from the man.
However, the critics might have done Polanski a favour. Everybody loves a flop. The more excitable the hysteria surrounding an artwork’s crapness, the more people are assured to take a look. Nothing could be duller than a three-star criticism, that polite acknowledgment that something is largely anodyne. Reviews are only interesting when they are polarising: show me the things you love or hate.
Criticism lately has become a far less spiky art. As the various industries have become more corporate and overbearing, reviewers have become less free to speak their minds. This is especially true for fashion criticism (an arena in which I worked for five years). Dominated by a handful of luxury behemoths, a bad review can find one’s “access” brutally curtailed. I am still banned from one house in Paris I reviewed poorly many years ago. I still have no relationship with the designer. Was it worth it? I think, on reflection, no.
Likewise, the film industry with its big marquee openings and studio jollies has cultivated a more acquiescent critical milieu. The Palace served as a handy pressure valve for frustrated critics to get their vent. A critical drubbing only really happens when the drubbed has no defence: it’s far easier to pile on to an independent movie whose director is already cancelled than it is to take on a huge generic movie made by a powerful studio.
Nevertheless, the role of the critic still has a part to play. They can still reset public opinion and steer the mood for what’s to come. Having been lambasted last month for his decision to wear a fake nose to play Leonard Bernstein in the biopic Maestro, Bradley Cooper has since emerged from Venice as an all-conquering auteur. The actor and director — and his prosthesis — have been lauded for a “magical” portrait of the artist, and the film’s Rotten Tomato score is 92 per cent.
It’s also been curious to watch Woody Allen, now 87, shuffling up the red carpet to offer a defence of Luis Rubiales, the disgraced Spanish football boss. Despite being embalmed in a toxic reputation, Allen’s latest film, the French-language Coup de Chance, has still been hailed by many critics as his best film in years.
This year, the critics decided to give Allen a pass: the director has been shunned by the industry since the #MeToo movement, owing to accusations of the child molestation of his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, which he has consistently denied. Of course, it helps also that the film is actually half decent, but few critics ever parse a film on merit alone. Most take a read of the cultural environment before they leap in with a rave.
I pay little heed to critics, at least not until I’ve seen something for myself. But, even I am piqued to watch Maestro, a film I had already dismissed as looking like a TV matinee. As a lifetime cultural contrarian, I take pleasure in despising things that others love. Likewise, a one-star review suggests a work incites so much emotion there must be something to discuss.
In my view, the greatest artists — such as Lars von Trier, David Lynch or Jane Campion — create works that sit on the precipice of triumph or total fail. I’d sooner watch 10 films by Roman Polanski than a single Marvel film. (OK, that’s a slight untruth, because I love some Spider-Verse.)
Besides the weird delirium of watching awful, the one-star league is lofty company for artists attempting something new. The play Waiting for Godot was dismissed as an “ugly little jet of marsh-gas” after its premiere in English in 1955. The 1979 film Apocalypse Now was slated for being “intellectually empty”. The Nutcracker ballet was considered so risible by Moscow audiences in 1892 that even its composer described it as being “rather boring”. (In fairness, they had a point.)
Five-star shows are fabulous for reflecting the values and vanities of the time we’re in. But the one-star offers us a glimpse into the darker, more subversive but ultimately more interesting markers of the age.
Email Jo at [email protected]
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