And, with one of the strangest titles you will ever read, I begin my last column of the semester. This week, we have a film critic controversy. The New Yorker disobeyed an embargo imposed by Sony Pictures that prevented all film reviews for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" from being published until Dec. 13. The New Yorker film critic David Denby's review of the movie ran in the magazine's Dec. 5 issue, and the topic has since generated some Internet buzz after emails were leaked between Denby and Scott Rudin, one of the film's producers. In the emails, Rudin characterizes The New Yorker's decision to defy the embargo as "lousy and immoral." Rudin also prohibits Denby from attending future screenings of his films.
With this type of response, one would expect Denby's review of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" to be maliciously scathing or at least somewhat damaging to the film's future. But no. Instead, Denby praised the film, adding another layer to an already puzzling situation. Rudin v. Denby has set off a small storm on Twitter among movie critics. Most believe Denby is at fault for breaking the embargo, but they also object to Rudin's opinion that a positive review will negatively impact the film's public perception. In an odd twist, Rudin's harsh public stance on the topic may have more of a harmful effect on the film than any bad review ever could.
You may be wondering why film review embargos even exist. What is the point of forcing critics to sit on material for weeks before a movie's release? Why invite them to such an early screening of a film? If studios are worried about backlash from a bad movie, they have the option of skipping the entire critical review process. If a film is good, early favorable press helps build momentum until the release date. It is unlikely that withholding critical reviews will somehow trick people into seeing a particular film. The logic does not add up.
I recognize that as a film critic, I am not the most impartial judge on the topic, but Denby is still wrong for violating the embargo. To attend a critics−only screening, he had to RSVP saying he would respect the embargo. He clearly did not do that.
The whole fiasco has plenty of relevance to my brief film−critiquing career. Two months ago, I reviewed "Martha Marcy May Marlene" for CriticsNoteBook.com. I attended a public screening of the film at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. To secure a seat in the theater, my editor put me in contact with the marketing company handling the film's screenings, and a publicist told me there was a review embargo. I would have to withhold my article for a few weeks. When I got to Brattle Theatre, however, there was nobody to check in with, and I walked right in — again, for a public screening — and watched the movie.
That same week, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" screened at the New York Film Festival (NYFF). My editor chose to publish my overwhelmingly positive review a few days later in conjunction with our website's coverage of the NYFF, and when the publicist saw we did not obey the embargo, she had a similar response to Rudin.
Were we at fault? Slightly, but we were not nearly as much to blame as Denby and the New Yorker staff. Public screenings and critics−only screenings are two different beasts. Additionally, I did not RSVP to attend the screening. Regardless of the blame, movie review embargos are futile conditions that, especially in the "Dragon Tattoo" example, take attention away from the most important entity: the piece of art. Movie reviews should be about movies; any other explanation is lousy and immoral.
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Jordan Teicher is a senior majoring in English. He can be reached at Jordan.Teicher@tufts.edu.
