Is it ever possible for a critic to step outside their own personality and make an honest recommendation? And would we want them to ?

Ever since the dawn of cinema when the Lumiere Brothers first set up their cameras, there has been a flood of film-makers who have attempted, in various ways, to capture "objective truth" on celluloid. For almost as long, film criticism has wrestled with the difficulties inherent in the process of analysing a film objectively. 

Is it possible (or even desirable) for film criticism to be free from personal bias? In fact, in the 70s, when interpretation followed semiotic and structuralist models often augmented by Marxist historical and Freudian psychoanalysis, hidden assumptions about race, class, gender and language itself were revealed as never before. Many of the film theorists, who came from other disciplines - linguistics, sociology, political science, philosophy and psychology - did not disguise their ideological agenda. Thus we had analyses of films from a Marxist, Freudian, Feminist, Gay and Black perspective. In a way, they were more interested in moral relativism than moral absolutes. 

But what of the humble film critic grinding out his copy weekly and feigning objectivity? Is it possible for a male, female, white, black, homosexual, left-wing, right-wing, or bourgeois critic to assess films in the same objective manner and not let these truths colour their writings in some way, even unconsciously. Does one's nationality and language play a part? Can a critic be objective when faced with the politics of a film that he or she finds anathema? Is the ideology of a film as important in judging it as the aesthetics? 

It is true that most western critics have been bought by the Hollywood studios, whether they like it or not. This does not mean that they are compelled to give the latest blockbuster a good review, but they are forced to give it more space in line with the publicity the film receives elsewhere. 

Nonetheless, if objective film criticism, like democracy, is never attainable, it should not discourage critics from trying to achieve it. Anything that minimises the complex personality of the critic standing between the film - that obscure object of desire - and the prospective viewer, must surely be encouraged. For a start, here are a few words and phrases that are frequently misused and should be ignored by the reader. 

There is no need for the writer to use the first person singular, which is superogatory. At least it should be used sparingly. A review is not about the critic but the film. Rather than writing "I laughed/cried all the way through", the critic, using objective correlatives, should analyse the film's effects in a more general manner. For example, here is an extract from a recent review: "I wasn't quite sure whether I liked it or not while I was watching it, as it was uncomfortable although it kept me intrigued enough to stay on till the end. It's an oddly affecting tale and I thought about it long after I'd seen it, but as a piece of cinema it doesn't quite deliver." As a piece of criticism it doesn't quite deliver. 

"Slow". This is often employed without even the adverbs "too" or "so". When a critic calls a film "slow", it is immediately taken as pejorative. Would one criticise a piece of music by saying it is slow? The word itself carries no negative connotation. It is as neutral as "fast", "shot on video" or "in black and white", although these terms, even unqualified, can also carry with them some prejudice. Slow usually implies that the critic has found the film boring, another meaningless subjective term. If someone announces that they find opera or Shakespeare boring, it says nothing about opera or Shakespeare, but about the speaker. 

"Too Long". Time is extremely subjective. The criticism doesn't really have anything to do with the running time of the film, but with how the critic experiences that time. One could sit through 3-4 hour films which don't feel long, while a bad 15-minute short seems interminable. A critic who thinks a film is "too long", is again revealing that they have become bored with the style or content and not the length. 

"Dated". A film is called dated, not only because it doesn't have any mobile phones or computers in it, but because the mores of the film are no longer those of the period in which we live. But so-called dated films tell you more about the era in which they are made than most other films. In a way, it's like using the relative adjective "old" to describe a film, usually made before the critic was born. But why is "old" only used to describe films? Does one say that one listened to a concert of old music or read an old book or saw an old play?

 "Pretentious" or "obscure", which generally means the critic has not understood the film. 

"Recommended". Critics should never recommend a film. How can a critic recommend a film to a bunch of complete strangers? It's comparable to someone meeting a stranger on a train who recommends the book he is reading without knowing anything about the other person's tastes. The review itself will allow one make up one's own mind whether to see the film or not. 

Ronald Bergan 
www.guardian.co.uk