Last night I put a piece about the Ethan Hawke Hamlet over on Samizdata, because Samizdata needs stuff now that is not about that non-war that has been not-starting lately.
Samizdata has a lot of readers, and a lot of commenters, and there were quite a few comments about Hamlet movies. Branagh is boring. Branagh is great. Hawke is great. Hawke is dreadful. Mel Gibson is not good. And so on. The interesting comments explained why they thought X sucked, or why they thought Y great. The silly ones just said it. Steven Den Beste, for example, who is worshipped by many citizens of the blogosphere, and often does write excellent stuff (about the non-war that has been not-starting) produced one of these oracular gobs of abuse denouncing Hawke, but gave no clue as to what he objected to about the man's performance. I'm not saying these all these folks aren't totally entitled to their contrasting opinions. It's just that "X sucks because I say so" is a rather boring opinion.
Sometimes "X sucks" can be funny. If the usual style in some particular writing venue tends towards high-falutin' over-elaboration, then the occasional unadorned "X sucks" can be a refreshing contrast. But Samizdata is not such a place.
Anyway, given that I haven't been writing about Hamlet movies here when I might have been (but instead put it elsewhere) let me import some fine film criticism by Aaron Haspel from another blog, this time about another favourite movie of mine, 12 Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda.
I shouldn't have done it, I know, but last night I watched 12 Angry Men again on television. Its principal interest is sociological. It preserves in celluloid a representative collection of liberal stereotypes circa 1957 — bloviating bigot Ed Begley, Lonely Crowd adman Robert Webber, hypersensitive slum-dweller Jack Klugman (looking positively fawn-like, if you can believe it), neurotically precise broker E.G. Marshall, short-fused martinet Lee J. Cobb, broad-minded and tolerant architect Henry Fonda. What is it with Hollywood and architects anyway? How come they always get a free pass? Why are there doctor and lawyer jokes in store, but no architect jokes?
Partly it's politics of course. Architecture at that time was becoming heavily left-wing not just in the sense that architects themselves were tending to be heavily left-wing, but in the more profound sense that architecture itself, that stuff they did, was becoming the literal, physical, concrete embodiment of socialist centralism, and a literal physical attack on individual, bourgeois freedom.
But there's more to it than that. Architects do have this ultra cool vibe radiating from them. Did I mention that I once tried to be an architect? Yes I did. Why? Because I wanted to be cool. It wasn’t that I especially loved designing buildings, and I hate the actual process of actually designing buildings – doing all that work I mean. It was simply that when people asked me what I did, I wanted to be able to say: "I'm an architect", and then bask in their inevitable admiration. When I was trying to do it, architecture had a very high drop out rate, and I reckon that's one of the reaons. People like me loved the idea of doing it, but hated actually doing it.
Adds Haspel:
If I ever write a screeplay, I'm going to make my villain an architect, out of sheer perversity.
Nothing perverse about that. It's a good idea.
Haspel then goes on to argue that the accused in 12 Angry Men was actually guilty, despite Henry Fonda persuading the other eleven to acquit him. And the two commenters on the piece so far both agree:
… Kid was guilty as hell.
And this, from Jim Valliant:
Our "hero" Henry Fonda is also guilty of gross juror misconduct. The knife he produced in the jury room was not presented as evidence at trial. The prosecution never had a chance to rebut this new evidence, and the defense (perhaps knowing that the prosecution had the complete statistics on the knife) may have intentionally NOT introduced this defense. Fonda's misconduct was not only illegal and against the judge's specific instructions (which Fonda had presumably sworn to follow), it was very unfair to the prosecution – and the truth.
I like that.
