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Marxist film critics devote their energies to discovering hidden evils in "bourgeois" cinema, taking an occasional break to praise a film from a socialist or developing nation. Liberal critics, such as myself, look favorably on films supporting the poor, ethnic minorities, women, gays, the environment, the First Amendment, etc. Conservatives save their kindest words for films stressing the nuclear family, patriotism, law enforcement, region, the profit motive.
There are, of course, exceptions to that neat tripartite packaging, but my immediate focus is on what critics of all kinds share in common. In this still fundamentally puritanical country, where not only tobacco but also wine is plastered with health warnings, moviegoing for pleasure seems a rather frivolous pastime, especially since (like smoking) it's no longer a majority habit. So we like to believe that movies play a serious role in life-that a movie displaying our sociopolitical view of the world will go out to win the hearts and minds of the unreconstructed. We're also concerned--Marxists and conservatives most of all--that movies lacking our particular ideology will foster the weeds of corruption.
Critics, movie and otherwise, argue continually about the extent to which movies influence behavior, from specifics like highway-line roulette in The Program to such broader areas as violence and pornography. But there's much less debate about whether movies do or don't influence ideology. We tend to think of ideas as information: pour enough out and moviegoers will take it in. So by praising movies that embody our particular right ideas and assailing those that don't, we are doing our bit to help improve the world. Aren't we? No, we aren't. Not much, anyway. Because having a great message isn't the same as delivering it. There's some light at the end of the tunnel--but the tunnel is long and narrow. How many people prejudiced against gays do you think went to see Philadelphia? How many supporters of capital punishment saw The Execution Protocol? How many non-Marxists sat through the nearly four hours of Theo Angelopoulos's Traveling Players? How many racially prejudiced people saw Freedom on My Mind?
The last example is crucial. A documentary about the Mississippi voter registration project in the early Sixties, it bypasses bitterness and posturing to focus on the everyday courage, humanity,...