Leonard Lives!

Today, Wolcott points us to davekehr.com and a great piece on Deadwood and how it fits into the history of westerns. Dave is taking issue with a Nancy Franklin piece in The New Yorker. Nancy praises Deadwood for its originality, its willingness to shatter the "conventions" of the western. Kehr handily shows that Franklin lacks any sort of exhaustive knowledge of the western and that Deadwood has roots that go way back into the genre...



I had this same reaction some years ago when Unforgiven came out. The critical hype seemed to eventually focus on the "ambiguity" of the hero and the story - as if ambiguity were something totally new to westerns...



There seems to be a total lack of memory among the critics working today. When touting the unique ambiguity of the Eastwood role in Unforgiven, I marveled that it was apparent that none of them had seen The Searchers...



No, our critics are like Leonard in Memento. Scrabbling around, trying to come up with a themic thread, relying on their fuzzy Polaroids to remind them of the approved buzz words of the day: AMBIGUITY! CLICHE SHATTERING! GRAY AREAS! Movie critics really need to get out and see more movies...