The Humbug Police
By:
November 13, 2009
In the New Yorker’s “Current Cinema” column this week, David Denby offer a quick and compelling appraisal of Richard Kelly’s new film, The Box. Kelly wrote and directed the magical and unsettling cult film Donnie Darko, the appeal of which Denby affirms — albeit by calling it a “near-masterpiece” in the deflationary mode frequently espoused in middlebrow criticism. While allowing that The Box is no Donnie Darko, Denby praises much in the new film, from Frank Langella’s performance to Kelly’s “extravagent virtuosity” (although that’s a bit left-handed too, isn’t it?). But then Denby lets go of the balloon and sends it sputtering across the room:
I would suggest that Kelly drop his reliance on religio-mystico-eschatological humbug and embrace, in realistic terms, the fantastic possibilities of ordinary acts of murder, fear, heroism, and death. If he pulls himself together, he could be the next Hitchcock.
Get serious. Get realistic. Get ordinary. If we want the human career entire, however, we must accept that religio-mystico-eschatological humbug will never die out, middlebrow bromides notwithstanding.
HiLoBrow celebrates the ordinary possibilities of the fantastic. Humbug, too, deserves its Hitchcock.