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In defense of his picking Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential as number ten film on his 2006 best list in the IndieWire critics poll, IFC News’s Matt Singer confessed that “if I wasn’t so afraid of being laughed out of the critical community, it’d be a lot higher.” Well, I can relate to that–as maybe we all can in a variety of ways–except right now I’m starting to feel a little antsy about my own critical delights. Immediate case in point: my “favorites list” for 2006 posted January 2–what’s on it that even remotely challenges the consensus, that thumbs its nose at the unofficial “hipper than thou” avant taste machine? Not a lot actually: Happy Feet, Manderlay, Miami Vice, arguably Caché … though even these balky mavericks have enough high-end endorsement (“ooh look, Dave Kehr likes Manderlay!”) to reinforce the feeling of incestuous complicity, like the monastic seeker in Raul Ruiz’s Snakes and Ladders who stays buried in the theological trenches even as he strives to extricate himself, every fitful act of resistance (even atheism!) ultimately co-opted by the discourse. Or maybe Taxidermia, which didn’t get a single vote in IndieWire’s “best undistributed films” roundup–though maybe all that means is that whenever I’m set loose on a film that nobody else has seen, much less reviewed, then critical discernment flies out the window … So what does that make me: an almost too perfect mirror, like a straight-A student mastering the art of regurgitating what teachers want to hear, the ideal standardized test taker? And is any “independent” critical personality there at all, or are we all simply perpetuating each other’s biases to infinity?
