Ten or 20 years from now, when we have all become successful, metropolitan socialites, Anthony Lane will be our source for weekend entertainment, and his brilliant wit will make all the work it took to arrive at that level of socioeconomic snobbery worthwhile.
Mr. Lane is a film critic for The New Yorker, a magazine most of us would only have opened in an attempt to impress someone at the doctor’s office. Rather than sitting in an uncomfortable chair feigning interest in the latest political satire, it would have been wise to peruse the entertainment section where Anthony Lane was most likely spewing his latest flashes of comedy and criticism.
Lane is surprisingly young for his level of success. Only 40 years old, he has long since reached the pinnacle of his career. Yet, in spite of his innumerable accomplishments, he remains refreshingly humble.
He insists his employment at The New Yorker was the result of “a clerical error of such embarrassing proportions that the magazine has spent the last nine years trying to cover it up.”
Most of us would certainly disagree.
Originally from Britain, Lane has, since his arrival at the magazine in 1993, sculpted the new face of film criticism. According to Lane, “of all the duties required of the professional critic, perhaps the least important–certainly the least enduring–is the verdict.”
Today, film critics are prone to reduce a film’s value to a number of stars or the position of thumbs. But Lane believes, and is teaching others to believe, that film is art and experience, and “the primary task of the critic is the recreation of texture.”
His brilliant thoughts and theories about the direction of film, its value and its frequent absurdity are compiled in his recently published book, “Nobody’s Perfect.” The book, which borrowed its title from a line in “Some Like it Hot,” contains reviews of the best and worst Hollywood and world cinema have to offer. From “Showgirls” to “Pearl Harbor” to Britain’s “Under the Sea,” Lane has a talent for finding the beauty and humor in it all.
Of Guy Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” he advises the audience to “think of it as a carefully constructed entertainment for the benefit of people who really, really like beer commercials.”
And according to Lane, Michael Bay’s blockbuster, “Pearl Harbor,” “tells a tale familiar to every child in America: how a great nation was attacked and humbled by the imperious pride of Ben Affleck.”
Yet, for all his critical insights, he insists on staying in the shadows of Hollywood’s limelight. He refers to Los Angeles as a different world and maintains that England is his true home.
When asked which film character he would most like to be, he shrinks back from the obsession of Hollywood idolatry and says he would “rather be an extra than a leading man.”
Nonetheless, he refuses to belittle the Hollywood machine and the art of cinema that so often fails to meet expectation. He promises, “The day I go to a movie expecting to be disappointed, I will find another occupation.”
For the sake of all future readers of The New Yorker, let us hope that day remains looming in the distance for a long time.
In the nearer future, only good news presents itself. Lane himself will be gracing our fair city Thursday evening. He will be reading from “Nobody’s Perfect” at the University Bookstore at 6 p.m. The New Yorker is lucky to have access to this brilliant mind, and for a short time, we will too.
