I enjoy watching documentaries, especially about pioneering women, and considering how much I like movies and writing about them, it was a given that I would see What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael in theaters. At a runtime of one hour thirty-eight minutes, it was not a huge time commitment. I know of Kael, but would be lying if I said that I read her work. I usually read movie reviews after I see the movie, not before. I am certain that she has affected everything that I have read. Respect!
Kael would have hated What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael. Even though the documentary is mostly organized chronologically, it does not find a rhythm until late in the film. It consists of interviews with talking heads, other adoring movie critics, some filmmakers, a close friend and her daughter. The archival footage is brilliant because it offers an opportunity to contextualize the testimony with the reality. The filmmaker uses tons of clips from movies, which normally is a good choice because then your film can rest on the laurels associated with another film. Often the clips earlier in the film had nothing to do with the voiceovers so when the clips finally began to match the substance, I had already checked out. Yes, the clip from Deadpool illustrated the concept that Kael was referring to, but if you could not figure out the actual movie that she was referencing, then maybe leave out the line altogether. There should be one rule: if she did not review the movie, and the movie has nothing to do with the audio, do not use it.
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael seemed more uncomfortable with the idea of examining Kael as a person and preferred to rely on depicting her professional rise. We may only care about Kael because of her profession, but we should not leave the film still feeling that way. There is only a brief moment that shows the murals in her old house in California. For a single mom who clearly had a distinct taste for sexuality and violence in her films, the movie uncomfortably rushes over the men in her life and all living breathing details that would make her more than a person at a desk. We have no sense of her as an individual. In contrast, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins felt rich in detail and balanced in its approach to the writer. For example, Kael spends a brief amount of time in Hollywood with Warren Beatty making films. Yes, she did it for the money and the love of movies, but did she also have a crush on him. Was there an affair? You cannot offer me a living, breathing woman comfortable with her own sexuality then ignore the fact that she dropped everything just to hang out with one of the hottest men in Hollywood from that period. The assumption is that it was professional, and maybe it was, but at the very least, tell me that she was salivating and enjoying the view. I am sure that the woman could multitask, but it was not even considered. Dude, you best believe that at the very least, she thought about it. To not even consider even a theoretical appreciation is absurd.
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael committed one cardinal sin even though it is an understandable. Sarah Jessica Parker does the voiceover for Kael if actual audio or video for Kael is not available. I like Parker’s voice, but there is no world where her voice even belongs in the same category as Kael’s. If you are going to use archival footage of the actual woman, then any substitutions must primarily be similar to the subject, not potentially attract more viewers. Just speaking for myself, I would pay to watch Sigourney Weaver knit a sweater, and Jamie Lee Curtis play jenga, but I have never contemplated the idea of looking into movies that either did vocal work in then watching them. Maybe Parker’s fans are more devoted, but she just struck a discordant tone, which is not her fault. She has a very distinct voice as Carrie in Sex and the City, another famous columnist. There can only be one famous columnist, fictional or otherwise in this film, and the filmmaker made the wrong choice. It was the same mistake made in Ask Dr. Ruth. Parker’s voice is lighter, more playful and sounds like a smile while Kael has a deeper, trenchant register.
I left What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael rather shocked that I am not sure if I would like Kael as a person. Late in the film, a casual line from her Apocalypse Now review is uttered that mentally threw me into a tangent thinking about intersectionality. As a woman of color, I expect the world of film to be unconsciously white because white is the majority demographic in this country. When a white person notices that they are white, then comments on it, that comment matters more than obliviousness. To be fair, the line was only an excerpt so the context may matter, but the tone of Kael’s comment was aggrieved that it was yet another movie meant to induce white guilt. Um, I am not going to comment on Apocalypse Now as a movie because it has been decades since I saw it, but if a movie about an essentially colonist war makes you feel uncomfortable and feels redundant, maybe it should, and it says more about the person than the film. As a New Yorker, I was disdainful of her instinctual fear of the city, her belief that she was the prime target of imagined criminals. If, as I hope, she lived a crime free life, in the afterlife, she needs to issue an apology. There is not much imaginative difference between her and the fifty two percenters yet I am certain that if she lived now, she would believe that she was on the side of the angels as she crossed the street clutching her purse believing that she is the real victim when no one is thinking of her. She wants movie to reflect reality when it is the reality that she wants to see.
Maybe What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael unfairly depicted Kael, but the film used her own words. Only broader context can save her so I will keep an open mind, a metaphorical cracked door. The idea that the filmmaker did not even consider the collective impact of these statements for a twenty-first century audience speaks to a certain obliviousness characteristic of the general lack of insight into his subject. He provides clips of Woody Allen, which I do not object to considering Allen’s role in cinema, but considering how many movies Kael reviewed, is a choice, then tackles accusations of (self-hating) anti-Semitism with respect to Kael’s review of Shoah, which shows capacity for sensitivity and concern. Is obliviousness willful or considered? Only God knows a person’s heart.
If you must see What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, then wait to see it at home, but it will lose your attention just as it is getting good.