My judgements were pricking the skin of many readers, as though my commentary on the life suggested by modern film was also a secret and hurtful commentary on their own choices and their own values. […]
My readers wanted films that confirmed their sense of what they knew, films that didn’t set out, however entertainingly, to interrogate their sense of moral reality, but rather – like popular paperbacks about the inner life of blokes – to offer a light-hearted, tear-jerking reassurance, and to rub balm on our modern quandaries.
From Two years in the dark, by novelist and ex-movie critic Andrew O’Hagan. It’s an essay published in the most recent issue of Granta (#86), dedicated to film.
