How to write a film review: principles and structure
As a recently graduated Art Historian, I took a course on film criticism at the Cuban Film Institute. Classes were fantastic, and I remember my outstanding professors with gratitude. The other students were also young aspiring critics; I learned from them as much as I did from the teachers. We established a terrific relationship, and most of us are still friends today.
The program was demanding. While I loved the conferences, I was not too fond of the exercises. We had to write reviews about specific films and topics every day for each lesson. I started strong, putting all my energies and creativity into finding crazy associations between cineastes and cleaver deductions on formalist analysis. But after a few days, I was exhausted. I wasn’t prepared for that work pressure and eventually fell behind. My motivation and confidence dropped.
I was aware that you face that kind of stress in a film festival context, for example, where you have to cover many films and events with celerity. Therefore, I had to find a formula to automatize the process of writing. I focused then on setting standards to abide by, dogmas that I wouldn’t compromise, and then designed a scheme to repeat. This new tool saved me during those months in the course. Many years later, I still use it.
The objective of this article is to offer an overview of values a writer should consider before doing a film review. I will also expose a libretto, a series of steps that you can apply if you are a beginner in the task.
…
A film review must respect the following principles:
1. Be useful and consistent
Think about your readers. Try to visualize them not as an entelechy, but as real people, with names and demographic specifications — age, sex, region, preferences, cultural community, etc. The more specific you get, the better your chances of connecting with them. Your article is a way of having a conversation, so keep in mind their needs and interests. Think about why they watch a film and what drives them. Then you will figure out how your text will help them understand, enjoy or value the movie better.
Don’t forget to choose your purpose. I gave you a list in a previous post. Once you have selected one (and only one), stick to it. The motive will provide the framework within which your text will move. It determines the tone and the vocabulary you will use. Then you can quickly note the differences between a review made to promote and another written for the author’s pleasure.
2. Be concise
I don’t mean to be short. For me, being concise is based on the adequacy of the idea you want to express and the argumentative resources you employ. Thus, you can be straightforward in a thirty-page essay if your reasoning requires so. Accordingly, you can be verbose in a thousand-word article.
Take time to contemplate your case. Use lists or mental maps, state them at the commencement of the text, and follow them with discipline. The reader will appreciate the script. Suppose you feel that you are pursuing a train of ideas that takes you further from that original sketch. In that case, I suggest you pause, think about the possible endings, and then evaluate if you can keep it into the text or if you could have the substance to write a completely different article on this topic. In either case, don’t renounce the idea; from this rambling, you can have helpful material to be explored later.
3. Respect the guidelines of the publication
This point doesn’t need much justification. Guidelines are the frontiers of your playground. You don’t fight them; you don’t think much about them either. They are not a constraint on your creativity. They are the horizons of your work. Push them, and you will irritate your editors. You don’t want that. They must see you as a problem solver, not a problem seeker. Please, obey the guidelines.
4. Be reflexive
Usually, film criticisms are defined as explanations of the films to their audience. This metaphor, quite extended, poses the review as a highway linking the movie on one end and the audience on the other. According to this, you are supposed to be a facilitator, catalyst of an encounter, and valuable as long as you paved a supposed fixed meaning –that only you understand– toward the receptor’s mind. I profoundly disagree with this allegory. The image of the critic as a caricature taken from Ratatouille, egotistical, know-it-all, self-important and distant, is far from the mission of the practice. It is arrogant, condescending, and quite hurtful to the profession.
You shouldn’t explain anything to the reader. You don’t know better than any of them.
Instead, you must present yourself as part of the equation. Being reflexive is acknowledging what is your role as part of the communicative situation. You are not between the film and the viewer. You are another viewer, setting an entirely new thread for your reader who might have seen the movie or not. Offer data and comment on how your thoughts on the film are bounded to your life. You will be more helpful.
…
I designed a recipe for a six paragraphs text. Each one should be between 80 and 110 words, about 600 words. Nevertheless, I confess that I have never written anything that short. The formula is just a starting point. Once I get into the text, my imagination flows, and the article flourishes with other multiple ideas. Here is the layout:
1. Paragraph 1. Start with a personal experience
I learned this technique from two sources. One is ethnographic literature. Contrary to conventional academic rules, insistent on a third-person narrative, Anthropology encourages a more personal approach and demands, from a methodological point of view, that the author places himself in context. Therefore, there is a long tradition of registering the encounter between the anthropologist and his object of attention. I love how this science blends logical thinking with the particular circumstantial experience of the lived events, not hiding the subjective and political act of being the one who tells. From this genre, I absorbed an interest in details, behaviors, artifacts, habits, etc.
The other source is the work of Bell Hooks. When reading Yearnings. Race, gender, and cultural politics, I was mesmerized by the way she attached her memory to major narratives of politics and culture. She managed to identify the expressions of power in ordinary episodes. Every chapter of the book starts with an anecdote that triggers an argumentative sequence of ideas. As a reader, you can’t help feeling deeply involved in the story, and by the end of the segment, you explore your past in search of the scars of authority. I want that for my writings too.
Here is my advice. Start with an anecdote relevant to the objective of the review. Use the self-awareness of the act of watching the movie (Anthropology), and grasp the emotions joining your past with the film (Hooks). This will benefit your rapport with the reader.
2. Paragraph 2. State your objectives, audiences, limits, and give an abstract of your text
I find it annoying to read something that doesn’t state its objective. I must say, though, that this is not a common practice outside academic publications. I have colleagues that resist declaring explicitly why they are writing a text. They see it as a pedantry custom of scientific literature, somehow constraining their freedom as creators. To me, on the contrary, it is a matter of respect for the audience’s time. They should be able to decide, as quickly as possible, if they want to keep reading my text or not.
To assert the objective, ask yourself why you are writing the review. What did you see in the film that needs analysis? How will your text help the audience discover new things about the movie?
Moreover, you should also question yourself, for whom is your text helpful? Is it for students, newcomers, fans, experts, or novices? Say it! Remember, your article is a conversation; hence, who are you talking to?
Also, it would be best if you let your horizons clear. Are some areas beyond the scope of your scrutiny that should be mentioned? As crucial as affirming what you will do (objective) is declaring what you won’t do (limits).
After this, I recommend narrating the arrangements of your piece. For example, suppose the objective is to examine the characteristics of authorism in the films of Wes Anderson. In that case, a logical structure might be (first) exploring the concept of author and authorism within the background of film studies; (then) identifying which of those traits are present in his work; and (finally) evaluating how he pushes the boundaries of those features in different ways, making him an exception worthy of being observed. So the reader will be better prepared to enjoy the next Anderson film.
This part must be brief and precise. There is little room here for rhetoric figures. It is an accurate description of your critique.
3. Paragraph 3. Describe the synopsis of the film
I don’t enjoy doing this part, but it is a necessary task to do. Criticism is supposed to have three components: description, interpretation, and evaluation. The synopsis has an informative mission, which is part of the descriptive section. Resume the story in three or four sentences, no more. Mention the name of the main characters and the actors and actresses playing them. Ah! Avoid spoilers!
How do I do it? I am lazy and don’t spend much time or effort on this chore. I search for the film on Google, read various summaries, and then assemble a Frankenstein paraphrasing those abstracts. Never copy & paste. Use them only for inspiration. Visit Rotten Tomatoes frequently; they also offer exciting data about the film.
4. Paragraph 4. Argument number 1
Here starts the core of your work. In this segment, you develop your points of view. Of course, there is no script for it. Every film calls for its interpretation, and every person reads the film differently.
I like to use a model proposed by Hypolite Tayne in the nineteenth century. The famous art sociologist indicated that every work of art is a member of three families, and a study of it should present an exam of how the piece is related to each. The first is the work of the same artist, the second is other works created during the same period by similar artists, and the third is the diachronic evolution of art in the country. Accordingly, when writing a film review, I try to answer some of these questions:
· What are the similitudes/differences of the film concerning the career of the director or cast? Is it a continuation or a break? How?
· Is the film part of a trend? Does it look like something we already saw, or is it entirely new? How?
· We learned from Rolland Barthes that every text is built from other infinite texts. So, from where is the film pulling its inspiration? How does it fit in the history of cinema? Be imaginative.
Questions like this are aspects I always look for when reading a film review. They are also the elements I pursue to answer when writing one.
5. Paragraph 5. Argument number 2
I try to find at least two concepts in films before I sit down to write about them. The previous one refers to how the movie relates to other movies. Now, I devote a unit to reflecting on the stylistic features of the film. Style has two components: on the one hand, there is narrative structure, this is how the film is told (premise, characters, instrumentation, plot, conflict, resolution, etc.); on the other hand, there are audiovisual features (mise-en-scene, photography, editing, and sound). You can speak endless about each of these constituents, so choose wisely the ones that help you to explain the relationships explored in the argument above.
This middle section is where you demonstrate how much knowledge you have of cinema. The rest of them reveal your proficiency in writing about film. They are based on experience. Hence, you will acquire mastery in the persistent practice of it. But the middle is sustained on expertise and preparation: theoretical and historical knowledge is required.
6. Paragraph 6. Conclusions
Before you write the conclusions, go back to the objectives. They must be aligned. Do your claims fulfill those purposes? In what way?
Let the readers well-defined the final idea they must take with them. Consider how that notion is associated with the lived passage you employed to begin the review. Your argument should be a fable helping the audience either repeat your experience (if it was good) or prevent it (if it was terrible). In this section, elude long, subordinate sentences. Instead, be sharp, bold, and rhythmic.
…
In conclusion, to be a successful film critic, you must write with quality and consistency. Achieving that will require an automatic method that relieves you from the burden of the blank page and boosts you to the interpretation phase of the criticism (arguments 1 and 2). Here, I presented to you my principles and structure: the things that I am not willing to compromise and a configuration that I replicate. They are not a straightjacket. Quite the opposite, they release my imagination. Every writer needs them. Create yours.