He is a very interesting critic and one I think doesn’t receive as much attention as all the usual suspects. Walsh’s political framework is indeed rigid, but I find that it allows him to see the movies he reviews in a different light than most other critics since most of them do not have a strong political background. I almost feel as if he is able to see holes in a movie where others don’t, and I find his reviewing entirely sober and lacking in any pretense.

His denouncement of Costa does show another perspective on the guy and “art” cinema in general. Hey, you can count on him to not jump on any bandwagons and roll his eyes at even the most touted works. And yet, his politics do make him somewhat didactic and unforgiving. Where’s the joy?

I wonder if Adrian Martin or any of the critics have read Walsh’s discussion on the state of cinema (or art) with another person from Swans Commentary? He takes a lot interesting shots at received wisdoms.

Because of my immersion into the recent Pedro Costa retrospective and Costa’s own firebrand delivery of a “dangerous” cinema, many of these ideas have finally “set” in a relevant and meaningful way. For example, I have been very influenced by Costa’s assertions that the best kind of cinema is precisely that which restricts or even denies access, in the sense of overly identifying with the personages on screen or–as you’ve synopsized it here–projecting with associations or being too comfortable for being too entertained. It’s so difficult not to do this as a spectator and yet crucial to maturing as a spectator.

Brenez’s question–“How do we somatize, internalize and act out the evil of the world?”–is another one I have been thinking a lot about. It has to be between people, I think. The world has to be somatized within the individual body and between individual bodies, wherein the potential breadth of good and evil likewise resides.

I love the Bergman insight on islands. I Walked With A Zombie and Casa de Lava have taken on complex connotations of longing and thwarted desire precisely for being set on islands where looking out to sea is a means of longing for the mainland, or home, or someone else.

I’m glad Adrian has spoken out against pugilistic criticism. I find that confirming and reassuring.

Durgnant sounds like my kind of guy. For as much objectivity as can be applied to a piece of film writing, can there ever be objective film criticism? Is is possible?

“space generated by sound vs. space generated by image”: Again, Costa has enlightened me with regard to this structure of argument. Not only in how he capitalizes on natural light sources to shape his images but in how he extends their spatiality through soundscapes that are nearly for walking through.

I love any kind of writing, film criticism no less, when it inspires desire. Imagining the audience is, for me, a form of desire, whether that be an audience of spectators or an audience of readers.

And interesting that they should single out David Walsh’s political perspective at the World Socialist Website. He denounced Costa as a fraud and yet I have found his filmmaking to be politics committed to action, nearly freed from rhetoric.