The New Yorker & Me: Lane v. Brody: Do They Ever Agree?

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Lane v. Brody: Do They Ever Agree?

Zohar Lazar's illustration for Anthony Lane's "No Laughing Matter"

Have Anthony Lane and Richard Brody ever agreed on a movie? I ask this after reading their reviews of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Lane sees Scorsese’s movie as a potential sitcom (“Don’t tell the Bufalinos, but deep inside this movie lurks a sitcom”). Brody calls it “a sociopolitical horror story.” This certainly isn’t the first time they’ve disagreed. Regarding James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari, Lane describes the racing in it as “surreal as well as punchy”; Brody calls it “sanitized.” Lane on Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood: a declaration of Tarantino’s love for “cars and songs.” Brody on the same movie: “obscenely regressive.” Lane on Yesterday: “spry and engaging, and the jokes rain down.” Brody: “soft-soap particulars and flimsy dramatics.” Lane on Roma: “persuasive in its beauty”; Brody: “little more than the righteous affirmation of good intentions.” Lane on La La Land: “it looks so delicious that I genuinely couldn’t decide whether to watch it or lick it”; Brody: “strenuous emptiness, forced whimsy, and programmed emotion.” Lane on Trainwreck: has “the softness of a regular rom-com”; Brody: “a robust comedy, ranging from genial to zingy to uproarious.” On and on it goes: Lane zigs; Brody zags.

So I ask again: is there a movie they both agree on? As a matter of fact, there is; they both hate Todd Phillip’s Joker. Lane calls it “a product” (“Here’s the deal. Joker is not a great leap forward, or a deep dive into our collective unconscious, let alone a work of art. It’s a product”). Brody says it’s a “viewing experience of rare, numbing emptiness.” Congratulations, Joker, you managed to unite Lane and Brody – no small feat.