Can you give every movie a fair review if you watch twelve in three days?

How many movies can you watch in a day before it all starts to mix up until it’s a blurry mess in your memory? Two? Three? And for how many days can you be doing this without losing your mind?

I think the answer will vary depending on who you ask. I imagine that professional film critics have developed a high amount of stamina and won’t break down in the first place. If you’ve been a regular to Cannes, Berlin and Venice for years, you must have some tricks in your sleeve, similar to how a wine expert can try out fifteen wines in one afternoon, giving each one a proper and fair evaluation. For a hobby critic like me, who hasn’t got a long track record of film festival experiences, it’s more of a challenge.

I had reason to think about those things as I attended Malmö filmdagar earlier this week. This is a three day event that is held every year, where the upcoming movies of the autumn are presented to people in the film business and to media representatives. Thanks to the Swedish Film Institute a whole lot of movie bloggers had received press accreditation this year.

Judging from the looks on the faces of the people I met, we were among the most enthusiastic participants those days, as we tried to squeeze as many movies as we possibly could into our watching schedule.

Hunger, exhaustion and dizziness couldn’t keep us from knocking off film after film, even when the breaks between them sometimes were down to five minutes, making it impossible to head for the queue to the ladies restrooms. Once a movie finished, you had to wipe it from your mind as quickly as you possibly could as you were moving to the room where the next screening would take place.

Coping strategies
I couldn’t help wondering about what strategies the professional film critics had to cope with it. Most of the movies were utterly depressing, like movies tend to be these days, and they left me with a lingering taste of death, heartache and despair. What was their trick to remove it?

Wine tasters spit out the wine, using white bread and water to cleanse their palates. But what’s the equivalence for a film buff? How can you rid yourself of pain and grief, approaching every movie the same way, with an empty, reset mind? Was there an empty room with white walls and a soft carpet where speed meditation sessions were offered to reviewers in distress? Did they listen to one of those apps that claim they can make your brain relax with the help of alpha waves? Or perhaps they had a quick watch of something completely different? Could a looney tunes short film cleanse your film taste buds the same way as a piece of white bread makes your tongue ready for more wine?

Being unfair
I don’t know how you folks make it. But after my twelve movies-in-three-days experience you have my respect. I don’t think I’ll be able to give each one of the twelve movies the same chance, sadly. Some of them were screened late in the evening after we had had a glass of wine if not two. Or actually three, if I’m thinking closely about it. And to be completely honest, if you’re not trusted to drive a car, can you truthfully claim that you’re fit to review a movie?

 

Some films were unlucky to get a bad slot, right after one of the best movies. How could I possibly be touched by Lovelace when I just had cried my heart out to Broken Circle Breakdown? How could Diana be anything but superficial and bland compared to Before Midnight?

I’m now in the process of sorting out my memories from those days the best I can, attributing the bursts of tears to the correct movies and working out if the reason why a certain film made me sleepy was that it didn’t engage me or if there were other factors at play, like the time of the day or what I had had for dinner before watching it.

I’m not a professional critic, just a film fan, not used to this kind of intense film watching. So bear with me if my judgement seems to be somewhat clouded in the reviews to come. I haven’t learned the tricks yet. I don’t know how I’ll manage to write all those posts.

There’s only one thing I know: I won’t be fair.

photo credit: gak via photopin cc