Notes on Hamrah
An essay on aesthetics and ethics in contemporary film writing
Here is my first contribution to The Ideas Letter. It looks at the work of the reviewer and essayist A S Hamrah in the context of contemporary American film criticism, and appears as the lead piece in the ‘Terms of Art’ issue, under the title ‘He Lost It At the Movies.’
Hamrah is a contributor to n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, the New York Review of Books, and Harper’s, who has probably been the most-discussed or name-checked film critic during the period I’ve been working as a journalist (and occasionally covering cinema). There is no denying his knowledge, energy, or talent. But despite being a film criticism addict most of my reading life, and a very grateful and enthusiastic reader of n+1, in particular its cultural coverage, I had never really engaged with his work. I think this was because, while I respond to instinctivism and a shoot-from-the-hip style – as in the writing of Pauline Kael or James Wolcott – I like to feel a strong critical or analytical argument underneath, and this just didn’t seem to be a priority of his famous ‘round-up’ articles.
Looking at Hamrah’s work over the last twenty years more closely, most of it now collected in two – brilliantly designed – books, I still found this to be the case, for reasons I tried hard to articulate. But I also encountered some problems that seemed less subjective, relating to his descriptions as much as his positions:
https://www.theideasletter.org/issue/terms-of-art/
