Variety’s Apology to Carey Mulligan Shows Critic’s Ivory Tower Crumbling | Peter Bradshaw | Movie

UUntil relatively recently, apologies in the arts review columns of any publication were extremely rare, if not nonexistent. If the crow were to be eaten, it would be the end result of an unprecedented legal action in which the defendant and the plaintiff sadly established – through an exchange of letters from the lawyer – what the outcome would be. likely in court.

No more. In 2018, then-New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley apologized after being charged with transphobia for a quip on the Broadway musical Head Over Heels. He had affected a satirical confusion over his star, the trans performer Peppermint whose character identified as non-binary.

Now Variety – a magazine with a list of first-class movie critics – felt the need to apologize for its review of Carey Mulligan’s film Promising Young Woman, in which critic Dennis Harvey said he believed Mulligan had made a mistake. Harvey wrote that “although a good actress” Mulligan was “a strange choice” and appeared to be “in bad shape”. He said that the film’s producer, Margot Robbie, may have been better in such a confrontational sex role.

The review was published in January 2020, but after Mulligan attacked it in an interview, Variety did something that can only be described as having your humble pie and eating it. They apologized: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets our reviewer’s callous language and innuendo … which downplayed her daring performance.” But they’re still running the review below, with the supposedly offensive passage quite intact.

It is very weak on their part. And in Christopher Hitchens’ immortal words: “Apologies are boring. What we want is an explanation. Perhaps Mulligan was particularly angry with this review because it appeared in a magazine considered the industry bible, vital in award seasons, and therefore a review is closer to the Ofsted report of a school as subjective article as it might be in other publications. And as the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin suggests, it could well be that Variety’s sheepish half-descent was due to a grinding fear of the almighty studio and talented PRs, fiercely threatening to shut down access to the stars in their stable.

But that is not the point. There are legions of women commenting on social media today to say that – guess what – they too are bored, in the withered Hitchens sense, with Variety’s shy half-apologies and whatever they want, c t is a wider and more diverse range of critical opinions women’s voices are heard. And something else too: they will want critical freedom and publications with the intellectual courage to support them.

For what it’s worth, I totally disagree with Harvey that Mulligan was poorly chosen. She doesn’t just make “English rose” personae. It’s a performance that compares more to his brilliantly stimulating and transgressive role in Steve McQueen’s Shame. But critics are allowed to have opinions, no matter how unpleasant, and even to comment on an actor’s image up there on the screen – as long as they are offered in good faith criticism, this as I think Variety magazine. Mulligan is entitled to his opinion too, and critics are not immune to criticism.