The Real Beale

While reading a review for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas on iTunes, I came across a review which simply said:

“bad and depressing

to be honest the whole movie is made for sorry people but is however depressing DEPRESSING DO NOT BUY”

Ignore the bad grammar and reference to “sorry people”, which I assume is either what they see as sad people or the target audience of drama films. The first thing that came in to my mind was “so a film can’t be depressing?”, my natural defences kicking in there. But then I thought is this person shallow (they can only like films which aren’t “depressing”) or just nitpicking (maybe they want to hate it, or they have a suited taste which convinces them that a depressing film can’t be good). I know I’m making too much of a fuss about this, but I can’t help but get down my opinions on these kind of people. And I know that not everyone has to appreciate good cinema, not everyone has to enjoy movies, and a lot of people don’t; the idea of it bores them, they just can’t enjoy watching a movie. But does this automatically mean that their opinions can be dismissed because of their personality? Surely that anything they have to offer is a different perspective and a different approach to the movie. Again this brings me back to my first point, that a film doesn’t have to be jolly to be good, in fact a lot of the greatest films include depressing scenes. It’s for effect, to provoke audience emotions, to get them to question what they’d do, how their lives are/would be affected by this etc. I seem to have answered myself here, that this person is shallow, that they cannot understand that a film can mean something to someone usually via prodding at their emotions. And funnily enough, a podcast I’m listening to has just reminded me, film buffs always think they know better. This is exactly what I’m doing here, taking the higher ground, writing as the almighty figure over this iTunes reviewer. This must be very boring to read, I’m basically talking to myself, going round in circles.

So, to conclude this long pointless post, they are niether shallow nor picky, those are opinions, they are simply being themselves.

Big woop.