Here’s a funny coincidence. A friend and I were discussing whether my review of A Mighty Heart should have completely avoided any reference to the baggage that Angelina Jolie brings to this film via her offscreen persona, including whether my review should have avoided even the slightest allusion to the celebrity gossip surrounding her. (I think I refrained from getting bogged down in that, but I didn’t think I could avoid mentioning it entirely.) As we were discussing this, I vaguely remembered that Roger Ebert had referred to Jolie’s offscreen persona in his review of Beyond Borders (2003). And so I went and dug up Ebert’s review of that film. And look at these opening sentences:
“Beyond Borders” has good intentions and wants to call attention to the plight of refugees, but what a clueless vulgarization it makes of its worthy motives. Of course there’s more than one way to send a message, and maybe this movie will affect audiences that wouldn’t see or understand a more truthful portrait of refugees, like Michael Winterbottom’s recent “In This World.” The movie stars Angelina Jolie, who is personally involved in efforts to help refugees and isn’t simply dining out on a fashionable cause. . . .
I thought it was funny to see Jolie and Winterbottom juxtaposed — indeed, contrasted — like that, a few years before they got around to working together on A Mighty Heart. Did Ebert’s review give them ideas? Did he play some part in bringing them together?
At any rate, it is certainly an interesting question, whether an actor’s non-actorly pursuits ought to be taken into account when one is writing a film review — either to hold back one’s criticism, as in the case of Ebert’s Beyond Borders review, or to hold back one’s praise, as in the case of my A Mighty Heart review. Should the same standard apply to both reviews, or is there something about holding back criticism that is more-worthy or less-worthy than holding back praise? Is there a double standard, as it were?
Incidentally, I also mentioned Jolie’s offscreen persona a couple years ago in my review of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), but again, I hardly think I could have avoided mentioning it at all:
At this point, moviegoers may recall that Pitt himself saw his marriage (to Jennifer Aniston) come to an end after five or six years together while he was making this movie, and that there has been much media speculation about the reasons for this. Suffice to say that such gossip has no place here; for me, at least, it was quite easy to forget about all that, once the story gets going. Indeed, the only other time I found myself thinking about the movie stars’ real-life personae, it was during a scene in which the Smiths attend a neighbor’s party, and one of the women hands a baby over to Jane, leaving her to look rather uncomfortable as she holds the child at an awkward arm’s length. The ironic humor here, of course, comes from the fact that Jolie’s fondness for children is a huge part of her offscreen image.
To judge from the way that paragraph was written, it would seem I wrote that review at a time when Pitt and Jolie were still officially denying any romantic involvement. Would I have written the review differently if they had fessed up? Who knows.
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