The winners of this year's National Magazine Awards will be announced tomorrow, and here's hoping that Stuart Klawans is one of them. His nomination (in the "reviews and criticism" category) is his first since he began reviewing movies for The Nation in 1988, which I can only assume is an 18-year oversight, since he's the best film critic in America. Disagree? Here's a taste of the three reviews he was nominated for. On The Departed:
Here's something of the mood that Martin Scorsese invented: The Rolling Stones churn and rumble and keen on the soundtrack as the camera cruises like a vintage Chevy into a low-ceilinged urban storefront. You take in all at once an atmosphere of shadows, tribalism and menace; you sense the directorial momentum, as if the engine that drove you inside had been left running.
On Volver:
Of course, any dramatist can bring out a knife in act one. But once the knife has been used, it takes an Almodóvar to blend realism instantaneously into melodrama, and melodrama into a moment of comic relief that’s cutting in its own right.
On Borat:
Borat is the movie of the year, the picture that makes all other films irrelevant. Do I like it? In my office as cinematic guinea pig of the American left, do I approve? Yes, but so what? I look upon Borat in awe, as I would gape at the sublimity of a tidal wave sweeping everything before it. Public solemnity? Obliterated. Displays of craftsmanship? Drowned. Respect for any authority, any institution, any individual (other than an impecunious Alabama call girl)? You've got to be joking. Mere anarchy is loosed, and its name (bless him!) is Borat.
Klawans is up against some tough competition: non–film writers at The Atlantic, GQ, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. I may be biased—I've been lucky enough to know him personally since my days at The Nation in the '90s—but the guy deserves to win. Either way, isn't it time David Remnick put David Denby or Anthony Lane out to pasture and gave Klawans the critical catbird seat?
POSTSCRIPT: He won! Justice is served.
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