Dread crawls about my person as I open the communication from the vile oaf at Screen Idle. As ever it is a demand to subject myself from the latest cinematic effluent expelled from the bowel of Hollywood.
Blade Runner 2049. Some form of ice skating drivel, I expect. God, how I long for the days when a critic would be called upon to offer opinion on the latest Alan Bennet, Colin Davis, or even Iris Murdoch.
But no, such is my lot that I am condemned to mix with the sort of people who wear poorly made sportswear at all times and believe that attaching unwieldly pieces of plastic to one’s automobile is an admirable activity
Thus, I find myself squeezed into a torturous seat next to a man who smells faintly of animal eating his own body-weight in chocolate raisins and boasting of his travails in a toilet cubicle at ‘Dukes’ with a young woman of dubious hygiene and reputation.
There follows a variety of commercials that appear to suggest if I purchase products I will engage in sexual intercourse, develop a meaningful friendship with an old person and, seemingly, become an eagle.
The film begins, it is a vacuous blend of colour and noise. People either shout at each other or mumble at each other. Everyone is perpetually cross with everyone else. Something explodes and then the whole thing stops.
The man next to me is still eating chocolate raisins.
I make no judgement as to the quality of the picture as, in order to drown out the hideous cacophony I replay Klemperer’s sublime Fidelio in my imagination.
Star rating
Star ratings are reductive and an insult to my profession
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