That's, like... your opinion

So I was ready to come write this, topic chosen, inspiration at the ready, when I open my laptop and my Gmail loads with a message warning me about a new login to my account. I flip. I change my password, go through all the security checkups, this takes me all of 30 minutes. In the end, the message that loaded was from three days ago when I went to the internet cafe to print my kids' homework. FML.

Anyway, can we talk? Can we maybe come to a certain realization that we cannot mix up opinion with fact? When I told my 6th grade students about the just then coined term "alternative facts" from camp carrot face, they responded as I expected. They cocked their heads quizzically and asked "Isn't that... not even a thing?"

There is still no such thing as an alternative fact, and no such thing as a factual opinion. -A thesis. A very short one.

So look, I took film appreciation lessons in college. Our teacher, a film erudite from Argentina with stringy blonde hair and a voice that sounded like it had come to accept the fact that it would never fully convey the complexities of the mind it spoke from, would sit with a lit cigarrette and get caught in the lovingly languid parsimony of praising Fellini or German Impressionism and let the ash reach the butt before absent-mindedly putting it out on a soda can or whatever other makeshift ashtray she had at hand. She made me understand that even the things I couldn't yet understand about film at that time didn't give me the right to fling shit at her marble arches and pillars of creative expression. 

So I sat through Eraserhead, Plaff!, the original Breathless, Nosferatu, Amarcord and Dr. Calligary's Cabinet, among others, often wondering what made them great, but never trusting any initial knee-jerk reaction I might have had that maybe they weren't "all that". And seeing them through the lens of age, contrast with many other films I saw through many more years, sharpened sensitivities, and just plain discussion and willingness to learn, I eventually did learn to savor good film the way I still haven't learned to appreciate fine wine... but since that's the go-to analogy, let's go with that.

So, when you want to say a film like... saaaay... Roma... is "not even that good", just remember that maybe, just maybe, there is a set of intrinsic qualities to the art of film making you just... haven't learned to appreciate. Maybe you don't want to. And that's fine, there is no shame in that. But just realize that art does have critical appreciation guidelines. Maybe cinema is not really about art for you, just entertainment. Maybe you like your plots exposed and linear, that's cool. 

Just... remember that not knowing what makes art good can make you say all kinds of iffy things. Someone who doesn't know how to appreciate cubism could say Picasso just made "nonsense squiggly pictures that a preschooler could make", or someone who doesn't know the first thing about painting can say "anyone can paint like Van Gogh, they sell the kits and they're super easy to follow".

It's your opinion. It's VALID because it's yours. Don't make it truth, doe.