Lane's memory of a life spent down at the movies

nobody's perfect by anthony lane(picador, (pounds) 15.99)

WHEN Pauline Kael, indubitably the finest critic the movies have ever had, finally retired from the New Yorker in 1991 the choice of Anthony Lane as her successor was as surprising as that of Vivien Leigh to play Scarlet O'Hara. No-one was more astonished than Lane who likens himself to William Boot, the hapless hero of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, who, as gardening correspondent of the Daily Beast, was mistakenly plucked from the dung heap and sent to cover a civil war in Africa. Of course, it could have turned out disastrously - as did a few of Tina Brown's appointments - but it hasn't. Almost 10 years on, Lane has no need to apologise for his good fortune. In a menagerie of Gilbraltarian apes, he is Godzilla.

Nobody's Perfect is, as he says, "a hunk of old journalism" running to some 750 pages, around half of which consists of movie reviews. The rest comprises book reviews and profiles, including a 75th birthday paean to the New Yorker, which shows that he has truly arrived. As a book reviewer Lane is always interesting, sometimes inspired, but he does not seem as relaxed and as easy with his subject as he is when at the movies.

He kicks off with Indecent Proposal, in which Robert Redford attempts to buy a night with Demi Moore's body for a million bucks. If you liked this movie, you must have a mind like Moore's. As Lane concludes: "Everything that Indecent Proposal touches, it sullies." It was movies such as this that made Kael take her stilettos to the charity shop. Lane, however, is eager to downplay thoughts of declining standards. It was always the case, he argues. Yet he detects a creeping tiredness, an insatiable desire for thrills which he thinks may have "bled" from video games, in which the gaps between heightened action - "the firefight, the kickbox, the heat of the chase" - become shorter and less memorable.

Lane's sympathies may lie with the Woody Allens of the world but, like Kael, he is not averse to vulgarity. Like her he has his best fun when on the offensive. When, in Notting Hill, Hugh Grant accompanies Julia Roberts to a movie premiere, Lane notes that Grant wears "the expression of a man who would rather be at home with a bowl of cereal." Braveheart is his bte noir, whining predictably about the twisting of history while continually, and prematurely, confusing the English and the British. In a movie full of amazing things, the most amazing, Lane says, is "the sound of Mel Gibson speaking Latin."

No less gobsmacking is the performance of Billy Connolly in Mrs Brown. Connolly founded his act (years ahead of Seinfeld, Lane reminds the old lady in Dubuque, The New Yorker's target reader) on unnoticed details: "before Connolly, nobody had ever inquired out loud why all deposits of human vomit contained diced carrots." It is little things like this which fixate Lane, who seems to hold the whole canon of cinema in his head, reminding us that movies, like novels, have an honourable and explorable past, in which the masters of the genre - Hitchcock, Huston, Welles, Wilder et al - deserve their critical dues.

The eight years covered in Nobody's Perfect track the rise of Quentin Tarantino, Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, he says, "is awfully close to a masterpiece") and Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave - "a smart, new shocker" - is reviewed but not Trainspotting), and keeps pace with Spielberg, Scorsese, Ridley Scott and others. Time will winnow the wheat from the chaff but it won't diminish the pleasure of Lane's reviews. Though he claims adoration of New York, he continues to live in London, having crossed the Atlantic around 150 times in the past decade, "without once daring to try the curried beef." He prefers to watch movies in a cinema with other ordinary movie goers. It is not an admission you will hear from many critics. Then again, they do not experience the quality of editing Lane receives at the New Yorker where fact checkers carry his reviews to screenings to check he has quoted accurately. Where do you queue to get a job like that?

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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