A recurring complaint I've read about this movie (I'm more of a movie girl than a film girl, which made it even stranger I'd enjoy a documentary so much) is that it doesn't spend near enough time of Salinger's work itself. Yet that would defeat a lot of the film's unwavering purpose.
A veritable sea of interpretations and impressions of Salinger's published works exist, it is the enigma of the man that is the question, and some of his writing has taken on such an epic and larger-than-the-author stature that even delving in a little would give this film a much different feel, and not in a good way.
I wonder if even a portion of the reasons that Salinger kept so much so to himself and guarded his privacy so very jealousy had to do with that larger-than-the-author reaction, where so much of one's self could be open to misinterpretation based on your art, just as we see in tabloid press about very famous actors, musicians, aristocrats, the extremely wealthy, and whose persona rather than personalities are what are worshipped or disdained.
Salinger is one of those exceedingly rare artists (Kubrick and Bardot are the only ones that come to mind) that basically said, nah, I'm not playing the game. You get some of my art, the rest is for myself or my descendents to choose what to do with, but you don't get me.
8/10
A veritable sea of interpretations and impressions of Salinger's published works exist, it is the enigma of the man that is the question, and some of his writing has taken on such an epic and larger-than-the-author stature that even delving in a little would give this film a much different feel, and not in a good way.
I wonder if even a portion of the reasons that Salinger kept so much so to himself and guarded his privacy so very jealousy had to do with that larger-than-the-author reaction, where so much of one's self could be open to misinterpretation based on your art, just as we see in tabloid press about very famous actors, musicians, aristocrats, the extremely wealthy, and whose persona rather than personalities are what are worshipped or disdained.
Salinger is one of those exceedingly rare artists (Kubrick and Bardot are the only ones that come to mind) that basically said, nah, I'm not playing the game. You get some of my art, the rest is for myself or my descendents to choose what to do with, but you don't get me.
8/10