The Challenge of Writing Criticism: When It Feels Like Wasting Time
**The Role of Criticism and Personal Experience in Artistic Interpretation: Reflections on Christine Smallwood’s “La Captive”**
In the realm of film criticism and art interpretation, there exists a delicate balance between objective analysis and the deeply personal reactions critics bring into their work. Christine Smallwood’s exploration of Chantal Akerman’s film *La Captive* (2000), as captured in her forthcoming book-length essay of the same name, offers a thoughtful meditation on how this balance shifts amid personal context, motherhood, and the constraints of time.
**Understanding *La Captive*: Proust, Akerman, and Obsession**
*La Captive*, based on Marcel Proust’s fifth volume of *In Search of Lost Time* (1923), tells the story of Simon, a character who attempts to “capture” his lover, Ariane, both physically and psychically. His controlling behavior—tracking her every move, recording her whereabouts—belies an insatiable desire for dominance and understanding, which proves elusive and ultimately unattainable. Akerman’s adaptation merges themes of power, love, and unspoken longings, but it also transfers these ideas into a striking visual and durational experience.
This obsession—the need to capture and possess—takes center stage not only in Simon’s behavior but also in the experience of interpreting the art itself. For Smallwood, the process of writing about *La Captive* during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic mirrored this sense of captivity. The critic herself becomes a captive working within the confines of her home, taking care of two young children, and grappling with the tension between her personal life and the art she is analyzing.
**The Intertwining of Critic and Subject**
Smallwood’s essay offers more than just a close reading of Akerman’s film. It weaves together Akerman’s vision, Proustian themes, and personal reflection to create a compelling narrative about how criticism is inherently subjective. In many ways, this work reckons with how the critic’s personal history, feelings, and circumstances inevitably bleed into their reading of a text. By acknowledging this, Smallwood’s *La Captive* doesn’t just explore Akerman’s film but also reflects the critic’s own preoccupations: motherhood, temporality, and a somewhat impossibly romantic notion of control and harmony within chaos.
While acknowledging the oppressive and abusive aspects of Simon and Ariane’s relationship, Smallwood’s own situation invites a curious reinterpretation of these same dynamics. In one particularly unsettling scene, where Simon asserts dominance over Ariane, Smallwood doesn’t simply condemn the act; she contemplates the unsettling notion that, in moments of tremendous stress or exhaustion, such an ideal of control could represent a kind of “domestic harmony.” By confessing this projection, she underscores the importance of understanding how our own lived experiences—and the constant demands on our time—shape our perspective on even the most disturbing artistic moments.
**The Passage of Time: From Pandemic to Parenthood**
One of the throughlines connecting Smallwood’s reflections to Akerman’s filmmaking is the inexorable passage of time. Lauded for her long takes that force the audience to confront the slowness of life, Akerman’s filmmaking asks viewers to *experience* time rather than just pass it. For some, these durational shots feel like slices of life refined into art. For others, particularly those already pressed for time—mothers with small children, for example—the experience may feel more wasteful or agonizing.
For Smallwood, watching two hours of a film during lockdown meant missing out on two hours with her children. This offers a poignant reflection on how time, particularly during the pandemic, becomes a scarce and intangible resource. The title “La Captive” thus embodies more than just the film’s plot—it captures the critic’s own sense of being held hostage by the march of time, an unwinnable battle every mother or parent knows too well.
Working as an art critic from home, Smallwood compares writing to “pouring time into the sink,” experiencing the loss of precious moments—while her baby continues to grow—all while grappling with a densely theoretical, emotionally charged text. The process becomes just as fraught and illuminating as the film she’s writing about.
**Displacement and Reflection in Criticism**
At the heart of Smallwood’s thesis is the idea of displacement. In much the same way Akerman’s frontal shots place the viewer in a direct confrontation with the subject on the screen, *La Captive* invites the critic to pour her own emotional experience into the gaps left by Akerman’s unedited camera. Akerman’s lack of “reserve shots” doesn’t just deny the luxury of reaction shots or commentary; it demands that the viewer—whether a critic or casual observer—fill those gaps with their own thoughts, experiences, or emotional responses.
Smallwood performs this displacement on both a conscious and subconscious