New York 2014 Review: THE 50 YEAR ARGUMENT Tells A Fiery Tale Of Words

Where to start reviewing a film like The 50 Year Argument? It's a question of approach that surely plagued Martin Scorsese when founding editor Robert B. Silvers first pitched him to tackle the subject of The New York Review of Books, as the magazine approached its 50-year anniversary.

Even contributing writer Margaret Bodde, at the film's NYFF premiere, professed her initial doubts while recounting a New York Review celebration where Scorsese and co-director David Tedeschi - editor of my one of my personal favorite documentaries, No Direction Home, - were lurking in a back room of the gathering, nabbing staff writers one by one for uncharacteristically brief 15 minute interviews. When the writers weren't busy being interviewed by Scorsese, they were quipping to one another about what a documentary about a magazine could possibly look like. 'What is it going to be? Our interviews intercut with voice over recitations of articles?'

As Bodde would learn early into watching the film, The 50 Year Argument is anything but static. From the film's opening frames - a kinetic overture of Manhattan aerial shots borrowed from West Side Story and set to the pace of a whiplash-inducing drum solo from a live Dave Brubeck recording of Take Five - Scorsese finds a way to tell a fast-paced story about a city on fire with revolutionary ideas bouncing off the tall buildings of his introduction like some cosmic metropolitan pinball.

In the wake of the newspaper strike of 1963, Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein seized the lull in news publications by releasing the first issue of The New York Review of Books: a monthly magazine determined to challenge the established medium of book reviews, which they felt was, "blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally." Their manifesto began simply enough - to offer reviews of idea-fueled literature that actually engaged the work's content by taking authors' arguments and running with them, thus joining the thematic discussion and stressing the integral importance of contributing opinion to journalism. Dubious of news that represents the 'we' of conventional wisdom, The Review shone a light on the voice of the 'I.'

This practice of editorializing versus regurgitating popular, top-down, opinion quickly spread beyond book reviews into a vast array of subjects from culture, economics, science and current affairs - you'll notice the typeface features a prominent 'New York Review' followed by a much a smaller 'Of Books.' But regardless of the subject, The Review carries its investigative approach across the board without distinguishing its leniencies as right or left wing. Its goal is not to push a one-sided agenda as much as to see to it that every side of the coin gets its fair shake. Keenly fond of speaking for the oppressed, if the politics of the writing staff had to be generalized into any one persuasion, it is towards civil justice and the essential right to doubt authority. The New York Review exists for the sake of argument.

In the film, Scorsese is wise to use examples such as Joan Didion's timely examination of the nuances concerning The Central Park Five - a group of African American teenagers accused of raping a woman one night in 1989. Where the world was quick to condemn the accused, in what seemed to her a little too much like an open and shut case prematurely based on racist sensitivities, Joan separated herself from the indignant moral backlash at the idea of interracial rape, and become the sole voice of reason in what she perceived as mass-racist, reactionary response. The names of the teenagers were even unceremoniously released to the press so their families could reap the brunt of a city inflamed with rage. That Didion's witch-hunt suspicions were proven correct in 2002, when the Five were proven innocent after serving 13 years of their sentence years, is just one instance exemplifying the importance of the publication's perspicacious philosophy.

The 50 Year Argument thoroughly rehashes issues and contentions of America's recent history by featuring priceless pieces of archival footage. There was the time Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer violently explored issues of misogyny and Manson-ism in a heated defaming debate on the Dick Cavett show. In another interview from 1963, author and New York Review writer, James Baldwin, expresses his homosexual, African-American perspective in a time when his right to merely exist questioned the status-quo. Then, of course, there's The Review's unrelentingly illuminating coverage of controversial wars, always with a tendency to run coverage counter to mainstream press. As far back as Vietnam, the staff were among the first thinkers to raise an eyebrow at the American government. Through Scorsese's exploration of the magazine's treatment of these pivotal events, the film is as much a documentary on the themes that drove the last half century of both national and international culture, as much as the publication itself, so in tune with the world's pulse.

Some critics have accused the film of squandering away a valuable discussion of the magazine's aftermath, vis-a-vis the evolution of the editorial and the opinion-heavy Internet world we've come to inhabit. No doubt that's a worthy discussion, and I'm sure Scorsese would encourage anyone to explore it in the same fashion as The New York Review would engage its own subjects, but like No Direction Home has no interest in telling the story of Bob Dylan beyond 1966, this film accurately getting at the essence of this revolutionary publication is more than enough. At the heart of both No Direction Home and The 50 Year Argument is Scorsese's fascination with characters that have the balls to challenge popular opinion and champion personal instincts in their respective quests for justice and truth. These are the living heroes that interest Scorsese and he knows how to tell their stories with understanding, admiration, and respect. Now, because of institutions like The Review, anyone is free to explore the aftermath.

In a TIFF review some weeks back, I quoted David Steinberg, who offered that "critics are like a eunuch at an orgy." In pertaining to reviews of fiction and literature, and probably in his case, television, it's not hard to imagine where he's coming from. Without a passion for the medium of their subjects, some critics offer nothing. Criticism, at its best, as exemplified by The New York Review, is a celebration of works with the audacity to communicate something real, doing justice to the author's themes by engaging the heart of the argument. This doesn't mean reviews need be robotically positive, but that a worthy theme deserves nothing less than representative exploration. The New York Review is an invaluable example of the best the art of criticism has to offer, and it's easy to detect in every moment of The 50 Year Argument that Scorsese's passion for the material pertains to passion itself. How do you make a film about writing articles? Start with the fire!