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Anthony Lane | |
|---|---|
| Education | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Occupations | Journalist, film critic |
| Partner | Allison Pearson |
| Children | 2 |
Anthony Lane is a British journalist who was afilm critic forThe New Yorker magazine from 1993 to 2024.[1]
Lane attendedSherborne School, graduating with a degree in English fromTrinity College, Cambridge where he also did graduate work onT.S. Eliot. After graduation, he worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer forThe Independent, where he was appointed deputy literary editor in 1989. In 1991, Lane was appointed film critic forThe Independent on Sunday.[2]
In 1993, Lane was asked byThe New Yorker's then-editor,Tina Brown, to join the magazine as a film critic.[3] He has written profiles of actors and directors (Alfred Hitchcock,[4]Buster Keaton,[5]Grace Kelly[6]) and authors (Ian Fleming andPatrick Leigh Fermor) andHergé'sTintin books.[7] Lane has also reviewed books, such asThe Stories of Vladimir Nabokov andThe Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh, two authors he reveres. In 2022, he wrote an essay on the legacy of Eliot'sThe Waste Land for its centenary.[8] He contributes to the magazine's "Critic at Large" section; in 1999, he wrote about"The Endurance": Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, and in 2000 he wrote aboutFull Moon, a collection of lunar photographs at theRose Center For Earth and Space.[9]
A collection of 140 of hisThe New Yorker reviews, essays, and profiles was published in 2002 under the titleNobody's Perfect — a reference to the final line of the 1959 filmSome Like It Hot. A profile of the film's director,Billy Wilder, ends the book.
In his introduction toNobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker, Lane mentions five maxims that "should be obeyed by anyone who, having tried and failed to gain respectable employment, has decided to throw in the sponge and become a movie critic instead":
The explanation for the fifth maxim is a good example of Lane's style:
Lane varies his style based on his subject. His review ofThe Prince of Egypt begins with the movie's slogan: "The power is real. The story is forever. The time is now." and continues in a parody of its clipped style: "The time is then. The place is Egypt. The boy is born. The prognostication is dodgy. The answer is bulrushes. The boy is launched. The boy is found. The adoption process is unimpeded by interference from government agencies. The dad is Pharaoh. The brother is Rameses. The stage is set." He goes on: "The picture is O. K. The picture isfine. Look. The thing is this. The cutting-edge computer-generated imagery is white-hot new. The movie is old-fashioned. The story is forever. The movie is for the holidays. The choice is yours."[10] His review ofEmma andKingpin imagines the characters from the former movie discussing the latter: "The company was far from disinclined to hear more; and Mr. Elton, whose refinement of expression was complemented by a most unsullied cordiality, spoke to them of bowling with ten pins; of the misfortune that was visited upon Mr. Harrelson in the losing of his arm; and of the ardent and uncouth intentions on the part of Mr. William Murray to impede the happiness that was both prized and merited by the heroes of the piece."[11] Referring to the poor use of archaisms inRoland Joffé'sThe Scarlet Letter, he writes "Thou hast to be kidding."[12] His review ofThe Phantom Menace mentions that "the worst marketing ploy I have seen so far is theStar Wars Learning Fun Book, for kids of kindergarten age. ('What is this? It is a Hutt. Say it out loud: Hutt.')The Phantom Menace raises the spectre of an industry where the parasitic arts of buildup and spinoff will outgrow and choke the product itself." Lane concludes: "What is this? Crap. Say it loud: Crap."[13]
Lane recounts episodes from his life as a filmgoer; he writes that film "has revivified the Proustian principle that memory is not ours to command", adding: "It is generally agreed, for example, that the last Golden Age of cinema occurred in the mid-seventies—the epoch ofThe Godfather,Chinatown andMcCabe and Ms. Miller. I feel privileged to have been there; unfortunately, I spent my pocket money on tickets forZeppelin,Earthquake, andRollercoaster (in Sensuround.) I realize thatChinatown is a great picture and thatTheTowering Inferno is dreck; but the sight of a weary, begrimedSteve McQueen is burned into my mind with a fierceness thatJack Nicholson, with his nicked nostril, can never match. I missed the Golden Age; catching up later was an education, but nothing I can do can bring it back."[14]
Lane's style is often allusive; in a profile ofLuis Buñuel, Lane writes that "The great filmmakers, however rare their own appearances in front of the camera, almost always come to resemble their collected works. No one could sit through aHitchcock season, for example, and imagine that its creator was a carefree and sexually contented beanpole.Godard is the mad professor, beloved of his students and nobody else;Howard Hawks is the sly jock with money and girls to burn;Billy Wilder grins like a miniature devil from the margins of a gilded manuscript—the imp who knows too much. Buñuel beats them hollow: that square sawed-off head, the ripe, amusable mouth, the martial breadth of brow and chin. And, most of all, there are the eyes. Hooded above and pinched below, they shimmer with the virtues, or vices in disguise, of the Buñuelian gaze: dignity, lubricity, and doubt. You can easily picture yourself being hypnotized by this man; sit through a sample of his movies, and you will think you have been."[15]
In a piece reviewing recent bestsellers, Lane, paraphrasingKingsley Amis, writes that "the ideal literary diet consists of trash and classics: all that has survived, and all that has no reason to survive—books you can read without thinking, and books you have to read if you want to think at all."[16]
Anthony Lane was awarded the 2001National Magazine Award for Reviews & Criticism, for three of hisNew Yorker articles:
Lane has also been nominated for National Magazine Awards on a number of other occasions, but has never won one. The nominations include:
Nicholas Lezard, reviewing Lane's collectionNobody's Perfect, wrote that "If the film is good art, or a delight, Lane will communicate precisely, concisely and illuminatingly the relevant merits; if the film sucks, he has some fun."[23]Laura Miller, reviewing that collection inThe New York Times, wrote that "Lane writes prose the wayFred Astaire danced; his sentences and paragraphs are a sublime, rhythmic concoction of glide and snap, lightness and sting. Like his belovedJane Austen, his style is infernally contagious." However, she expressed reservations about his use of puns.[24] In 2008, Lane was named one of the top 30 critics in the world byMore Intelligent Life, the web version of the lifestyle publication fromThe Economist.[25] As of 2010, the movie review aggregation website Metacritic weighted Lane's movie reviews higher than any other critic's.[26]
Lane used to live inCambridge, England, with his former partner,Allison Pearson, a British writer and columnist.[27]
