Someone advised me to watch El crítico, a documentary about Carlos Bayer, whom Juan José Campanello sends (in the film) to his sister, only to end up asking, with typical Argentinian sarcasm, who Bayer is. In this part of the world, there are many people who can ask the same thing without sarcasm, but in the world of Spanish cinema, Bayero is (or was) a famous character thanks to his direct and relaxed style, which allowed him to stand on the pages of major newspapers (first El Mundo, later El País) as representative of a viewer who is fed up with almost everything that is not American cinema and despises films by intellectuals, feminists, Iranians or Koreans (and Pikemen, to some extent).judging by Campanella’s statements). But Bayer doesn’t like Spanish directors. Especially to Almodovar, whom he dedicated to shooting, but also to those who signed a letter asking the newspaper not to send him to cover the festivals anymore after Bayero admitted that in Berlin he managed to miss half the time. an hour of Kiarostami film.
I’ve never read Bayer, so I can’t comment on his style. But I can tell something from the movie. El crítico (not to be confused with the Argentinian film of the same name with a memorable cameo) is a TV movie that has the problem of being monotonous and dizzying at the same time due to the overabundance of interviews, the brevity of the film’s shots (there’s not even time to read the column titles Bayer) and the need to contrast each statement with another of the opposite meaning. Despite this, it is revealed that Bayero suffered as a child because of his father and priests, that he was lazy in his youth, that he never finished anything, and that he devoted himself to poker, alcohol and drugs (hobbies that never were not completely on the left). Growing up, he became a dinosaur who went through life alone but had some good friends. A dark character who at times does not cease to be good, at 70 he flirts with retirement and suicide, lamenting the decline of a profession that, in truth, was for the few: that of the chronicler, who, upholding only his criteria, is isolated from industry and academia, he stirred passions and influenced the box office, while year after year he toured the big festivals, where per diems allowed him to stay in the best hotels and eat in the best restaurants.
How can you not be a little jealous of a guy who brags that he doesn’t know what the Internet is, but knows how to read, in addition to food and travel? How can you not pity him for stumbling into old age, conveying a sense of hangover that matches the false glamor and drudgery of routine work? Still, I believe that, with his obvious flaws, Bayer has performed a saving grace that doesn’t require you to be a thinker, just to have a little grace. Insolence in the face of what is considered respectable is a little disempowering to the reader, a victim of the conditioned and mediocre film culture reproduced by the media. Bayero was able to demand satisfaction, at least the satisfaction of not having to honor Almodóvar. This is already something.
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