Critical Cul-de-Sac

Contemporary film criticism increasingly takes the form of a ceaseless hunt for hidden messages in movies. In addition to producing outlandish interpretations, it is also confusing the role of art in society.

Radical film criticism—from Siegfried Kracauer to André Bazin—was banished to the dustbin of history, dragged down by the decay of the Soviet Union and the rise of cultural fatalism. Today it has reemerged in undead form, as an incessant plumbing of movies for subterranean political meanings.

Reviews are flooding the culture sections of niche and mainstr…