Book Review - The Film Club: A Memoir
May 23rd, 2008 by jeremy
Book twenty-one in 52 books in 52 weeks
In this memoir, a former film critic and novelist David Gilmour, makes the decision to allow his teenage son, Jesse, to leave school in the tenth grade as long as he promises to watch nd discuss three movies a week with his father. Jesse is quickly doing worse every week in school and Gilmour decides ths drastic measure might help.
He’s determined not to force Jesse to make a decision either way, and is a little frightened when his son gives up on a formal education. It all happens very quickly, without Gilmour explaining his thought behind the decision. It just kind of happens, and they jump right into the film club. Gilmour begins with The 400 Blows and then shows Jesse Basic Instinct just so he doesn’t lose interest right away. He usually tries to give a brief introduction to each movie, and picks one or two things for Jesse to watch for so they can talk about it.
But the book isn’t as much about this movie club as it is about Jesse going through late childhood. It talks about his girl problems, problems with drugs and alcohol, and the various jobs that don’t seem to be going anywhere. I would have rather heard more about the film choices and why Gilmour picked each one, but this becomes almost an afterthought as instead the focus turns to the horrible choices Jesse seems to make about every girl and ounce of cocaine he meets.
He divides their movie watching into units, and we get sections on undiscovered talent like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, to guilty pleasures like Ishtar, to stillness represented by High Noon. When he’s discussing these films and why he chose them to help his son is when I enjoyed the book the most. I wish there would have been more discussion, and maybe more of his son’s point of view on each film. It is an interesting book, it just seems to lose focus a bit toward the middle, and never seems to get it back.
Grade C+
More of my reviews in 52 weeks
Other people doing 52 books in 2 weeks
Heliologue reviews A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil
Jamie reviews Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
[…] blogger who, unlike me, wanted more film […]