nationbooksprojectofnation
large_book

Buy It Online
    Amazon >
    IndieBound.org >
    Powells.com >

Left in the Dark

Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001



Stuart Klawans
January 2002     ISBN: 1560253657


Critic Stuart Klawans has covered the movie scene from Hoop Dreams (loved it) to Gladiator (hated it) and from Lone Star (hated it) to Unforgiven (loved it). A friend of independent filmmaking (but not of its pretensions), an enemy of big-budget productions (except when they're entertaining), Klawans doesn't forget that each of us needs some joy in the dark.

Here is the best of his funny, sharp and revelatory film writing for The Nation, and a selection of reviews and essays from The New York Times, The Village Voice, Film Comment and other journals. Klawans explains how to approach a masterpiece by Abbas Kiarostami as if it were a strange dog; why David Lynch would disappoint a visiting Martian; and what The Rage: Carrie 2 tells us about rage and Carrie. All this, plus insight into the quieter refinements of Moulin Rouge, the correct Talmudic interpretation of Natural Born Killers and the reasons why they were never wrong, the Old Masters (Renoir, Dreyer, Semb�ne and early 1930s Warner Brothers). Informing all of these pieces is Klawans's advocacy of "real imagination," which flourishes on the border between fiction and documentary.

What readers are saying

"The genuine heir to James Agee and Manny Farber: someone who can mix political and aesthetic analysis with a lightness, sanity, humor, indignation, and elegant prose style that is dazzling to read."
--Phillip Lopate, Cineaste

"Watching a movie with Left in the Dark as your guide is like suddenly being able to truly distinguish the light from the darkness up there on the screen."
--Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky

"Klawans is funny, sharp, wise, sane, learned, humane, passionate, often profound, occasionally flippant, sometimes angry, and a literary stylist of the first water. He is also a movie critic. The combination is dangerous."
--Luc Sante

About the Authors

Stuart Klawans began writing film reviews for The Nation in 1988. His book Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order was a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Awards.



Watch the video from our past conversations, interviews and events. Includes items from The Nation Institute and TomDispatch. Click here.



Follow us on twitter at @nationbooks or @nationinstitute



Become a fan of Nation Books on Facebook

signup

for our FREE e-mail newsletter, a monthly dispatch of events, excerpts, commentary by Nation Books and Nation Institute writers.



Eugene Richards Wins 2010 World Press Photo of the Year Award

April 23 - January 16 | Exhibition around the world
Institute Fellow and award-winning photographer is the winner of the 2010 World Press Photo of the Year contest. Every year following the World Press Photo Contest, the winning images go on tour. The exhibition is officially opened in Amsterdam as part of the award ceremony in April and can be seen at venues around the globe until the next year. The tour program takes in approximately 100 cities in 45 countries and is still expanding.

September 24 - October 5
Fatima Bhutto: Author Tour
(Across the United States)
Please join Fatima Bhutto as she travels from New York to Massachusetts, Oregon and California on an author tour to discuss her new memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword. MORE

October 5 | 7 pm
Herding Donkeys: Howard Dean and Ari Berman on the Future of the Democratic Party
(92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York City)
Nation Institute Fellow Ari Berman talks about his new book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, with former Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean. MORE