I can’t help it. I know it’s trivial. I know that it’s mean. I know it doesn’t matter. I’m not sure if I have a natural inclination toward literary criticism or if I have some sort of syndrome. Like Can’t-Help-But-Make-Fun-of-Nicki-Esqudero-No-Matter-How-Much-It- Makes-You-Look-Like-An-Ass Syndrome. I just don’t know.

It hit me at the first sentence of the third paragraph that I would have to write this. “He and his girlfriend-turned-wife, performance artist Yoko Ono, worked together to promote awareness about the possibility of peace…” I know it’s awful. I know that it’s nit picky. But first of all “girlfriend-turned-wife” is quite a phrase. What a strange turn of events! A man’s girlfriend becoming his wife. How odd! Second, EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS THAT. All you need, if not a clue, is, besides love, VH1.

Okay, wait, we have to start over. Let’s go through this word by word, poo by poo. The introductory paragraph, though not making me want to read further, is not god awful. Though I can’t help but want to make fun of Esqudero for downplaying Lennon and the Beatles to, “oh, I’ve heard of them,” it’s whatever.

The second paragraph, in which she points out that Lennon was British, though largely correct, because Lennon was British, also lived in New York, and besides all that, everyone knew who he was. The last sentence of the paragraph, “As a result, he was watched closely for being a possible conspirator against U.S. government,” is a bit of misnomer. He wasn’t watched because he was a protester. He was watched by everybody. If you saw him, you were like, “Hey, there’s John Lennon.” Well, he was monitored by the U.S. government, hence the title of the film, but Esqudero seems to suggest that Lennon being an objector to the Viet Nam war would necessitate his being scrutinized. Which of course is not as natural as Esqudero suggests, but rather the beginning of what the federal government now does as commonly as checking the stock market: violating the dude’s human rights.

So then we get to the paragraph introducing Yoko Ono, which I can’t help thinking, despite being infinitely more interesting than John Lennon, Esqudero had never heard of until her image popped up on the Harkins theater screen. (Hey, she’s in Scottsdale.)

So this is where it gets really good. “The film is pure documentary, but the film is artfully done.” As if to suggest that documentaries are dull, and not art. “…the transitions between scenes are interesting because the filmmakers use fades and montages throughout, making it stand apart from the average documentary.” In other words, “the filmmakers used standard editing techniques to make this film stand apart from the movies I was forced to watch in grade school. I’ve never seen a documentary, but they are boring. They better make this dinosaur relevant to my life or I’m going to get on the internet and copy and paste some shit and shine this one on.”

Am I reading too much into Esqudero’s prose?

The next paragraph is more of the same unbelievably obvious stuff about the Beatles music making up the soundtrack and why it adds to the film. Esqudero of course does not ask how much the music cost to put in the film or who had to be paid. That might’ve been sort of interesting.

“The film also touches on U.S political corruption…” Though I haven’t seen the film, this has to be largely what the film is about. “And the Black Panther movement, and the people interviewed are some of the biggest names from the time.” [“Or I assume so, as I have no idea who they are.”] “All this is very entertaining to watch [because if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been made into a movie] and it’s especially relevant today [duh], comparing it [‘it’ is referring to what? The movie?] to the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and musicians like Kanye West and Green Day.[people I’ve actually heard of] And you don’t have to be a baby boomer to appreciate its message. (I can’t help but notice that Gen-Y in the first sentence is capitalized, while Baby Boomer is not.)

Why would a “baby boomer” care about its message? They were there. They know what happened. Also, if it’s a documentary, the idea is that it doesn’t have a message. It has a subject and a bias. It creates a narrative from the footage. That’s it.

Of course this is really a jab at the Flag Live, rather than this one author.

And though it’s not very relevant, I think it’s great that Movies at the Mall in their last months are picking up these documentaries that Esqudero won’t see, like Who Killed the Electric Car and America: From Freedom to Fascism. It’s a good way to go out. Movies at the Mall, and this critique.