As I learned, friendship with Kael was a precarious proposition. Brilliant, charming, and scandalously funny, especially when she dished celebrity gossip (her favorite word was whore), she could be even more dismissive in person than she was on the page. That meant that if you didn't agree with her often enough, she didn't want you around. Before long, I didn't, and we parted ways. But I always felt that in our very inability to get along, I'd absorbed the ultimate lesson of her critical vision: Say whatever you think, the consequences be damned.

It's fitting, in a sad way, that a world without Pauline Kael may now be a world without movies worthy of the reverence she brought to reviewing. How would she have appraised the summer of 2001? Probably not highly. Then again, the essence of Pauline is that she never stopped surprising you, or herself. She'd love what you predicted she'd hate, and vice versa. Even when you violently disagreed with her, she brought you closer to the experience of watching a movie, closer to the connection between movies and life, than all of the reviewers you agreed with. That's not just a critic; that's an artist—a true voice. Kael's was forceful, and beautiful, enough to linger.

Originally posted Sep 14, 2001 Published in issue #614 Sep 14, 2001 Order article reprints
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