He was wrong, apart from the "without the intellect" bit.
Geoffrey Wright has the honour of making the same mistake Tolstoy did, in the war bits of "War and Peace". Tolstoy wanted to show a number of things about war: that it was confusing, that it was governed, for the most part, by sheer contingency, that the tedious to-and-fro muddle on the battlefield bore little relation to the clean strategies of the generals, etc. So he produced muddled, tedious, random, repetitive DESCRIPTIONS of battle. No doubt he conveyed exactly what he wanted to convey. But it was still bad art. ("Anna Karenina" is "War and Peace" without the war, and hence a much better book.)
Wright wants us to show us that a neo-Nazi skinhead's life is an unmotivated shambles. So what kind of film did he make? You guessed it. Tolstoy was a good enough writer to write well in spite of himself, but Wright isn't a good enough film-maker; all he can do is make a competent, dismal film that seemed impressive in its day because it was "unflinching" - as if that's a virtue.
Geoffrey Wright has the honour of making the same mistake Tolstoy did, in the war bits of "War and Peace". Tolstoy wanted to show a number of things about war: that it was confusing, that it was governed, for the most part, by sheer contingency, that the tedious to-and-fro muddle on the battlefield bore little relation to the clean strategies of the generals, etc. So he produced muddled, tedious, random, repetitive DESCRIPTIONS of battle. No doubt he conveyed exactly what he wanted to convey. But it was still bad art. ("Anna Karenina" is "War and Peace" without the war, and hence a much better book.)
Wright wants us to show us that a neo-Nazi skinhead's life is an unmotivated shambles. So what kind of film did he make? You guessed it. Tolstoy was a good enough writer to write well in spite of himself, but Wright isn't a good enough film-maker; all he can do is make a competent, dismal film that seemed impressive in its day because it was "unflinching" - as if that's a virtue.