On Monday we watched City of Gold (2015), a documentary about the work of L.A. Times food critic Jonathan Gold — though it is as much about the City of the title as it is about the Gold.

As a documentary it is relatively unremarkable — shots of talking heads and laptop keyboards are the order of the day — but for a food-related documentary there is surprisingly little food porn. Instead, the filmmakers use Gold’s words to describe most of the food mentioned in the film, which serves as both an interesting filmmaking technique and a beautiful exhibition of Gold’s writing.

I wasn’t familiar with Gold’s work before watching the film, but now that I am I really appreciate his experiential writing style. He doesn’t just describe the food he eats, he paints a full picture of the context and culture in which the food is experienced, because going to a restaurant excites many more senses than just taste. Particularly in a large and multicultural city like Los Angeles, going to a restaurant is a little like visiting another country and experiencing its culture — or, at least, how that culture mixes and interacts with America — and Gold attempts to usher his readers through that experience on the page.

At one stage of the film Gold refers to himself as not so much a food critic as a “chronicler of Los Angeles”, which I think is an apt description and something that any food critic should aspire to be for their city.

I was particularly surprised to learn that Gold visits a restaurant four or five times before reviewing it — and, he says, up to 17 times if he’s unfamiliar with the cuisine being served. This fact really blew my mind, because I would assume most film/theatre critics only watch something once before they write their review. I wonder what effect it would have on film criticism if it was common practice for critics to watch a film five times before reviewing it?

In Wednesday’s class we read five different reviews of Edward Scissorhands (1990), which ran the gamut from simple plot summary to sophisticated critical analysis. It was fascinating to read critics with such different styles discuss a single film, because seeing them all side by side helped us identify differences in tone, style and language. Of the five we read, I most preferred to read the critics like Paul Harris and Adrian Martin, who had depth and critical rigour in their analysis but didn’t get too far into academic or pointlessly florid language.