I don’t get it.

And now, six features into James Gray’s directing career, I think I am done apologizing for it.

My experience of Gray’s films has been, consistently, “great acting… why doesn’t the story work?”

And yet, some of the smartest critics I know are true devotees of everything Gray does. They must be hip to something that I am not seeing, right?

Where I see a 1930s/40s backlot jungle movie, they see a lush, elegant dip into the profoundly exotic.

I see Charlie Hunnam as I have usually seen him (a serviceable, professional, hunk actor) out of his depth, not offering the emotional range that this character demands. They see him making a breakthrough performance of great depth.

Where they see restraint and subtext in the inaction of Gray’s work, I see a puzzle that simply doesn’t interest me.

I think the reason that Joaquin Phoenix has been so critical to Gray’s work is that he brings the kink that Gray just isn’t interested in bringing… even though his films are all about passion. The way Spielberg hits the wall when it comes to sex or Fincher hits the wall when it comes to heartfelt emotion, Gray is drawn to big emotions underlying his work, but then seems to make every effort to keep it under restraint.

Perhaps Gray is the great tantric filmmaker and I am just the heathen who wants to have the emotional explosion every time.

Or, as Richard Brody of The New Yorker put it: “James Gray’s films are the public trace of a secret doctrine: don’t follow the words, follow the music; don’t believe your eyes, believe your heart. He’s a devoted, meticulous, fanatical realist whose clear, tough, physical dramas sublimate themselves into undertones and overtones, murmurs and intimations, reminiscences and dreams.”

Yeah. That makes sense. And it bores the crap out of me.

Really, my thoughts about why so many critics revel in Gray’s work is that they are deeply moved by the withholding nature of Gray. Ironically, the only James Gray movie to gross as much as $4 million domestically is the one movie critics hated, We Own The Night. Ironically, this is also the second-lowest grossing Mark Wahlberg movie of the last decade (20 films).

I think they like that the emotion is (mostly) secret. I think they feel he is, somehow, a feminist, in that his women suffer in a more realistic way than in most “Hollywood” movies (but suffer they do). I think they prefer emotional restraint on the paint drying level to scenery chewing (or their idea of what that means).

My decades of film obsessing has included many directors with whom I didn’t connect early on only to fall head over heels a few films later. I am thrilled when it snaps in. Peter Weir, Danny Boyle, Lars von Trier, Robert Altman, Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Iñárritu, Baz Luhrmann, Haneke and Mike Leigh are amongst the filmmakers that took time for me to make a strong connection… to understand what they were up to and to fully appreciate it. There is usually one film that, finally, connects, and sends me off to reconsider all the other work I had seen and have not connected with before that moment. I am glad to say that only one filmmaker on that list is no longer with us and I now joyously anticipate every new work from each of the others, resilient even after disappointments.

But I don’t think this is ever going to happen for me and James Gray.

I think his fans in the critical community are right, really. What disconnects for me in every film, it seems, is what turns them on about his work. And thus, I have to assume that this thing – genius or defect – is deeply embedded in Mr. Gray. I just don’t like that flavor.

It would be perverse, in a way, to wish for James Gray to make a movie I loved. (And keep in mind, in spite of not connecting, I respect the work he gets from actors and completely understand why they want to work with the guy.) If he made a movie I loved, he would have failed himself.

It’s not fun being the stick in the mud who won’t go there with a guy that so many colleagues love. I don’t take pride in raging against the work. Given the commercial insignificance of Gray’s work, hating on his work is like pulling wings off a fly. The whole thing makes one feel like a vulgarian, however irrational that is in context.

I still hate The Immigrant (great performance by Cotillard… but what a mess) and will scoff every time I hear or read a critic talking about it as an overlooked masterpiece. The Lost City of Z belongs in conversation with Apocalypse Now or Herzog’s jungle work like Trump belongs on Mount Rushmore. Give me The Mosquito Coast on white men trying to figure out their place on the planet every time.

But… I am taking the James Gray chip off my shoulder. I’m sure he’s a great guy and would be a wonderful thinker with whom to spend a four-hour dinner. No need to be frustrated about how some see his work or being emphatic about taking shots at the work.

Like mushrooms, I will keep trying them with an open mind every couple of years, not really expecting my palette to change, but hopeful, as I am missing out on something that so many others love. And if my tastes don’t change… just order something else. Not so bad.

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