Redefining Cinema
An argument on the side of a welcoming and inclusive view to movies
There’s been talk recently in the world of film about the changes that are going on with the industry. It’s coming from consumers and industry mainstays, but the clear sound that seems to ring out is alarm. They aren’t wrong about it. Change was happening prior to the pandemic which has only now been hastened because of that. In a few years time, film viewing could look incredibly different than how it did a few years ago. The tone and way that these voices are proclaiming the change is in clickbait articles like: “You Should Be Worried About Cinema Becoming Content, and Here’s Why.”
The death of cinema is nothing new. It’s a debate that has been raging for decades. Theatres have been seeing declining numbers for years, prior to the internet, with the advent of television even, but with streaming now, and the ever-growing number of providers of platforms, this cry about a pending fallout continues. Just wait till VR takes off, that’ll surely kill it.
Of course, what these complaints are about isn’t cinema houses, which do factor in, to a certain degree, but to the concept of what movies are and how they are viewed and or seen.
For anyone that hasn’t been keeping up with the debate about cinema’s life support status, the latest arguments from the filmmakers themselves come from Martin Scorsese, who called the superhero faire not real cinema and compared it to an amusement park among other statements. While I respect him for stating that they are not for him, to dismiss them as ‘not cinema’ is entirely combative and rude. By dismissing them as ‘not cinema’ he really is acting as a gate keeper and attempting to raise what he does to the level of godliness and an artform that requires praise (an academy award possibly?) That is the real issue that I take with his statement.
Maybe the reason that I take extra offense to Scorsese’s words has to do with these not being the first time I’ve heard them. The superhero genre has had a long history of being looked down on that only recently has managed to gain traction, and not just superhero genre but comic books at large, granted the number of comic book readers continues to shrink, but by and large, they are more popular than ever before. In much the same way, horror, a genre that I have studied since I was a child, is — while not considered child’s play- still not considered by many as a serious genre and not worthy of respect. Belittling anyone’s preferences like that is asinine and makes you look closeminded.
Now, in response to that interview and article by Scorsese, the cry that cinema must be saved echoed loud and repeatedly. The article, claiming that cinemas are “going extinct unless you act now…,” pointed to a larger problem, one that is societal. I’m right there with them that there are some real problems in society, however I don’t think that the one they point to is one of them. Much as their clickbait title decries, they are concerned that film is becoming just more content. Isn’t that what film has always been?
Film has always been entertainment
I’ll save you from the History of Cinema class lesson but, that’s what it always was. Over one hundred years ago, they had a film just like Avengers: Endgame, except it wasn’t quite as CGI’d as any of the Marvel movies are, nor did it have such a great script, or any script for that matter, or characters. Actually, it was just a train chugging toward the screen.
That spectacle that began with the Lumière Brothers films or the work of Georges Méliès has morphed over the years to match with evolving tastes and complexities but it still remains a draw of cinema houses: that thing you can’t see anywhere else. The novelty will always be what we love about it, but now it has to compete with the fact that screens are everywhere, and film can be viewed however anyone likes and film has evolved into different formats of stories that can advantage them for different audiences. The best thing cinemas have going for them is the thing that has made them so special for so long: the combination of sight and sound on a massive screen with other people.
The magic that the old Lumière films had was novelty in the fact no one had ever seen images recorded like they were. In a similar way, the advent of YouTube was also a novel with the first film being essentially a demonstration of its capabilities. Me at the Zoo was nothing more than Jawed Karim talking about the elephants that are behind him. What followed evolved from clips of funny home videos to discussions, webisodes, and more with better production quality and editing as it went on. Producing the same thing that can be seen on a computer screen online, or on a phone on YouTube means that films in cinema houses must also be appropriately capturing or else they may as well be watched on a phone anywhere at any time.
For those that aren’t aware, there’s an incredible movie that a young up and coming future Academy Award winning director made back in the 70s that changed cinema forever. I think the film was called Jaws if my memory is serving me correctly. It was what gave us the “blockbuster” film. It revitalized movies and kept them going for the next 47 years and set a standard for what movies could be with popularity. The reason behind this was at its core good filmmaking, but what made it cinematic was the scope. It was massive and exciting. This wasn’t anything that could be found on television at the time. If it had been on television at home, would people have found it as impressive on a twenty-five inch screen?
Art versus Entertainment
Film is the strange combination of art in the sense of ‘creation of a thing to behold’ but requires the technicality of science in knowledge, and hard knowledge at that: cameras, lighting, permits, scheduling, lingo, editing technique, costuming, etc. That’s why it’s very often a collaborative process. While it might be noted for the tastes of artistry brought to it, filmmaking is a technical field of entertainment. Good entertainment may be considered art, but to say that what you do is art, seems a bit pretentious, don’t you think?
If that is the case, as some people might claim to be making art and not entertainment. I would like to point to one Stephen King, author. Mr. King, while not exactly known for his prose of flowers, nor having ever been compared to literary gods, is a writer that has found some success. By all accounts, I distinctly remember King accounting about being compared to a “hack” and possibly taking some pride in that fact. Stephen King has been ridiculously prolific and more so has been incredibly successful in crafting popular stories of the past fifty years that have been adapted into multiple media. The reason I bring him up is that he has occasionally written something that has made noted top reading lists, such as Carrie, which makes high school reading list. While King will have his detractors, for Carrie to make high school reading lists, there must be some artistic merit to the work.
My reasoning for bringing this up is because, King isn’t an artist. I don’t feel that he’s the kind of person to step out there and claim that, especially knowing that he does take some pleasure in people hating him for his work. He is a craftsman though and occasionally his work reaches the level of art. Much the same way that film is entertainment that occasionally does the same. None of us are artists. We’re craftsmen that know how to do our jobs damn well and can sometimes make something even better than we would expect or hope for but to call ourselves artists is pompous.
A noted essay entitled “The Decay of Cinema” by Susan Sontag is pointed to as an earlier cry to this rationale.Sontag makes excellent points, many of which are better than those of the more recent variety however her argument is clearly incorrect, insomuch as the fact that others continue to spout that Cinema is dying and in that, Cinephilia is lost. By her belief, there is no way to argue against it. Her held belief that the tastes of movie goers and movie makers largely are against her own and anyone that claims to hold the same beliefs in a narrow selection of films that are “art” is lost because of the system that caters to a different audience views it as not profitable is itself cyclical which is ironic as she points to the 100 years of cinema at the time as being just that.
While holding to the same cinephile view as Sontag did, Scorsese’s arguments about the lost appreciation of cinema holds more to the idea of spreading the taste to the uninitiated, he also believes in redefining what ‘cinema’ is. He points to a period of new forms of creation and experiment in the industry during the 60s and 70s as when that definition formed originally. Is there any way that this was declared? Was it written down at some point or was it just figured out by some hivemind? Much that same way he seems to believe that his personal film idol Fellini deserves to be in this new definition, Sontag limited counted as well.
Daniel Simpson’s video essay also noted that later in 1996, after Sontag’s essay was written, several films released, two of which were adaptations of works of the bard, Shakespeare, as well as that franchise-making sellout-classic: Fargo. While I believe that Fargo is considered by at least some as a modern work of the cinema variety, albeit not obscure or artistic enough, the other two Shakespeare works are worth considering on merits. The first being Hamlet directed by Kenneth Branagh from a script by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh. Overall it did well with critics and received multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Writing for Branagh. The second adaptation, and more interesting one, was Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
It was critically panned at the time of its release for modernizing the setting and visuals while retaining the original language. Over the past twenty-five years this version has become beloved. Much of the praise stems from some of the same sources of contention critics had with it. The modernization of the film was massive. It locations to near Mexico City with the conflict between rival gangs that used guns, wore button shirts and jeans and jewelry and drove cars. As Roger Ebert pointed out it wasn’t the first attempt at modernizing the story, but the fast pace and choices made it entirely different with the original dialogue at times hard to understand. He was not alone, but with time even critics have come to like it. Audiences more recently have complimented the cinematography being exceptionally beautiful and the score as being a collection of great pop hits. Some of this sounds like it’s pop culture faire that doesn’t fit in with the concept of cinema but on the other hand the performances and shooting of the film communicate something brilliant beyond the simple mass appeal material it is accused of. Which is it?
If there is anything that modern cinema can point to as a predecessor, it would be theatre. Shakespeare’s work was lauded by kings and queens as high art, but also by the common people. His work was written with both ends of the audience in mind. For every great dramatic sweep that Hamlet would make to a skull, there was a fart joke or a sex joke. To say then that Shakespeare was a great artist (which as I am not Shakespeare, I feel comfortable in stating that his work that has withstood the weather of time is art and thus makes him an artist) is to say that the work should be accessible AND appealing to everyone.
With that said about appeal, it isn’t easy by any means. Finding anything that everyone might appreciate isn’t easy ever. Often it ends up being a low common denominator, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be great or that it can’t be art.
Now, back to that great Martin Scorsese. I have no issues with Scorsese’s movies. Everyone has their niche. His just happens to be the same gangster film over and over. One of my personal favorites that is actually great is John Carpenter. His films have something clear to say and have the added bonus of telling unique stories every time. Just look at The Thing, Halloween, Prince of Darkness, and Ghosts of Mars. Never mind that they all happen to be horror movies.
Another personal favorite of mine is Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. That thing is incredible unlike that piece of trash “Napoleon Dynamite” which doesn’t even have a single focus of a story. It’s just a proto version of YouTube videos. Based on that assertion, I’d say that Napoleon Dynamite shouldn’t be considered a movie, but then, what about Twilight? That’s pretty awful too by my account. If personal taste is enough to be judge what is and isn’t a movie then The Irishman is torture by way of a nightmarish hellscape with senile men playing fifty-year younger versions of themselves by using de-aging CGI. Oh wait, that was Scorsese, wasn’t it?
Have I made my point?
Movies are entertainment and it’s the viewer that decides what they are, not the maker. Claiming that just because something is not to your taste equates it to trash and doesn’t belong in the cinema plex will quickly make everyone enemies.
Home Box Office
Cinema is film and film is nothing but content, it’s just that we now have new ways to view said content, which don’t involve going to a building with giant screens, unless we really feel like it. And that is okay.
Anyone that’s seen HBO Max knows the odd status that Warner Brothers has put it’s films into. For the past year films from Warner Brothers have thankfully and unfortunately had to compete with themselves due to the distributor’s slate being released on the streaming platform and in theaters, giving audiences the option of how to view them. It’s been a sore spot for box office numbers, but it gets to the source of the problem with film: Is it good enough?
When television entered the scene, the death of Cinema was pronounced imminent. We’re still waiting on that one and if it changes, I’ll let you know. There are similarities between the two mediums that make it understandable why they are competitive.
For a while television was more popular. The medium offered something that film couldn’t. Film came back of course with new technologies that make it even more novel, more exciting, and they had more freedom in content without the stricter limits by the FCC. But with all of that, especially technology, television has improved as well. Cheapened technology has meant that television can match what movies did with cutting edge techniques a few years ago and thus offer comparable experiences from the comfort of the couch with larger screens and better sound systems. The question really becomes then: Why go to the cinemas?
People now have home theatres in their houses. There are the rich that have their own personal cinemas even with the ability to stream new movies the day they come out but living rooms with fifty plus inch 4k televisions with Dolby surround sound are great alternatives to a silver screen as well. It’s also meant that awesome television content is just as big as a movie and sometimes the screen that the theatre has isn’t much bigger than the television you have at home. This has made the content between the cinemas and the home theatres on par and the content is what is compared. From the point of viewers and content creators, this is a good thing. There isn’t any reason anyone should be upset. Unless they’re being selfish. As Scorsese puts it, filmmakers want to have their movies screened in theatres, because that’s true cinema. They might be the only ones that lose out. I don’t see any reason to cry over that. It’s a cyclical problem that can’t be ignored by filmmakers: Audiences want to watch content that they want to see with the limited time that they have. Not everyone lives near a cinema. Cinemas have only so much time to allot to films and only so many screens to show them on. It means that what audiences go see really must be worth it.
For the small independent films, that means it really must be good stuff, like competing-with-the-blockbuster-stuff good. When faced with the decision of going to see something like Requiem for a Dream or Star Wars, someone that has kids or had a lousy week won’t really have to think too hard. On the theater owner’s side, they also need to be earning a profit, as they already barely make a buck on the ticket sales and are relying on the concessions, they’ve got to get the biggest audiences in the seats for films that people really will enjoy over food. That’s generally not the ones that are harder to watch.
Indie films can be good. They can be great. They deserve audiences. One can, but should not watch franchises alone, but that doesn’t mean that films can be entitled to a theater screening in the same breath. This is the part about having two thoughts at once. How do smalls movies get to be in theaters without just getting tossed into every theater at once like those big studio flicks?
Word of mouth
It’s the same way that small movies used to get their growth. Halloween started with a limited number of screens, as did many other now massive films. It can still work, possibly even more effectively with modern communication if given the right way of promotion. The only challenge is finding the right way to distribute and build that hype. As noted in an essay, films such as Call Me By Your Name and The Florida Project both attempted standard limited theatrical releases and then expansions to negative results. While they may have been good films, maybe doing it for the sake of awards recognition is violating the spirit of the act. Only a few years prior, Paranormal Activity had done much of the same thing, going so far as to even have people request for the film to be shown in their market. It is something that can still be done, if you have something people are wanting to actually see in the theaters.
Otherwise, save the extra expense and effort and watch it at home. It’s more relaxing and easier after all.
There is a magic to the movie theater, much like there is the magic that is in live theater performances. No matter how large televisions get, the silver screens of a cinema house will always be bigger and the singular focus that you can experience is unlike what you can get at home. If that’s not something that is being experienced in that designated environment, then it’s a failure on the exhibitor’s part. But the film’s contents must live up to the expectations of the audience to make it worth it for them to choose to go to that special place.
The cinephile content
There is a certain type of film that serves a specific purpose. They aren’t for everyone, in fact they often are for the industry itself. Understanding the film isn’t the point. Experiencing it is the point. It’s the ones where actors completely change their appearances and make themselves suffer for a role. Then they get released right at the end of the year, just to make it in before the cut off for awards so it is fresh in the minds of the voters.
Some of that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not entirely. Take a look at Scorsese. Sixty percent of his films have gotten releases in the last three months of contention for Oscars. That requires some sort of preference or pull to have that sort of odds. For anyone unaware, for a film to qualify for the Oscars it is required to “a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, and play for seven consecutive days…“
It makes sense to make a film that you yourself would want to see. From that standpoint, filmmakers making movies that appeal to the Academy makes sense. Think of The Artist. But then the claim that those types of films are the only films that are cinema is a lot.
The requirements are also a lot. To even get a movie into theaters now still would take some clout. I would imagine the clout of an already successful director would be about right. To then lament the souring of the taste of society and the success of popular movies as not cinema appears to me to be gatekeeping.
What is gatekeeping? Well, normally it’s the act of creating hurdles by those that are accomplished in a field by creating rules that limit others from breaking into a field. In this case it is just limiting the definition.
In a reversal, the ones that are being blocked are major franchises, namely something like Marvel and Disney, and the ones doing the gatekeeping are the art-film filmmakers. Even more bizarre is the fact that these gatekeepers were at one time part of a cohort that made cutting edge films that went against the establishment with things like Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy and The King of Comedy. Now that they have aged into power they’ve decided what isn’t acceptable much the same way that what they used to make was called obscene and offensive. Does a film have to challenge your senses to be cinema? Much the same way that prior to their rise, films winning awards didn’t believe that. Take for instance 1959’s Best Picture winner Ben-Hur, a blockbuster popular film of its time that seems to still be regarded as something great.
A film like Vice which grossed $76 million on a $60 million dollar budget and released on Dec 25th with an unrecognizable Christian Bale clearly wanted to win an award, damn the audience. What is happening now seems to be a cyclical return to another fashion.
To me, it might be that the old guard has lived long enough to see themselves become the villains of the story.
Fashion
Horror is a genre that often gets lambasted for being juvenile and needlessly gory, bloody, disgusting, and shocking. When it’s done wrong, there may be an argument for that, but when right it reveals a lot about society. Anyone that’s studied the genre can attest to that. The popularity of it as a whole moves with the state of the world. In years of bounty, it rises because people want to feel scared. They want the different, but then in times of turmoil, it may take a turn down because looking out the window at the world is all the fear you can handle. It’s also used to express the kinds of fears people have: foreigners, religion, racism, technology, mortality, etc. These topics, while they may never vanish entirely, do trend. Look at the 60s for aliens or the 00s with zombies or the two separate waves of the 80s and 90s with slashers.
Just like the fashion of horror, films have the same waves. Like the AMC post-pandemic pre-film roll with Nichole Kidman, we go to the movies to be challenged, to cry, to cheer, to be comforted. Movies are all these things and to claim that any one of them isn’t film is to deny the nature of film. Just because what you like or make isn’t popular with audiences anymore doesn’t mean anything. It just means that the fashion has changed.
Content
So, content. That’s the word the article says we should all fear.
Maybe I’m biased. I like filling my life with content. Everything is content. Content is a word that means “substance” “a part or element.” We live in a world that is online. In many ways we live at a breakneck pace with an unhinged system that throws content at our faces as much as it can. It’s been that way for years and has only gotten easier and more democratized with the ability for anyone to contribute to the virulent barrage with. This song is all you need to understand it.
One point that might be worth touching on, even if they didn’t clarify it, but I believe would fall into some concerns is the fact that what this democratization as Scorsese pointed to does do in theory is make the random cat video on YouTube compete with The Godfather. I can anecdotally relate as I have a friend that lives on YouTube videos. Watching a movie with them is impossible but watching three hours of random stuff on YouTube is very doable. Their attention span may be shot to hell from ten years of watching content that barely broke fifteen minutes. It also could be that there have always been those that don’t watch movies, or television for that matter, and wouldn’t be watching movies in theaters if they were the only option.
When competing with itself in leveled streaming platforms though, i.e., movies with movies only, the video essay makes a good point. There was a film purchased by Netflix, that was made by Orson Wells but never completed. They finished it and released it and but then failed to advertise it, at least to the standard of the author. I can understand that feeling. I can’t say that I remember it being promoted in any serious way. That in itself it seems to be the problem. How do the channels of release promote these new films? They target the content by algorithm.
With YouTube, this certainly has created a problem where it results in everyone becoming radicalized. I do remember that Pandora did it with me where every channel I created resulted in me listening to the score for Requiem for a Dream, but that isn’t the real problem. When that started happening, I didn’t just stop listening to music. I didn’t become some obsessed Clint Mansell sycophant. I found Spotify. Something else came up. In this case, the free market worked. Algorithms aren’t going to go away. It’s great when we have the option to see what other people say is great, but it’s not like films are made entirely from an A.I. that’s been forced to watch 20,000 hours of other movies. Amazon Prime doesn’t just buy whatever they can get their hands on, even though it sometimes feels like it. Someone at some point thought that what they purchased the rights to would be wanted by someone on their service.
What we consume isn’t limited to what they, the ever-controlling overlords, see fit to give us. We can say no. If we say no enough to the bad Adam Sandler films, he may eventually give us an Uncut Gems, but we have to say no.
Content is only as good as we accept it. At some point we also thought that reality TV, not just some but all of it, was a good idea. Remember cartoons back in the 70s? It will get better when we demand it gets better. These sorts of things are constantly evolving. There is a truth that platforms are looking for more content to stream. There also seems to be no end to more content to come. Not all of it is bad and not all of it is good. Much of what the platforms put out also is new content. While people do want to watch new content, much of what people love is old content too. At some point, that older content will appear if it’s sought after. On the television side, there are the sitcoms that garner massive money like Friends or Community, but people are demanding those properties because they are easy to consume. Are the films of the cinephile as easy to watch? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Then what?
There is also the possibility that the Orson Wells film just wasn’t good. Not all old films are, and maybe not all Orson Wells films are Citizen Kanes. Is everything by Martin Scorsese great? John Carpenter and James Wan are my favorite directors but I can certainly point to their bad films and call them out. I can also accept that not all their films are for everyone. Maybe Scorsese needs to admit that he fucked it up with The Irishman. Not everyone, hell most people, don’t want to see senior citizens de-aged into weird creatures of themselves in their 40s.
If all of the above is given its due, then the article points to the algorithms as a culprit for the endless feed of recommendations of non-“cinema”-films. Why aren’t the greats being recommended? Curation would be better. I can’t disagree with that. The genres available can sometimes feel limited. That is part of the beauty of the algorithm. If you shape it enough it will show you things that you in theory will enjoy. If you point to only classic movies, then the movies recommended will be those classics. But it still isn’t curation.
The way they describe it was from the idea of friends sharing movies on physical media being the pinnacle. While that’s admirable and ideal. It’s just as possible to tell your friends about the awesome film you just saw on Peacock or HBO Max but now there’s nothing to lend them. It’s maybe a bit harder if that film vanishes from the service several months later, but that’s a reason for finding a film on physical media still or having friends over to watch the movie with you.
Films have always had shoddy releases and especially with smaller films. One of my recent new favorites, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker was one of those films. They will always exist. A more recently released favorite of mine that I want on Blu Ray but have to wait on is Grave Encounters. The only release that it had in physical media was DVD, which for me just isn’t good enough. Older movies have faced this problem with DVD too but blaming the streaming services for the loss of those cult films or just straight up forgotten pictures is misplaced.
That may not necessarily be what those old cinephiles want to hear, but they really aren’t going to be the majority. The good news is that things are always getting better. Criterion has been around for a while and continues to see more films added to its library. Shout Factory for years has been producing quality releases of hard-to-find films, and specialty channels get created for a reason. The adage is still true today as much as it ever was, “be the change you wish to see.”
I for one will proudly declare my love for certain films that get forgotten or lost in time when I feel the need. That’s what a number of my reviews are. Laying blame at the feet of video services isn’t going to do any good. Sharing the love of movies always gets down to word of mouth. Movies in theater, to movies online and hard to get films all require that same thing. It’s the way stories spread and evolve and grow. Sometimes they fall out of fashion, but at some point if they have that special core, they’ll find their way back from the depths of “out of print” or “lost.”
Claiming though that something isn’t really cinema is never going to help either. It only makes one sound like a snob about the topic. Gatekeeping is an ugly look in any field. Candy Crush is just as much a game as Call of Duty or Final Fantasy is. It’s all about taste. Some people like Moscato while others like red blends or a cabernet. A serious movie is a movie that was made and that people enjoy. Let The Room (2003) be celebrated alongside Gone with the Wind and 500 Blows. If you can’t, then you will inevitably see your definition decay and die.
