Issue 14: How to Watch a Movie
Pardon the late newsletter this week; didn't want to encourage email-checking on a holiday.
In 2012, the French film Holy Motors took world of arthouse cinema by storm. A madcap series of vignettes across disparate nooks and crannies of Paris, Holy Motors struck a chord with critics as a film that celebrates the fact that it's a film. From its very first frame, the movie presents the viewer with scenarios that are only possible in cinematic form—or at least more powerful by virtue of context and juxtaposition. (Some examples of what I'm talking about, for the uninitiated: a main character who dons a new identity via prosthetics and makeup every fifteen minutes, a sequence where a glass-eyed troll absconds with Eva Mendes from a cemetery photoshoot to the sewers, a performance of a thematically relevant ballad by Kylie Minogue, an accordion-concert intermission in a cathedral).
When I first watched Holy Motors a few years ago, I was put off by its weirdness. I also more-or-less wrote it off as an exuberant yet ultimately uncompelling thesis on the magic of movies. Aren't these films a dime a dozen nowadays, with legions of NYU-educated film buffs churning out similar cinematic theses of their own?
Yes they are. But what I realize about Holy Motors now (not without a little prodding from David Ehrlich) is that my read on the film was wrong. It's not an elegy for the good old days when movies used to be better; it's a lament for audiences who have forgotten how to see a movie.
This point sank in last month as I was listening to the Hamilton cast album for what must have been the 70th time. Prior to this particular musical, I wasn't a fan of musical theatre. Sure, there are showtunes I love to hum (most of them from Les Miserables) when the right occasion comes along, and I had always enjoyed going to productions of musicals that my friends had a part in. But musical theatre in and of itself never struck me as a format that held any greater or lesser value than any other kind of performative art. I was wholly neutral…until Hamilton came along and its legions of fans with it.
Enthusiasm is contagious, especially when it originates from theatre geeks. The friends who got me to listen to the Hamilton cast recording didn't just tell me to give it a listen through: they invited me over for a live listen-thru party, they explained the musical theory behind why the songs were so ingenious, they kept coming back to it for weeks and months to mine the thematic depths of the show. All that excitement and the conversations it produced taught me how to truly listen to Hamilton—something that becomes ever more pronounced whenever I meet someone who hasn't learned how to experience the show's music. (“Oh, yeah, it's okay I guess. I loved King George's songs though!" GAH.)
Lots of film critics like to rag on the Marvel Cinematic Universe for its manifold sins against humanity generally and the film industry specifically, and if you take the time to weather the many thinkpieces and one-star reviews and groaning tweets, you'll find a sentiment underneath all the complaining that's remarkably similar to what I experienced with Hamilton and what Holy Motors is trying to tell us. The way that superhero films are for the most part made and marketed is weaning audiences off of the traditional ways audiences used to watch films. The symptoms are many: movie stardom has been reduced from a Katharine Hepburn-style godliness to an assembly line of interchangeable parts; film editing is getting increasingly more vapid, perhaps in no small part having to do with the attention deficit economy; cinema is becoming less of a territory where artists can experiment and push boundaries and more of a limited platform for a very specific type of movie—movies that will make $$$$$ at the global box office and prop movie studios up with the potential for endless sequels, reboots, and offshoots.
There's no dearth of good writing on franchise films to elucidate how such movies can spark conversations worth having. Even the word "franchise" isn't a de facto signifier of some kind of second-rate quality (see: Mad Max: Fury Road). What I have seen a lack of young voices outside the film industry who can watch, analyze, and debate film as intensely and intelligently as they can, say, musical theatre. Theatre is, granted, a much older format than film, so there's been more cumulative time for humans throughout history to think about how to think about theatre. But it would be a crying shame if, not even 150 years after its birth, cinema and its many possibilities are reduced to shells of their potential that nobody but the highly educated and elite among us know how to talk about. Or worse: care about.
Articles and News
Shameless Self-Promotion: This week I also wrote a piece on the history of American movie theaters in cities. Fun to research, even more fun for you to read!
Tilda Swinton in Hail Caesar! + Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer = Tilda Swinton in Bong Joon-ho's next film.
Why doesn't Hollywood make movies for and about young girls outside the animated princess and young adult action heroine molds anymore?
Then again, the young women who started out as young adult action heroines may now be the saviors of independent film.
#OscarsSoWhite update: The Academy made major strides towards a more diverse membership by inviting 683 new members to their ranks, among them 50 female directors and 283 international members. Who am I most excited about? Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Jia Zhangke, Ana Lily Amirpour, Lucrecia Martel, and Marjane Satrapi now all have an invitation to a seat at the table.
The most interesting essay, besides my own, that you'll read all week (Pocket it for later if you must): the philosophy of subtitles.
Poster of the Day
The Criterion Collection will be releasing Pan's Labyrinth later this year and the cover art is everything you would want it to be.