It is now official. The era of real cinematic
film-making is at a close. So says film director Martin Scorsese in a recent
interview last month.
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| Martin Scorsese |
“Cinema is gone. The cinema I grew up with and that
I’m making is gone. The theatre will always be there for that communal
experience, there’s no doubt. But what kind of experience is it going to be?”
he questioned. “Is it always going to be a theme-park movie? I sound like an
old man, which I am. The big screen for us in the ’50s, you go from Westerns to
Lawrence of Arabia to the special experience of 2001 in 1968. The
experience of seeing Vertigo and The Searchers in VistaVision.”
Well, we all agree that as technology evolves over
the years, so will the craft of story-telling. Big blockbusters involve special
effects, invasions from outer space, superheroes battling costumed villains and
explosions that are so far fetched they could never happen in real life. There
are few filmmakers today that know how to truly direct a motion-picture:
Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalon, Quentin Tarantino
and Martin Scorsese. These men respect the classic movies of the 1930s through
the 1950s and, inspired by the way movies were directed during the height
of Hollywood's Golden Years, often mimic the proper use of telling a story
through the lens. Sadly, most of today's directors come from an era of video
tape which means liberal use a hand-held camera and quick cuts during editing.
Someone needs to remind today's film students that a using a hand-held
camera is not direction. In fact, if the camera moves about too much I
get motion sickness and I know I am not the only person who suffers from this.
To me, there is something special to watching a
Hopalong Cassidy Western on Saturday morning or a Mary Pickford silent on a
snowy winter evening. Of course my wife and I still watch the latest movies
that appeal to our inner preference, but last year's motion-pictures featured more
duds than hits. Oddly, 2015 gave the appearance that Hollywood finally
figured out the recipe for making an entertaining movie. In 2016, Hollywood did
the exact opposite. Ghost Busters, for example, was poorly edited
and a disaster from the viewpoint of Screenwriting 101. But when the movie came
out on DVD with scenes not seen in the theatrical release, the entire film
worked perfectly. (Why they did not release the DVD version in the theaters I
will not know.) Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide
Squad also suffered from bad editing. Regrettably, the DVD releases of
those movies did not do them justice.
Jungle Book and The Legend of Tarzan were
surprisingly better than I expected and neither featured ghosts, monsters,
demigods, exploding buildings, car wrecks or costumed characters.
Let's be frank: it's all about demographics these days. The majority of
ticket buyers in this country are under the age of 30. Scorsese points to
the proliferation of images and the over-reliance on superficial techniques as
trends that have diminished the power of cinema to younger audiences. “It
should matter to your life,” Scorsese says. “Unfortunately the latest generations
don’t know that it mattered so much.”
Which brings me to the social commentary of the week.
Last month I met a man much older than myself who lodged a complaint:
"They don't make good movies these days. It's all about superheroes and
zombies and car chases. Even the superheroes are looking younger with each movie. Hollywood isn't what it used to be."
So I asked him what was the last movie he
saw in the theaters. His response? "Oh, I haven't been to the theaters in
twenty years."
And that is why they don't make the kind of movies he wishes they would make.
