I spend a lot
of time watching movies.
Something regular readers of this
column will no doubt not find surprising.
What might be surprising is the
amount of time I spend searching for movies to watch.
Finding a good film is far too often
a daunting, time-consuming, tiresome task.
For a short while when I was in
college in Atlanta in the late 80s I collected movie memorabilia, and the thing
I remember most about it was the sheer volume of time it took trekking around
the metro area, traipsing through flea markets and speciality shops and trade
shows, sifting through trash in search of treasure. A landfill of rubbish might
yield something remarkable. Might. It was just as likely not to.
Since that first ill-advised foray
into collecting, I have spent countless hours in dusty old bookshops amassing
the tens of thousands of titles of the library that surrounds me now.
And I’ve taken the same approach to
film––spending untold ticks of the clock scouring trade publications,
newspapers, magazines, reading reviews, writing down recommendations, following
the fledgling careers of filmmakers.
All the above has been made a
million times easier by the Internets. And yet that has only made finding a
good film only slightly more likely.
Why?
Because of the dearth of good films
being made.
Why?
For a number of reasons. Here are a
few.
First and foremost the film industry
devalues good writing. Everything begins with the screenplay. Sure, it’s possible to make a bad movie from a good
script but it is
impossible to make a
good movie from a bad script.
Film has become a director’s medium.
Maybe it always was. But far, far too many directors today know how to make
pretty pictures but not how to tell a moving story.
Because writing is so undervalued in
Hollywood so is reading. Too many people in power––with the power of the green
light––read coverage of the script rather than the script itself.
The script is the foundation. Fix
the foundation, fix the film.
The best screenwriting being done
these days is for cable television not for feature films and until that changes
good movies will continue to be a challenge to find.
Another problem is that of too many
cooks in the kitchen. Collaboration is one thing. A multi-headed monster is
another. Less committees more auteurs would go a long, long way toward fixing
this dysfunctional industry.
In many ways Hollywood is like
congress. Insularly. Incestuous. Corrupt. Self-serving. Juvenile. Facile.
Meretricious. Shallow. Egotistical. Full of power- and money-hungry whores.
Both bodies are far too influenced by those with money.
There is way too much spectacle and
not enough story. Too many movies try to wow an audience instead of move it.
CGI, special effects, and 3-D are too often distractions, attempts to divert
our attention away from the lack of credible characters and solid storytelling.
They are sound and fury signifying nothing in an effort to keep our attention
off of the sad little man hiding behind the curtain.
Unless a work of art moves the human
heart it has very little merit beyond momentary distraction. Unless art
imitates life, unless the characters on the screen are deeply, profoundly,
recognizably human, unless that same screen reflects life and the paradox and
complexity of the human condition back at us there will continue to be more
mediocre movies than any other kind.
And that’s the thing.
Most of the movies made aren’t
terrible. They’re far too safe and cynical to be terrible. What they are is far
worse than terrible. They are merely mediocre. Lukewarm leftovers of some vague
something that almost but not quite resembles something we once could but no
longer can quite recall or remember.
That something is humanity and the
sacred stories we tell to both remain human by remembering and to become more
human by inspiration.
At its best the silver screen is
both a mirror and a window.
Too often today it is neither.
It is instead a glass darkly, a
dimness that no longer sees us and in which we no longer see ourselves.
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