It's Like a Movie, but It's Not

New York Times ^ | August 4, 2002 | NEAL GABLER

[testforecho]

As much as I liked Attack of the Clones, for instance, this guy really nails it on the head. The use of music, in particular, to suggest a romance between Anakin and Padme that would be non-sensical otherwise. Reminds me of the "Feelie" movies in Brave New World.

[Jonathon Spectre]

Stupidest. Article. Ever.

"Umm, when you go to the movies now, you are not seeing a movie. You're seeing something like a movie. It looks, sounds, and acts like a movie. It's shown in a movie theatre. But it's not a movie."

What a waste of ink.

[Rebel_Ace]

What you have just read is "like an article". It has words, sentences and paragraphs, but lacks any real content.

[parsifal]

No. This was a great article. Think about laugh tracks the next time you watch a TV show that them, like Gilligan's Island. 99% of the time, what is being laughed at on the track isn't something you would laugh at. Try this experiment.

Then ask yourself if you are really experiencing a funny TV show, or are you being cued like a Pavlov dog to find humor where it doesn't really exist. You'll say "yes" I know. Now, extrapolate this to the new crop of movies and start watching for the cues. parsy the poor man's pundit.

[IronJack]

Today's "entertainment" calls for the audience to invest little of itself in the process. The viewer is simply a passive observer, not a participant in the cinematic event. Anything cerebral scares the Cheaplaugh crowd. Formulaic jump-cut editing, distorted mise en scene, and pretentious camera angles are supposed to compensate for the lack of plot structure or dramatic integrity (think Matrix.)

That's not to say these movies aren't entertaining. But they're entertaining in the same way the magician at a child's birthday party is. You paid to be entertained so you let yourself be entertained, all the while you know that the tricks are predictable and probably easily deciphered, the jokes are tired, and amusing only in rote, and the schtick embarrassing except that you have nothing better to do.

The "dark, gritty look" of movies like Gladiator and Blackhawk Down is becoming cliche. The vapid scat humor of Dumb and Dumber or anything by Adam Sandler is an appeal to the dullest couch spud. All the moviemaker has to do is keep him from drowning in his own drool before the final credits and he can consider his product successful.

It's Jerry Springer on the Big Screen, the Dark Age of Cinema. But what can you expect from audiences that actually tune into crap like "American Idol" and "Survivor?"

[parsifal]

No, you are wrong. This was a deep and profound article. Please read it again. Have you ever watched the movie like North by Northwest. Pay attention to the sexual interplay between Grant and the blonde. (Tippy Hedron?) All below the surface.

Now see how sexual interplay occurs in modern movies. Man throws woman up against a wall and they have sex standing up. Thats how you know they like each other. Do you see a difference?

The latter is a "formula"---sex=love, and you get to see the sex. In the earlier, attraction is in the eyes and the tone of voice and the relationship. You never see the sex, but you know it is there. One is harder to do. One is easier and takes less talent and demands less of the audience. I bet you can pick which is which. parsy.

[IronJack]

Besides, more subtle entertainment requires the use of critical thinking facilities that have atrophied after years of pre-digested pap on TV and radio. Today's audiences are ill prepared to appreciate subtle dramatic or comic touches. Then again, "subtle" isn't a common description of today's cinema. The best today's directors seem to be able to manage is "obscure."

[jellybean]

Reminds me of the movie Pearl Harbor. The bombing scenes were okay, but I didn't feel the suspense they were trying to portray. The 'love story' aspect was bogus. Perhaps if they'd developed the characters more, I would have cared whether they lived or died.

[CIB-173RDABN]

Parsifal, I agree with you. I had thought it was me these last few years. I just was not "getting" the jokes others seem to get.

Movies didn't seem to make sense, and they certainly were not entertaining.

I chalked it up to being a generational thing. I was getting to be an "old foggy", that just wasn't "hip" to the new culture.

Kind of like reading Cliff Notes, instead of the book. You get all of the information, but miss the experience and pleasure of the book.

[spodefly]

Are you criticizing "the Matrix"?

Well, I will not stand for that!

(cue ominous music)

[Billy_bob_bob]

Movies used to be made by people who had lived real lives before they got into the movie business. The people who make movies today grew up watching movies. They don't have real life experiences to draw upon, their lives consist of the movies they have watched. This is why their product is so empty, because they have nothing inside themselves to bring to their stories, instead they are endlessly rehashing stories that they have seen before.

[MarkL]

Besides, more subtle entertainment requires the use of critical thinking facilities that have atrophied after years of pre-digested pap on TV and radio. Today's audiences are ill prepared to appreciate subtle dramatic or comic touches. Then again, "subtle" isn't a common description of today's cinema. The best today's directors seem to be able to manage is "obscure."

I have to agree with you here (at least somewhat). There used to be a radio program in KC, played Friday and Saturday nights, very late, that I'd set my alarm for... It was called "When Radio Was," and it was replays of the old radio serials, as well as Fibber Mgee and Molly, Burns and Allen, and best of all, The Jack Benny Show!

I've got to say, I don't think that there's anything else on TV or radio that's anywhere near as engrossing or entertaining.

And, no, I wasn't around to hear them when they were on the first time! I'm only 40! lol

Mark

[IronJack]

Are you criticizing "the Matrix"?

Not really. Just observing that its bizarre, minimalist, jerky composition has been overdone, and is now the cinematic standard for everything from Adam Sandler comedies to dog food commercials.

[parsifal]

It's not old age, for sure. I am 48 and still feel 15 years old inside. Most everything is dumbed down today even more than it used to be. Some of it is because Hollywood has so much entertainment to produce. When I was a kid, there were 3 networks and I think producers were working overtime even then to keep up with demand.

Look at the Munsters, for example. Lame as all get out. Look at Bewitched and I Dream of Genie. The rot had set in way back then. Look at some of the Westerns from the 50's. For the most part stupid, dull, insipid, idiotic plots.

Remember that Doris Day-James Garner movie, where she started selling soap? Remember the gag where the weekly TV show was the same plot week after week, even though the setting might be Nazi Germany one week and the Wild West the next? The kids recognized it, and the adults in the movie didn't.

I think there is a lot of good movies being made today and good shows, too, but you have to wade thru so much dreck to find them.

parsy.

[IronJack]

I think the dramatic paradigm (pardon the buzzword) has changed. Audiences today are unwilling or unable to participate, so they expect easily digestible smarm or accept obfuscation as profundity. Radio from yesteryear required that the listener supply the visuals. But most engaging of all was literature, where the entire dramatic universe was conjured inside the reader's head.

It's more than coincidence that the increase in banal cinema has accompanied a decline in literacy. As for radio, it only exists for conservative talk and to fill up that big hole in your car's dashboard.

[CIB-173RDABN]

You have a point. A lot of the mass entertainment is being made by very young people, for equally young people.

As someone smarter then me said once, "When I was 20 I knew everything, now that I am 50 I know nothing."

[Dr. Frank fan]

As much as I liked Attack of the Clones, for instance, this guy really nails it on the head.

Actually I couldn't make heads or tails of the article. It reads more like a facsimile of an article than the real thing (ironically, since this seemed to be the point he was trying to make about movies).

Is this anything other than a variation on the old "stuff was better in my day" theme? The movies this guy used to watch were "real" entertainment, but all current movies are "facsimiles" or "imitations". Yeah, ok, whatever you say, old-timer. Now I'm real impressed that he front-loaded and straw-manned his argument to death by stacking up a freakin' Adam Sandler movie to the one it was "based on", but really: is that a fair comparison?

Ugh. I mean just cuz he can throw a couple Umberto Eco quotes together and bash America doesn't mean he's making any actual good point of any kind.

The use of music, in particular, to suggest a romance between Anakin and Padme that would be non-sensical otherwise.

Um, once you accept that these events are taking place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"; that Padme is the former Queen of her planet but posed as her maidservant practically the whole time; that a Jedi named Qui-Gon Jinn just happened to land on a planet called Tattoine, just happened to wander into a junk shop where the owner just happened to have a slave named Anakin who (wouldn't you know it) it turns out just happened to have a "high midichlorian count" and perhaps was even conceived immaculately - once you accept all these things, seems a little silly to me to complain that a romance between this Anakin and that Padme was "non-sensical". He was a strapping teenager assigned to protect her, and she in her early 20s; in fact a romance between them would be one of the more believable things about those movies, it seems to me :)

[Dr. Frank fan]

��5{�������� ever watched the movie like North by Northwest. Pay attention to the sexual interplay between Grant and the blonde. (Tippy Hedron?) All below the surface. Now see how sexual interplay occurs in modern movies. Man throws woman up against a wall and they have sex standing up.

Which movie was this? Showgirls?

You're making the same mistake as the author of the article: you take an unmistakably great, classic movie (which of course North by Northwest is), you compare it to some piece of crap released by Miramax or whatever, and then blithely proclaim "See! Movies used to be so much better!"

All based on what? Comparing Frank Capra to Adam Sandler? Alfred Hitchcock to Joe Esterhas? I've got nothing against complaining about modern crap movies or anything, but can't you guys at least try to make a fair comparison?

[EBITDA]

Gabler's points are all well-made. For the most part I agree. But it misses some of the point about why people go to a movie and what entertainment is about.

The formulaic approach is not something new. How many times did the damsel in distress get rescued from the oncoming train in the silent movies? How many times did Charlie Chaplin take a pratfall to elicit laughter from his audience? How many times did Moe poke Larry and Curly's eyes? How many times did Bob Hope and Bing Crosby go 'on the road?'

Formula is an intrinsic part of technique. Sometimes a film maker rises above formula and produces genuine art. More often we simply see repetition of the tried and true process. So what. That makes the exceptional movie that much more enjoyable.

For the moviegoer I suspect the problem is largely one of expectations. Do I expect great art when I see a movie from Schwarznegger or Stallone, Wesley Snipes, etc? Of course not. I would be a fool if I did. What I do expect and what they can deliver is the roller coaster ride that Gabler so derides. And just like the cool ride at the amusement park I can ride it over and over and still enjoy it. Repetitive? Formulaic? You bet. Do I have fun? Sure.

Is it art? It is certainly craft and that is fine by me. When I want something more out of the movies I go to a different kind of movie. Take 'Il Postino' for example. A genuine work of art. But I did not go expecting a roller coaster ride or even the edge of the seat mystery formula provided by Clancy or Grisham.

If I think of Austin Powers as high art then I am missing the point to the same extent as the person who demands that it be high art. Mike Myers and Adam Sandler are only vaguely amusing to me. But who gives me the right to say that someone else should not be allowed to enjoy them?

By Gabler's standards moviemaking may just as well have stopped after Citizen Kane. Lighten up. I can read Dostoevsky and I can read Clancy without confusing the two. And if I can't it would be my own problem.

[Dr. Frank fan]

Movies used to be made by people who had lived real lives before they got into the movie business.

When was this? 1910? Sounds like you're idealizing history, and in particular Hollywood, just a tad.

It's just as likely that those old films you love starred vapid bed-hopping screwed-up people who Moved To Hollywood To Make It Big, as it is now. Did Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles, or Norma Jean Baker (oh, sorry, "Marilyn Monroe"...) really ever "live real lives" as adults? I guess I just wonder who you think you're talking about here.

The people who make movies today grew up watching movies.

This was also true in 1970, 1950, and probably even 1935. Movies've been around, and popular with the young people, a wee bit longer than you seem to think.