As a person who has always wanted to be a filmmaker, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of cinema lately. I mean, I’m never really not thinking about movies, but lately even more so. With how terrible most movies have become lately, the impact of AI’s rise on writers in Hollywood, and the effect the pandemic had on the film industry, you hear a lot about how “film is dead” these days. I hate to admit it, but I’ve even said similar things myself over the years. You can probably count on two hands how many truly great, original living filmmakers there are left. Sometimes it feels like we’ve entered a new era, and “it’s so over,” as the youth would say. But then there are other rare moments we get a glimpse of what cinema can be, not even a “we’re so back” moment, but a “we’ve never been here before.”
I saw Furiosa yesterday, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It was absolutely incredible. Easily my favourite movie in years. It exploded my dick off, and threw it at me. Then it ran me over with a monster truck. I can’t wait to go back to see it again. I’ll see it once a week as long as it’s in theatres, I’ll keep going back, I don’t give a fuck. But anyway, I don’t want to talk too much or spoil it for those of you that haven’t seen it yet. Reviewing it isn’t the point of this. What I want to talk about is the state of cinema, and the thoughts I’ve been having regarding that lately.
In April, Cineplex (the movie theatre chain in Canada, for those of you who don’t know what that is) did a Kubrick retrospective for some reason, and I went to almost all of them. Well, all the heavy-hitters anyway. I skipped a couple of his early ones. Anyway, something I found somewhat interesting was that the theatres were pretty much packed for all screenings of his movies. I know that doesn’t sound very surprising, but I didn’t go to screenings downtown Toronto, where you can typically expect a popular movie to be packed. I went out of my way to see a couple of his movies at smaller theatres, further away from the city, and the screenings still had a fairly high amount of people. These are audiences showing up to see movies they could easily see at home, and movies they’ve probably seen already many times before. I think this is noteworthy because it proves people still want to see movies, they just want to watch good stuff. They are willing to pay to watch good movies, and they don’t care if it’s more than several decades old.
To change topics slightly here, there’s another filmmaker I’ve been thinking about lately. Harmony Korine has been in the news recently because of his recent film, and he’s made a bunch of comments basically saying film is dead, and how he doesn’t really watch movies anymore because they’re boring and so on. He has stated that his intention for his new movie was to make something that “comes after movies.” He’s also been using the phrase “post-cinema” during press tours and Q&As for the film; his idea is that, because film is “dead” now, he’s interested in exploring what that means by trying to show audiences stuff they’ve never seen before. I personally have not seen Aggro Dr1ft yet, so I can’t comment on it.
To circle back to the filmmaker I alluded to at the beginning of this, I want to mention George Miller, and the comments he has made about film’s current state. Something funny I noticed is that in several interviews for Furiosa, his sentiment is contrasting with Korine’s; Miller has said that film is still a relatively “new” medium, and this interests him. Film is just over 100 years old at this point, and the idea that Miller considers it “new,” and Korine thinks of it as “dead,” is striking. It’s all a matter of perspective, and how you personally view things. Tarantino has leaned on the Korine side of the matter in interviews, and dates the “end” of cinema to be around 2019 or so, right before the pandemic changed things and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came out.
But then there’s Furiosa. I want to use that to circle back to my main point here, because Furiosa was absolutely fucking incredible. It did things to me. I felt the Dolby Atmos rumbling in my heart and balls, and I loved every second of it. I was riveted. I think the solution to this whole state of film thing can be easily answered by looking at Furiosa, and thinking about why it was so great. The reason why film is not dead is because we haven’t reached the full potential of the medium yet. People seem to forget that (as dumb as this is to say) film is a visual medium that pre-dates the invention of sound. Sound, terrible dialogue, and lazy storytelling came later, but the power of the image itself is what kicked everything off.
This is why people still show up to Kubrick movies 56 years later. 2001: A Space Odyssey shows them something they can never really see anywhere else; there are some parts that are practically a silent film. This idea is also what Korine is getting at when he says, “post-film” world; it’s basically about just coming full circle, and figuring out how to use film to its full extent in a way people have never seen before. And like I said above, this is partly why Furiosa was so great. Of course sound is a big aspect of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aggro Dr1ft (although I haven’t seen it yet), and Furiosa. But at the end of the day, they are still primarily visually focused films; it’s almost like the sound is an afterthought to the construction of the images.
Anyway, that’s what I think the answer to all this “film is dead” stuff is. Basically, people and filmmakers have gotten so lazy over the last few years they have forgotten what cinema is actually capable of, and what it is essentially supposed to be. I am going back to see Furiosa in theatres a few more times to remind myself.