(by Alex John)
Martin Scorsese’s essay on Fellini was moving, nostalgic, and solemn, and gives a wonderful account of the Great Italian filmmaker’s life, his films, and his passion for cinema. He almost had me buying what he wrote in it entirely, but I started to feel indifferent when he continued on with what he had to say about the decline of art in cinema, and how business has taken over cinema in America, or may be worldwide, from his earlier interview and the explanation he gave for it in his NY article. Now, he has made this clear that this is his personal opinion, but anything that comes from a maestro like him has an undeniable appeal among the mortals like us which lends his lamentations on today’s cinema more depth than just being his perceptions about it. Now, let me tell you this; I am not a great fan of the trends in today’s commercial cinema; Indian, American, or anywhere else. I know cinema is being productized these days more than ever, I am almost scared when studios name a film ‘blockbuster’ even before it gets released and it actually becomes a blockbuster (just like the father worries about his kid in the 1976 horror flick ‘The omen’ when he realizes he’s never been sick ever since he was born. Why don’t these films freaking flop?), but is it actually as bad as he makes it sound? I don’t think so. Why? Well, let me tell you.
For one, I think he oscillates between mainstream and offbeat cinema as he compares the movies of his times with those of today’s. He complains that ‘content’ has taken over ‘form’ and ‘art’ in today’s films, but conveniently forgets that was the case of the older days too, when movie stars and studios took their turn in reigning cinema in the USA. Mainstream movies of those times were mostly driven by content rather than form and art. Remember the Sidney Poitier classics of the 60s and 70s? The countless summer blockbusters since Jaws? We know that even the uber-stylish Hitchcockian films were reliant on ‘blockbuster content’ to an extent. Now, let’s fast-forward to today’s films from America, or anywhere else in the world. Are all of them just content-driven, lacking in cinematic form and art? Do all those films lack the risk element of the golden years of cinema, as he puts it? Are Nolan’s movies just storytelling apparatus? What about the films of Guillermo Del Toro? Inarritu, Tarantino, Refn, anyone? What about the countless offbeat directors from Von Trier to Noah Baumbach?
Now, let’s get to the ‘theme park’ films that Scorsese doesn’t count as cinema. No matter how perplexed I am about them for being products that never go wrong with their target audience, I believe they still are cinema. They are often well written, efficiently directed and have complex enough characters to warrant serious attention, making them much more than just adrenaline pumping roller-coasters. They may lack the cynicism and temerity of the cold war era films, but still deal with the lofty themes of benevolence, fraternity, loss, necessity and existence. As much they are products designed for a legion of target audience from worldwide, so much they’re tangible movie experience too. If they are not, if they are just lifeless theme park equipment, the response would be ice-cold when an important character died at the end of a Marvel cinematic franchise. I was quite surprised how I was moved when Iron man died in Endgame, considering the general lack of interest I have for superhero movies., making me reconsider my belief that such films were inferior, lifeless means of entertainment. In fact, I realized it takes enormous amounts of skill and dedication to show what they show us on screen; taking us through no-holds-barred thrill rides and at the same time make us feel for the characters they present us with.
I was reminded of something when I mentioned the ‘cold war era’, something that Scorsese disregards when he says today’s mainstream films lack art and diversity-the times we live in. He spent his youth in the 1960s and 70s when a nuclear war loomed over the world, insecure youth largely resorted to drugs and anarchy, and a lot of people in the USA lined up for their last confession. I wouldn’t dare say we now, in the US or anywhere else, live in a peaceful world, but today’s world is far more consistent, prosperous and livable, especially in the west. Now, is there anything wrong if today’s films cater to the taste of the largely movie-going younger generation? Wasn’t this the case with the commercial films of his younger days too? Were the movie-going public heads-over-heels in love with the outlandish offbeat films he raves about? These were the questions I was asking myself when I read him write that today’s movie business can’t be trusted with taking care of cinema as an art form. Well, I would say it is being taken care of everywhere around the world by the enormous mainstream movie businesses of today and the offbeat assembly that flourishes parallel to it. They may not be the towering public figures that the yesteryear’s youth desperately needed to look up to, but today’s filmmakers, mainstream or parallel, are no less talented or intrepid than their predecessors; just that they are often overshadowed by the ill-conceived notion of 60 and 70s being some kind of ‘golden age’ of cinema all over the world.
Martin Scorsese is a living legend, and I understand him when he talks about the mediocrity of today’s blockbusters, but when he says they’re not cinema, I believe he is much more influenced by nostalgia than the current state of affairs. I am not going to commit the sin of saying these are the ramblings of a nostalgic old man, but he apparently misses the old times, the camaraderie among the then young revolutionaries and the pleasures and adventures of those tumultuous times. It’s funny how he uses Fellini, a non–US director, as the baseline to point out the shortcomings of the current American film industry, but forgets about the countless foreign directors who made it big in the US, in industrial or offbeat cinema (you want someone whose cinematic audacity wanders off so far out it often crosses the line of bizarreness, like Fellini? Yorgos Lanthimos is the one for you). Hollywood these days has its flaws like the Hollywood in Scorsese’s younger years (remember the rampant racial discrimination until the late 1960s), and a lot of its films are convivial to a fault, but to say those films are not cinema is doing injustice to the sheer amount of artistry and dedication behind them. Marvel movies are the products of their times, and the embodiment of the old saying, ‘the only constant in life is change’. Scorsese is reputed enough to call Marvel movies theme parks, but a lot of us have to jump on the bandwagon that goes the other way, and I am glad I am one of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZcEZsFXkk
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/il-maestro-federico-fellini-martin-scorsese/
Baradwaj Rangan 
Madan
March 4, 2021
I will give you a parallel to relate to what Marty’s driving at.
Is Kenny G music? Yes. But is Kenny G jazz? Nope! Now the moment I or other jazz aficionados say this, we are dubbed as snobs, usually by the larger universe which does not listen to jazz at all and has no inclination to. But seriously, listen to George Adams perform You Don’t Know What Love Is and tell me Kenny G has anything in common with him other than playing the same instrument. So… nobody stops that why if it is simply dumb snobbery, do jazzheads across the spectrum of tastes consider Kenny G as not jazz?
On similar lines, Marty is not saying that theme park films aren’t ‘motion picture’. He is saying they do not artistically, aesthetically aspire to be cinema. That may be a debatable point but it is a different one from the argument made against what he is saying. That Marvel films do have a plot and good technical values do not mean they approach motion picture from a perspective that’s in the same ballpark as Marty. In the same way, Kenny plays a saxophone and his albums are superbly well recorded (maybe too well). All that does not make it jazz though it makes for pleasant listening and a decent initiation for someone who hasn’t heard much saxophone music.
I am sure if you put it to him, Marty would say that yes, stuff like Dr No isn’t cinema either. The problem is with the increasing commodification of films, the space for ‘cinema’ keeps shrinking and unless the Western world gets on the other side of the pandemic soon, maybe it won’t make it too long into the future. There always was motion picture product but studios used that to finance prestige films (or cinema) previously. They still do in a manner of speaking but today prestige movie means making a biopic about some much revered figure. That our imagination has shrunk so much is itself a symptom of the problem at hand.
To sum up, what Marty is doing is lamenting what seems to be the withering away of an art form, or rather of a way of approaching that art. It is not yet clear that the changing of the way of doing things is purely positive development and not mere entropy.
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Alex John
March 5, 2021
@Madan, thanks for the input.
I understand Scorsese is talking about the art of cinema as he knows it, but when he says things like. today’s movie business cannot be trusted with taking care of the art of cinema, it borders on the annoying phenomenon known as ‘adultism’.( reminds me of that random YouTube comment ‘folks, we can’t leave this world to todays children. We have to do do what our ancestors did).
To my belief, cinema is not something that needs to be taken care of, but is rather a river that finds another way if met with hurdles. Scorsese is worried about the invasion of theaters by blockbusters, but see how we get so see zillion amazing offbeat movies through the OTT platforms.
Like I said, cinema doesn’t need patrons, it only needs countless passionate viewers like you, and me. It can take care of itself.
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Madan
March 5, 2021
“Like I said, cinema doesn’t need patrons, it only needs countless passionate viewers like you, and me.” – The problem is there aren’t countless passionate viewers for cinema as Marty sees it. I appreciate your optimism but observing what has come to pass in music tells me that the onus is indeed on the makers to uphold aesthetic standards. They cannot delegate the onus to audience and shrug. It would appear that Hindi film music was in better shape back when literacy levels were way lower than today. So what it shows is that it was the makers who refrained from relying only on item songs to get hits. This is also why I don’t understand why viewers get upset about what Marty is saying. He is talking about and to the makers. If he is adulting them, then I am sure as adults and extremely privileged ones at that they are capable of defending themselves. Let them write op eds too debating him if they want to. I would be interested too in hearing THEIR perspective as to how they justify their work. But saying, “oh we are just making what audience wants” is a lame defence and that is mostly what they have offered by way of soundbytes when asked about his comments.
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vijay
March 5, 2021
I wonder what Marty would think of current mainstream tamil films 🙂
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Alex John
March 6, 2021
‘If he is adulting them, then I am sure as adults and extremely privileged ones at that they are capable of defending themselves.’
I am not sure how many of them are extremely privileged.;-0
2.May be they don’t react to him because they have better things to do.
See, my problem with Scorsese is he completely disregards the changes that come with time. That is why I wrote that he might be missing those old times where he had fun with his friends and colleagues when the world outside of movie halls were getting ready for he Armageddon. My point is just this; today’s generation has access to quality offbeat stuff these days that even a privileged movie director like Scorsese couldn’t even think of in his younger days. It’s not just the way he used to watch them back in his heydays. So, it kind of irks me when he makes it sound like the studios have taken over completely and ‘good cinema’ stands no chance with today’s filmmakers.
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Madan
March 6, 2021
“I am not sure how many of them are extremely privileged” – Guys like Jon Favreu aren’t privileged? I mean, anyone directing a MCU/DC film is already in the uppermost echelons of Hollywood.
” today’s generation has access to quality offbeat stuff these days that even a privileged movie director like Scorsese couldn’t even think of in his younger days. ” – There is indeed access. On an unprecedented scale. Which only pushes people to seek comfort in the familiar. If the access was accompanied by ticket purchases/eyeballs, you would see studios greenlighting more middle budget films and they don’t. Why would they when Marvel/DC/Disney ‘live action’ are safe bets for a minimum half a billion dollar gross? That wasn’t the case back in the day. There was a decent chance that a supposed safe bet could still flop…even if it was pretty decent. And that unpredictability made studios hedge bets by encouraging some low cost projects where the upside would potentially be high if it clicked.
It’s the same story in the music industry. Yes, you can hear just about anything you want but on an aggregate scale, most people only want to listen to Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga etc. Everybody outside the top 10 is struggling and, further, only a few pop artists make the top 10 again and again. No alarms and no surprises, as the Radiohead song goes. Life is amazing today IF you jump into the rabbit hole. But the vast majority prefer the terra firma of uber-predictability, powered by big data and algorithms.
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Alex John
March 7, 2021
@ Madan,
‘If the access was accompanied by ticket purchases/eyeballs, you would see studios greenlighting more middle budget films and they don’t.’
Yes, you’re right, but look at what happens on the ground-level. Has the negligence from the part of studios in anyway affected the sheer number of middle budget/offbeat films (great or not) churned out from all over the world?
Now, about ticket purchasing/eyeballs Tell me when was it so great for offbeat/middle budget films. How many people see Fellini/Godard films when they are available at our fingertips? How many have seen them at their heydays? Forget it, what is the box office performance history of Scorsese’s own artistic mainstream films those don’t have that bona fide superstar Leonardo Di Caprio in them?
Again, my point is, things today are more or less the same as they were 50 years ago; they just happen in a different way. At least from my vantage point.
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Madan
March 7, 2021
” Has the negligence from the part of studios in anyway affected the sheer number of middle budget/offbeat films (great or not) churned out from all over the world?” – But world over is a different metric. There’s more prosperity in the erstwhile third world now which supports more experimentation in the film industries of these countries. I do agree with the thrust of your argument there but Scorsese is clearly making his case from an American/European perspective.
“what is the box office performance history of Scorsese’s own artistic mainstream films those don’t have that bona fide superstar Leonardo Di Caprio in them?” – Pretty decent actually. Casino made $116mn, Cape Fear $182 mn, Goodfellas and Color of Money in the $50mn region. As a contrast, Whiplash made all of $49mn and that’s in 2014 currency. So even a relatively harmless film like Whiplash made maybe less than Raging Bull adjusted for inflation.
IMO there’s something going on with the studios, they just don’t seem to greenlight films with characters that have a more than ‘acceptable’ level of quirk. I don’t think a film like The Edge would be made today. Again, Edge made $43 mn in 1996. That’s about $73 mn now.
It’s the studios that make films happen so Marty is not wrong to criticize them. Not like studios were losing money all over the place in the 90s. It’s the damn algorithms; now they know exactly what is best placed to succeed and see no need to make anything more except a few Oscar baits for prestige. And Oscar baits today mean films about honourable people, honourable subjects, not films of great artistic value. That’s not even a consideration anymore at the much vaunted Academy.
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Alex John
March 8, 2021
@Madan
“what is the box office performance history of Scorsese’s own artistic mainstream films those don’t have that bona fide superstar Leonardo Di Caprio in them?” – Pretty decent actually.”
Although I have my points to rebut that ‘decent’ argument ( any film that earns back less than triple of its budget is generally considered a flop in Hollywood. Try running this formula through Scorsese’s films), I am going to settle for ‘decent’ as it supports my previous argument.
Is ‘decent’ good enough for a profound filmmaker like Scorsese?
Isn’t the offbeat/middle budget business decent these days?
Like I said, things are more or less the same, they just happen in a different fashion, and Scorsese seems to have a problem with it.
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Madan
March 8, 2021
But I have given you examples that show that it is indeed not decent compared to the 90s. So it then comes down to what each of us choose to believe.
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Alex John
March 8, 2021
@ Madan,
Yeah, that’s right. I think this repartee could go on until the kingdom come, as we all tend to believe in what we want to believe, even the great Scorsese. I believe the offbeat films are still doing good, you just beg to differ.
Let’s call it a day!
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Satya
March 8, 2021
Many of us might have watched Mark Ruffalo’s work in the MCU and might have appreciated it too. But how many intend to watch something like Dark Waters and Thanks for Sharing, which had the same guy as its protagonist? Or his supporting roles in films like Zodiac? The tale Dark Waters wanted to tell is technically mainstream. And yet people call it offbeat.
Same with Benedict Cumberbatch – how many could actually remember and appreciate his work in films like Wreckers and August: Osage County? Forget Sherlock and MCU, I doubt if Patrick Melrose is considered ‘popular’.
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Madan
March 9, 2021
Satya: That’s what, what we call offbeat TODAY used to be just mid budget middle of the road cinema back in the 90s. Even Marty’s best pre Leo streak of success was built on such films – from Color of Money to Cape Fear -compared to the more demanding Taxi Driver. It’s been clear for a while now that that market is shrinking. One can blame Ron Howard to some extent. He inaugurated the 21st century with the perfect Oscar bait that was Beautiful Mind and that started the trend of biopic after biopic. You know just making movies about real people instead of imagining great fictional characters that the audience would identify with. Other industries may still be doing relatively fine but there is a sinking feeling that Hollywood has given up.
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vijay
March 10, 2021
Were’nt No country for old men and There will be blood more than decent successes, just to name a couple of post-2000 films off the top of my head? The latter was not certainly about honorable people and was’nt a “safe” biopic by any means
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Madan
March 10, 2021
Vijay : Even those films are as old as 2007. And the low viewership for that year’s Oscars seems to have convinced the Academy that the Oscar bait biopic or serious issue movie is the best balance between commercial appeal and artistry. They clearly don’t want to reward the crowd pleasers like even the Nolan Batman films, forget Marvel, but at the same time don’t want to lean too much towards oddball films.
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