2004 and the Invasion of the Middlebrow Movie

Two articles by A.O. Scott for the New York Times got me thinking recently.  In “The Most Overrated Film of the Year,” Scott argues that “Sideways” has become this year’s critical darling by appealing to the narcissism of his middle-aged white male peers, who see themselves in Paul Giamatti’s character and can’t help adoring him.  In “The Invasion of the Midsize Movie,” he investigates the growth of “specialty” studio divisions that have replaced the now-waning Miramax to dominate the indie movie industry in 2004 with many notable “indie-spirited” films, including “House of Flying Daggers,” “A Very Long Engagement,” “Sideways,” “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and “Hotel Rwanda.”  To this list, I’d add “The Aviator,” “Closer,” and “Millon Dollar Baby,” and also go a critical step further than Scott by arguing that, in addition to their pedigrees, all these films of the last year share an exceptionally uniform and rather alarming mediocrity.

I came to this realization as I found myself struggling to count on even one hand the number of really excellent movies I saw in the last year.  I’m not convinced I saw any at all – the leading contenders (”Before Sunset,” “Kill Bill Vol. 2,” “Primer,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) were all good, made by smart-enough people, featured watchable, often star-studded casts, yet, for various reasons, fall well short of cinematic greatness.  They are certainly stronger than the hodgepodge group listed above, but still fit into a larger pattern emerging in recent years that points to the demise of arthouse film generally.

Before I go much further, it’s worth addressing the terms of this debate.  What rules of taste could one lay down to even begin such an argument?  What qualifies as “original” or “great”?  Who am I to define what “middlebrow” is?  Rather than directly answer these and other slippery questions, I fully own up to the painfully subjective nature of the topic.  My “2001″ could be your “Moulin Rouge” for all I know – in which case we probably won’t agree on any films at all.  But given a mutual familiarity and abiding passion for film and film history generally, can it really be argued that Alexander Payne is the new Woody Allen, or that “Million Dollar Baby” is the new “La Strada”?  ”Sideways” and “Million Dollar Baby” are not bad films, but they are, without a doubt, unremarkable and unoriginal, and neither you nor I are any better off in life for having seen them.  This might sound like an impossibly high standard, but it was not so long ago that arthouse films offered such experiences.  Yet as the indie scene has become increasingly accessible, it promotes films that merely recapitulate common human experiences in some semi-literate way, thereby relegating the entire genre to the realm of intellectual entertainment, rather than art.

Who is the main culprit?  I’d point multiple fingers at Miramax, which started the 1990s off so promisingly with revelatory films like “Pulp Fiction,” “The Three Colors” trilogy, and “The Piano,” but has since became a bloated parody of itself, and helped transform the independent film scene into something alarmingly middlebrow.  ”The English Patient” was certainly the original Miramax Trojan horse, and the start of the company’s demise.  Based on a Booker Prize-winning novel, featuring a decently talented cast, and directed by the dependable Anthony Minghella, it had all the right credentials to sweep the 1996 Oscars and provide the arthouse formula for so many films to follow.  And its most insidious aspect is, in fact, its relatively high quality.  Though lacking the ineffable genius of the truly great historical epics, it possessed just enough intelligence, beauty, and intimacy for highbrow literary types to laud, while remaining accessible enough for middlebrow types to like.  Its influence is evident in countless subsequent films, including “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Life Is Beautiful,” “Chocolat,” “Moulin Rouge,” “The Hours,” “Chicago,” “Cold Mountain,” “Finding Neverland,” “The Aviator,” and every other mediocre-to-shitty film Miramax has trumpeted every Oscar season since.  All these films are prettily shot, capably directed, and feature credible actors who are exceptionally easy on the eyes, but perform the same trick of gaining the audience’s affections through familiar themes and saccharine charms.  I myself have proclaimed love for several films that probably didn’t deserve it, simply because they entertained me better, or slightly more intelligently, than I’d expected.  It was only after seeing Bergman’s 1982 masterpiece “Fanny and Alexander” for the first time recently did I finally begin to realize the mistake I’d been making, like hearing a real human voice after having long-mistaken a recording for it.

This is not to say that I’ve given up on contemporary cinema; it’s simply that I have a newfound resistance to being lulled into complacency by what is easy and familiar, which is, I believe, the way of current independent film.  ”Before Sunset” is a wonderful little movie, but ultimately too small in scope and simply too familiar to qualify as revelatory, which is, above all else, what great films should be.  I am ultimately not all that interested in films that repeat back to me the thoughts and experiences I’ve had (albeit more eloquently, with better-looking people involved).  Truly great cinema – like all great art – is that which expresses ideas I would never be smart enough to think up or fully understand myself, or contains images more beautiful than I will ever experience.  Films like “Fanny and Alexander” and “2001″ will always be my benchmark – those that effortlessly embody genius, that expand the purpose and meaning of cinema, and that stake their claims in film because it is the only art medium that could do justice to ideas and images so great.

Art lovers can wax nostalgic about the classics in each medium (and we often do) – the masters of the past who did it first, did it best, did it better than anyone today.  Such commentary is often counter-productive and self-defeating – after all, experience almost always starts from the contemporary, before history weighs in to inform and enrich our judgments.  But skepticism of “the new” is healthier than an immediate sympathy for it.  Just because every movie theater and Blockbuster focuses on the just-released does not mean those films are more deserving of our attention or affection than the lone dusty shelf of those past films that have been deemed “classics.” If anything, the test of time is more meritous than any other contemporary standard we could hold dear.

In formulating a healthier skepticism of new film, I hope to become a more discerning critic and moviegoer.  Each of us only has so much time on this good earth, and sadly, a fixed number of films we’ll ever have the chance to see.  (An abiding sadness I have in life is the thought of all the films in the future I won’t get to see, unless Heaven exists and is Good like that.)  Like every cinephile, I start each new movie wondering whether it will contain something profound, new, or at least better-stated than anything I’ve seen before.  Over time, I hope to understand and refine my tastes in a way that lasts, and above all, to never mistake what is merely pretty as being beautiful, or what is good as being great.