Enough! With! Ovation!
The Cannes Film Festival is famous for its standing ovations. At this week’s premiere of Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Sisters, Adam Sandler, of all people, received a four-minute standing ovation. Bong Joon-ho’s Okja also received a four-minute standing ovation.
But how does a film live up to such a reception when, nowadays, the extreme has become the norm? It feels as though we must either love something or completely despise it.
I recently made the nearly four-hour flight from Toronto to Mexico, a relatively short distance, but you wouldn’t know it based on the reaction upon landing. Every passenger decided that wheels touching runway was an opportunity to burst into applause, so cacophonous, it could have been mistaken for engine trouble. Every face broke into relief, as if the sheer act of clapping was not to congratulate the pilot on a job well done but to say, “Oh thank god, I made it, I’m not dead yet!”
My body felt more fear and frustration in anticipation of this rolling applause on the return flight home than any midflight turbulence. The pilot had one job and he did it. When your waiter gets your order right, do you applaud? What about when you remember your keys?
From plays to concerts, people offer rounds of applause regardless of whether or not the performance was the least bit deserving of such a reaction. Go to a Tuesday matinee, and as the credits roll, there will often be people putting their hands together despite neither the cast nor the filmmakers being present. Who are they applauding in this instance?
Yes, there is nothing more Scrooge-like than to condemn applause – a gesture meant to do nothing more than congratulate its subject. But why is it so hard for people to accept that not everything deserves such a reaction? It’s supposed to be primal, an almost universal sign of approval. Not only does the proliferation of ovations create an unwanted obligation for others, it also downgrades the level of appreciation we’re capable of expressing when the extraordinary actually does occur. It just doesn’t seem right that the pilot who barrel rolls an Airbus to safety on the Hudson River should receive the same level of gratitude as the person who lands a passenger jet on the Pearson tarmac.
Until I have the opportunity to applaud something truly exceptional, the only people receiving an ovation from me will be those who remain seated and remain a little stingy with their gratitude.