Quality cinema offerings within reach, maybe
This year, 2018, concludes with a momentous decision, less a New Year’s resolution than a form of cultural surrender. I’ve decided to join Netflix.
Actually, after a few weeks of pondering the pros and cons aloud, it was the wife who took the plunge, signing up for a month’s ‘‘free trial’’. As if its regular fees were not already as cheap as the proverbial French fries.
Money isn’t really an issue with Netflix. It’s the principle of the thing. I run a DVD rental shop, one of three remaining in Hamilton. We’re a specialist operation, the poor cousin of higher-profile stores like Wellington’s Aro Video, Christchurch’s Alice in Videoland and Auckland’s recently closed Videon.
Such is our back catalogue and concentration of material in languages other than English, we are closer to a library than the oldfashioned franchise stores. Classic films and festival movies are not among Neflix’s traditional strengths. If you have an interest in the former, your options are soon exhausted. However, in 2018 the streaming site emerged as a major player in world cinema. It financed and controlled the distribution of Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, a Spanish language coming-of-age tale set in Mexico in the 1970s.
Easily the best-reviewed film of the year, Roma topped the respective lists of Sight & Sound, The Guardian and Time magazine. A considerable achievement given its limited theatrical run. In New Zealand, the window in which you could see Roma on the big screen was minuscule and you needed to live in certain areas. Three Auckland theatres were favoured, a couple in the capital and the South Island and one a piece in Tauranga, Taupo¯ and Napier. The Waikato missed out entirely. There are rumours that Hamilton is the country’s fourth largest city. A statistic wilfully overlooked by decision-makers north of the Bombay Hills. Ironically enough, this geographical slighting has played a part in our decision to sign up. No critic worthy of the name could get away with missing the film of the year. There was no local option to see Roma and Netflix does not release on the DVD format. It’s stream or be damned.
Other, equally noteworthy Netflix films were denied any kind of theatrical release. The Coen brothers – if not the finest filmmakers of the 21st century, then the most prolifically consistent – have made a pact with the small-screen devil. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs enjoyed festival premieres but was thereafter only accessible via the streaming site. Orson Welles’ final feature was completed with Netflix funds, 42 years after it was shot. Some of us had been waiting decades to see The Other Side of the Wind, dreaming of the day when stills glimpsed in books and lowquality Youtube clips could be appreciated in pristine condition, writ large.
Such visual splendour screamed out for theatrical exposure. No other 2018 release was as crisply edited, every frame a reflection of its director’s genius. Alas, big Orson was betrayed in death, as he was so often in life, reaching at best a home theatre audience, at worst folk who think ‘‘the cinema’’ can equate to images on a smartphone. Something even worse is being threatened in 2019. Martin Scorsese’s grand reunion with Robert De Niro, a gangster film called The Irishman, has been long in post-production.
With a budget of $140 million and cast that also includes fellow Scorsese alumni Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci, along with Al Pacino and our own Anna Paquin, The Irishman could well prove the director’s last hurrah in a genre he made his own. But will we get to see it on the big screen? Will we be able to purchase a copy, placing it on a shelf next to Taxi Driver and Goodfellas? The writing may well be on the wall for both DVD stores and private collectors. What the streaming revolution means for film preservation is less clear but the issue of ongoing accessibility is of immediate concern.
Not only are audiences denied the possibility of seeing masterpieces as they surely should be seen but their long-term availability is subject to the whims of the streaming provider. On the other hand, there’s always the possibility that the audience for more artistically challenging films could be expanded.
With Netflix fast becoming ubiquitous in New Zealand homes, quality cinema is within the reach of thousands, many of whom would never dream of paying to see anything at a theatre that wasn’t set in the Marvel Comic universe.