Netflix, Marvel, Brexit – and Weinstein: how this decade radically reshaped cinema’s heroes and villains
The long decade closes with no consensus on what we were supposed to call it (the “teens”?) nor about what ground has been gained or lost in the big cinema debates of the past 10 years. Steven Spielberg warned of a colossal evolutionary crisis in theatrical distribution, whereby the film business becomes over reliant annually on three or four big “tentpole” movies that will then crash, leaving us with the movie equivalent of 2008 or even 1929. And the tentpoles that everyone is betting on are the superhero films, which Spielberg warned will go the way of the western. Well, this hasn’t happened yet.
So a new hero/villain has arisen: Marvel Studios, which has enjoyed a staggering explosion of box-office popularity, blessed by cinema chains for providing surefire hits, but increasingly loathed by cinephiles for dumbing down the movies. Martin Scorsese, in his widely shared New York Times article, expanded his personal view that superhero films are just glorified theme-park rides without the individual artistry and humanity of real cinema.
But Scorsese created a controversy of his own by taking his new film to Netflix. Two of the best films of the year, Scorsese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, are Netflix products, released in cinemas for a short while and then absorbed on to the site to attract new subscribers and gratify existing ones.
And it’s not just Netflix. One of the best films of this year – and the decade – was Beanpole, by the brilliant young Russian director Kantemir Balagov; it had a handful of big-screen showings at the London film festival, then went straight to Mubi streaming. It’s an awful shame, although the streaming sites offer large-scale viewer access and hospitality to newer, younger film-makers. (And for independent arthouse films to exist only briefly in cinemas is nothing new.)
As for superhero films (Gen-Z westerns), there is no doubt that many studio executives are mesmerised by their bankability and less likely to take a punt on other genres of film. I have, however, written about tendencies that are more worrying: high frame-rate and “motion smoothing” on new TVs that can make films clearer, but flatter and blander, like daytime TV. As for cinema admissions, they are holding pretty steady at 170m annually in the UK, helped by the investment in the cinema-going experience – although the novelty of getting food delivered to your seat is surely a step too far.
In this decade, Hollywood woke up, or was rudely awakened, to issues of diversity and social justice by the #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo movements, driven by social media. Voting membership of the Academy has also been changed to bring in a younger generation, women and people of colour. Harvey Weinstein may be about to reach a deal in the civil courts, to the outrage of many, but Roman Polanski has faced a resurgence of discontent with his reputation. His new film, An Officer and a Spy – although favourably received on the film festival circuit – has had no UK showing.
The question of diversity (so long disputed by men of a certain age who wish to be congratulated on their courage in rejecting “quotas”) is far from answered, but new voices are emerging in Britain with fascinating and brilliant films. There is outstanding work from female British film-makers such as Carol Morley, Joanna Hogg, Clio Barnard and Rungano Nyoni – and elsewhere, great directors such as Kelly Reichardt, Anna Biller, Lucrecia Martel, Chloé Zhao and Debra Granik.
As for auteur cinema, some commentators have found it too bound up in male privilege. But great – even historic – work has come from Jessica Hausner, Mia Hansen-Løve and Martel, as well as established silverbacks such as Quentin Tarantino, Yorgos Lanthimos and Paul Thomas Anderson, whose most recent film, Phantom Thread, was the curtain-call for that extraordinary acting talent, Daniel DayLewis. From Asia, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho have continued to produce dazzling work. But if there is a big auteur whose stock is a bear market, it has to be Abdellatif
Kechiche, whose multi-part epic of sexiness, Mektoub My Love, is increasingly baffling.
The decade’s other great issue is Brexit – and it is remarkable how movies in the UK have failed to address it (although the new romcom Last Christmas, for all its ickiness, does mention the B-word and attempt to dramatise its attendant issues). From within the industry, producers such as Eric Fellner and Jeremy Thomas are railing against the woeful division that it is opening up, especially with regard to the free movement of people and equipment across the Channel. Brexit burdens film with a bureaucratic nightmare.
With the decade coming to an end, I am optimistic about many of the issues I wrote about to mark the half-decade, especially the way digital technology has enabled young film-makers to get their work made, and raise money for new work, through sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. I am less happy about the state of documentary. Five years ago, we were in the middle of a “surge”; now I am seeing documentaries that feel lightweight, sometimes almost negligible, often taking refuge in postmodern self-reference about the chaotic difficulties of making documentaries. Perhaps there are – at present – too many documentarians chasing too few genuinely strong subjects.
Britain has endured austerity for the past 10 years, so it is extraordinary how documentaries have not reflected this. It has been left to the eightysomething veteran Ken Loach (in partnership with the screenwriter Paul Laverty) to tackle the issue directly and simply with I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.
Perhaps the other issue is the nature of criticism itself. It is tiresome and self-pitying for critics to complain about social media – especially as social media has done so much to galvanise and invigorate criticism – but in the teens there was more retrenchment, more abuse. Along with a handful of other critics, I disliked Joker, the new origin myth movie for Batman’s great villain, starring Joaquin Phoenix. But whatever that film’s problems, it is incomparably more interesting and intelligent than its online fanboy trolls and hatebombers, though I was spared the misogyny that women writers experienced on this subject.
What is extraordinary is how threatened people still are by dissenting opinion, an aggressive neurosis that is probably intensified by the bizarre consensus machine Rotten Tomatoes and its meaninglessly pseudo-scientific ratings that paralyse the idea of considered analysis. Individual critical voices are what count; what count even more are individual film-making talents.
Perhaps there are – at present – too many documentarians chasing too few genuinely strong subjects