Andrew Klavan, PJM: Andrew Klavan: ‘I Read This Year’s Oscar Nominations and Thought, the Movies are Over’
I read the list of this year’s Oscar nominations and thought at once, “The movies are over.”
This is not to say that the movies are bad. Not to say that the people making them are untalented. Not to say that some films don’t make money. It’s simply to point out that the form is sinking into social irrelevance.
Every art form has peaks and valleys of relevance. Shakespeare could say of stage actors that they were “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time,” whose portrayals could destroy a reputation. Percy Bysshe Shelley could declare with a straight face that poets were “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” James Joyce could have a budding intellectual novelist proclaim — with youthful grandiosity but not without legitimacy—that he was setting out on his career, “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Which stage actor — which poet — which intellectual novelist — could say such things today and be taken seriously by anyone but his doting mother?
So too, there was a generation of movie makers—several generations—who brought the dreams of the world to life. Neal Gabler in Empire of Their Own talked about how movies once “colonized the American imagination,” and in the same vein Geoffrey O’Brien called film The Phantom Empire because it captured — in more senses than one — the way people thought and felt about their country and the world. But the list of nine Oscar nominees shows how far the art form has receded from its imperial moment. As John Nolte at Big Hollywood pointed out, only one of the nine nominees — The Help — was a major hit, and the films of the year that were major hits — Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class — weren’t Oscar-worthy. In other words, Hollywood is less and less capable of making important pictures of high quality that the general public wants to see.
In a wonderful post earlier this year, Nolte offered his advice for how to bring the movies back to full vigor: give us real movie stars, stop insulting America and Americans, emulate the NFL’s respect for its audience, etc. But I wonder if Doctor John might be writing a prescription for a patient who has already died.
Mr. Klavan, I must respectfully point out that unless your entire first parag. is simply to avoid controversy, the closing parag. completely refutes it, and well.
Hollyweird IS making bad movies; most of the people making them ARE untalented (and paid exhorbitantly for nothing); and how many of them, if any, ever make actual $$ I have no idea. You are spot on, tho, that J. Nolte has the right ideas.
My husband and used to take in 2-3 movies/month on our date night. We’ve stopped going because it’s hella expensive, and we don’t need to shell out mega bucks to be insulted, subjected to infantile plots & premises or language I won’t put up with in the groc. store.
After watching the movie “Sniper” with Mark Wahlburg four years ago, we quit supporting Hollywood completely. In it, they dragged out the tired old plaed-out contrived CIA-right wing-conservatives-Christian-racist conspiracy meme who are conspiring to assassinate a (yawn) black Presidential candidate and their headquarters was…where else?…Lynchburg, VA. since then we see plenty of movies – we buy only bootlegs. we still find good movies on occasion, but we are financially on strike from Hollywood until they renounce their Anti-Christian bigotry, their Anti-American propaganda, their hate, spiteful Goebellian use of their media in their attempt to try to brainwash the public.
I think you are correct in your sentiments but wrong in your practice. Knowingly buying bootlegs is wrong. It is stealing and that is not a Christian practice.
Agree with you re: bootlegs. Best to just go cold turkey on Hollywood. A total boycott of the toxic waste Hollywood produces would also cut off a major source of funding for the likes of Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, et al.
Well, I haven’t seen any of those movies – I don’t generally go to movies, but I was quite pleased that a couple of moviews that appeared to be for children had made the Oscar nominations.
Hollywood makes the popcorn movies for international audiences.
Hollywood makes the arthouse/indie movies for other people in the film industry, with the hope that awards will be garnered.
With both these audiences (international and film industry), the filmmakers have been able to insult and slander America and traditional American virtues, and not suffer penalties (financial or reputational) for it.
Folks, they are giving us the finger. And have been for decades.
If their business model sinks slowly into the La Brea Tar Pits of irrelevance, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Not sure the patient is dead. To me the patient is the movie audience.
Instead the patient is growing impatient with a doctor who keeps proposing surgeries that cause nothing but pain. Prescriptions that make the patient nauseous. The patient sneaks off and indulges in the remedies of days past. An afternoon on Turner Classic Movies with movies that didn’t hurt, didn’t make them sick.
Hollywood, the studios, the Keven Smiths and the Quentin Tarentinos of this world are the quack doctors. They are prescribing a course of leeches long after the patient is convinced that the medicine is worse than doing without.
My husband and I used to love going to the theater to see a movie. We rarely do that anymore. It’s painful and infuriating to spend good money and waste three hours on a weekend to hear Hollywood tell us what to think . The last movie we saw in a theater was “The King’s Speech”, which we enjoyed even though fealty to the historical details was somewhat skewed. Two others we liked were “Master and Commander” and “Amazing Grace”. “Amazing Grace” was panned by the NYT, which was reason enough for us to give it a chance. None of them are recent, which just reinforces my point about how seldom we go to movies. I also just realized none of them were set in America; maybe because we can’t stomach being force-fed disingenuous pablum about our own country and culture?
My reliable litmus test is to read or listen to blurbs of movie reviews and if they score high on my nausea scale I summarily reject the movie in question. For example, some pretentious idiot reviewer used this line to praise “The Descendants”: “It portrays life in all its wonderful, wounded whimsy”. That silly line, with its sophomoric alliteration, was a red flag warning us not to waste our time. We may go see “The Artist”, though.
I looked at the list of nominees and laughed out loud. I hadn’t seen any of them until I got all the way down to costume design, then I had seen one: “Jane Eyre,” which I didn’t particularly like.
I thought, “Wow! I guess I’ve given up on the movies completely! …No. Hang on. I saw ‘Captain America’ twice!”
Yeah, that’s what I want: a fun, tight story; a clean hero; and America the beautiful, dang it!
I’ve given up on the movies because I generally don’t like the violence, the sex, and tired, drawn out chase scenes. And the remakes and sequals. They’ve lost their imagination and creativity. And I refuse to support the Marxists among them: Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Jane Fonda, Oliver Stone (his son converted to Islam), etal. They mock and distort our culture, our government, and our military. They promote un-Christian values: promuscuity, excess violence, smart alecky kids, and homosexuality. In short, I don’t need them and I don’t miss them.
There’s a disequilibrium in quality. It’s not the quality of the filmmaking that’s a problem–it’s content. Partly it’s due to the steep gradient between red and blue America when it comes to politics and culture. Hollywood doesn’t know how to make movies for the heartland anymore. Beyond that, Klavan is right to point to Nolte (who I disagree with quite often, actually) about the quality of Hollywood stars these days.
There are good movies out there, but each has to be qualified in some way. Good action movies lack the necessary writing punch. Mainstream movies too free with making political sucker punches. Hollywood is clearly in love with its own wit, but doesn’t quite understand that to many of us they sound like petulant teenagers.
Hollywood could make good movies again if it tried, but that would mean broadening its cultural ideas. The climate simply isn’t right for that, and probably won’t be for some time.