Competing Cinematic Ideologies

To be or not to be...a true film enthusiast. An article from Blog Catalog presents their top ranked films of the decade. This list, according to the website, has been culled from numerous online surveys. This ostensibly infers public opinion. Following this article is another which elaborates on Film Comment's list of the "Top 150 Films of the Decade". For those who don't know, Film Comment is a magazine which covers the gamut of cinematic tastes, from old to new, from foreign to domestic, from narrative to documentary films. It is published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is considered the "official journal" of film society. I had a hunch that the two lists would be disparate in nature and to my absolute non-surpise, I was correct. This ineluctable disparity is the perfect example of the friction between dominant and fringe ideologies.

Let's start with Blog Catalog's list. The top THREE on their list are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This definitely smacks of the influence of the lay filmgoer. Don't get me wrong, these are noble films, each a beguling blend of artistic and technical virtuosity. However,they are slightly saccharine in tone, purposely so to make it more palatable for the average moviegoer. Ok, let's look at the top three on Film Comment's list: Mulholland Drive, In the Mood for Love, and Yi-Yi. Now, I know all three very well and their respective directors. They are all masters of their craft and their films are truly unique and powerful. But I bet if I asked random people from the public, let's say people from our writing class, they would certainly not have heard of any of them - an instant "deer in the headlights" look would return my query. The directors are, respectively, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, and Edward Yang. And I just know that everybody and their grandmother can name the director of the Rings trilogy, right?

As I perused both lists, I noticed a preponderance of Academy Award winning films on the "populist" (online) list and mostly independent and foreign films on Film Comment's. The former had films like the Best Picture winners Slumdog Millionaire and Million Dollar Baby. These choices are indicative of the power the multimedia/awards shows has on the lay public. Advertisements which aggrandize "Oscar-nominated" films are ubiquitous and insidiously ensconse themselves in the recesses of the lay public's psyche. As a result, we start to associate "Academy Award" with words like "grand" and "epic" and "dramatically brilliant". We then adopt the populist, or the dominant culture's, ideology that Oscar-winning films must be great. Everyone is victim to it, including me. Look at the Rings trilogy. People came out in droves to see these films because they were marketed as the "second coming".

Film Comment's list contained many independent film successes such as Elephant, Royal Tenenbaums, and Before Sunset. All these films were made for shoestring budgets compared to that of the Rings trilogy. The directors of these films, Gus Van Sant, Wes Anderson,and Richard Linklater respectively, have stayed out of the mainstream spotlight (excepting Van Sant for his film, Milk). Their films have an independent film sensibility- cerebral/ contemplative tone, stylistic directorial flourishes, and brilliantly incisive/witty dialogue. To the lay public, "independent" is a gentle euphemism for "fringe","esoteric", or "artsy-fartsy". The word frightens them, alienates them. Independent films are not big budget or formulaic in nature, actors sometimes work for scale, and they do not have wide distribution. They are on the periphery but this is what invigorates true film enthusiasts. They know that when they watch an independent film, they will see something out of the norm, maybe a little odd and eccentric, but continually fascinating. Even when an independent film fails artistically, one can still feel the passion of the filmmaker in every frame. Their earnestness, their striving for originality and deeper truths, is what usually sets them apart from more "mainstream", more marketable films such as the Rings trilogy. Let's face it, those films are spectacle. They're not probing for deeper human truths. The mantra for independent filmmakers is what the legendary director Jean-Luc-Godard coined the art of cinema: "Truth at 24 frames per second".

My rhetoric may seem elitist in tone, but it is not. All the films I mentioned in this article, from both the "populist" and critics' lists alike, I have in my collection. I don't solely watch independent film. I like mainstream films as well,as long as they are done effectively and with heart. I think Slumdog Millionaire and Million Dollar Baby are masterpieces. They both are powerful statements on the human condition and the resiliency of the human heart. The film enthusiast, like me, just yearns for a redefiniton of what a good film is in the eyes of a standard filmgoer. A good film can make you think, can be non-linear, contrapuntal, in its construction and tone. It doesn't have to be formulaic with a neatly wrapped, happy ending. Sometimes, you may have to contemplate how the characters' lives/story will unfold after the credits roll and after you have left the theatre. Great films, both mainstream and independent, don't give you all the answers. Instead, they provoke you, demand that you provide them. And they certainly don't have to win any damned Academy Awards or break box office records to earn your respect and gratitude.