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The end of the year is a time of introspection. Did I miss anything? What were the highlights of the year? Ah, the irresistible attraction of the Year’s Best Movies listings. That is how I ended reading the best movies of the year in De Standaard. Their critics describe each film listed as nothing short of a masterpiece. Something for the ages.
I have not seen any of them.
It is like I missed every single great movie of 2023. And none of the movies I saw and enjoyed were even mentioned! Like Barbie. Are these people telling me that I live in a parallel reality? Before the feeling of disembodiment could take hold, I needed a quick sanity check, before calling in the people in long white coats.
And, right there, at the 2023 box office top 10 most watched, not a single one of the newspaper’s best movies of the year.
The target of this newspaper, its goal or mission, is to inform the general public. If the list they publish are the “best” 2023 movies, then either the audience got it entirely wrong, they don’t know their public, or they don’t care. How can self-styled opinion leaders end up living in a reality which has absolutely no overlap with their target audience? Is this only for highbrow culture, movies, or…?
The message clearly given is that, this year again, “we” somehow did the wrong thing. We clearly went to see the wrong movies. Maybe that is Schadenfreude on their part.
We were told to watch Tar. We went to see Barbie. And the truly good movies of 2023 just fizzled out into nothingness. Even Martin Scorsese told us to go watch Tar, not Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Granted, we needed Variety to tells us how to understand the end of the movie, but still.
It sounds like we should not be entertained. But lectured.
Why does cinema have to be Tragedy?
Some movies are not meant to be entertaining. Sure. As a capture of life, movies are as diverse as our experiences.
M. Scorsese thinks that tragedy is the only legitimate movie genre. After all, he went all out on record explaining that a movie is about human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being. It seems to me that he got a bit emotional and released his inner Maximus at the circus audience: “Are you being entertained?”.
For sure, Martin Scorsese knows a thing or two about movies. Especially, if not exclusively, movies about the Mob. In New York. With Robert de Niro. When he is not Dirty GrandPa or getting a new baby. Or Al Pacino. When he is not getting a new baby too. Or Di Caprio. Who is not getting any baby, but busy replacing his latest girlfriend.
And where Martin lights the way, the critics dutifully follow. Remember the gushing reviews of The Irishman? But if it is the psychological and emotional experience of, say, Italian-American mobsters. Well… Male swaggering about looking all tough. Shooting people for realz. The epitome, the deepest level of human complexity.
And if it is not a “name”, then pour drama, add a hint of death and/or disease. Preferably both. Let simmer. Call it “bittersweet” more than outright “sad”. That could be misinterpreted. Wait for the Palme, Oscar nomination or other.
Just don’t expect spectators.
Take Scorsese Killers of the Flower Moon. “Real” cinema. And few people to watch. I understand the frustration.
Tragedy, not comedy. Entertainment is for Marvel. Or comedy. Don’t Look Up. Barbie. Aristophane, Moliere, Chaplin or Sacha Baron Cohen?
That view of cinema is so contrived that De Niro himself made a career out of an entire sub-genre of self-parodies: The Family, Analyze This/That…
Cinema can be art, can be entertainment, even both at the same time
Where it gets really annoying, is the insistence of mainstream media of pursuing that agenda with their “best” movies list. It is as though movies still have to prove their cultural legitimacy. Look upon me and marvel at how obscure I can be.
Did you enjoy the Palme d’Or from Firghisiztan, shot in black and white? How many people want to watch it? Does that qualify as a recommendation to a general public you claim to serve?
How do you define “best” for your audience?
Let’s have a closer look at it. The below lists are taken from cultural authority outlets. Variety is the self-styled “Leader in Entertainment since 1905”. So much so that they had not only one, but two entertaining movie lists. Maybe to cover as many bases as possible. I just included one. For France, we have Télérama. They had a list of 23 movies not because there were only 23 good movies for them, but because we were in 2023…. Yeah, ok. The Guardian did not yet published the full list as they crawl the numbers up, but the numbers 8 to 10 were just telling enough. The Times had a paywall. De Standaard is a Flemish newspaper. Time magazine instead of the NYT which is behind a paywall.
Here goes.
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And now, the box office list of what the public really watched:
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The list above is where we actually spent our money – not intentions or claims, but behaviour as we say in market research.
There is no overlap.
Both lists have nothing in common.
There is no overlap between what people really went to see and what mainstream media is claiming. So what was your point already about best?
Of course, at the release of these popular movies, the very same critics will have sung their praises. After all, exclusive interviews and invites to the afterparty just don’t drop from trees. But it will not last longer than the PR campaign schedule. Come the end of the year, they change back to the pumpkins they always were. Entertainment. Missing some je-ne-sais-quoi or other.
The “top” movies were not review bombed, they just attracted no public
The Irishman of our man in the movies Scorsese was about the New York mob. With De Niro, Al Pacino and Pesci. But not Di Caprio, who did not ned de-aging. It bombed. Same with the Killers of the Flower Moon, his latest try, this time with De Niro and Di Caprio, without Al Pacino, New York or the Mob. Bombed again. Badly. Both “real cinema”, by definition. Not just “popular entertainment”.
Not like Once upon a time in Hollywood then. Which did not bomb. And it had Di Caprio. It did not have Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino. It did have a story. Actors. Entertainment.
As a writer, I understand the frustration of failing to reach your public. But this is not a plot, it is just that the general public wants to be entertained during his free time, with the activities he pays for. Surprise? So movies not designed to be entertaining just bomb because of it. Or because they are just bad. Shocking.
You can rattle your cage about review bombing, change or suspend the review system when it does not go your way, people will just know from trailers. People enjoy entertainment, comedy or not more than feature-length pontification.
Oppenheimer, not Killers of Flower Moon.
Barbie, not The Fabelmans.
Why should tragedy be the only legitimate cinema genre?
Go Asia, India, China, and you will see that the reviews, theatres and box office results are near perfectly aligned. And they can still roll out Crazy Rich Asians.
Of course, everyone should be able to express her/him/them/itself. Even Scorsese.
Just not at everyone’s expense. You create to reach a public. You build an audience. That audience supports you. And if you do not need an audience, then you are creating stuff for yourself. That goes for everyone. Or should.
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The gold standard is the French film subsidy system. It started as a mission to preserve a formerly vibrant local culture. It ends up in a system looping in on itself. And 50 years on, France is still in the eyes of the world,…. Edith Piaf and Casablanca. Which is not even a French movie. Better than Pepe the Pew, but just. Most of its current creation is on life support through grants, tax breaks, … and French media thumping the tub.
The French movie industry does not subsidise success as measured by popularity, but “culture”. A bit of circular thinking that. Just look at the list of Télérama recommendations shared above. Do you recognise any of them? The global box office gives us an accurate picture of the real France: Astérix and Obélix, rank 65. The rest? A zombie system where popularity is at best a second thought.
But it is not just France.
Belgium had Close in 2022. A movie presented as an international event. During the 2023 Oscar night, the director received a personal call from the national PM. The country stopped to watch the results. Actually, this is what we were told to believe. The numbers show a rather different material reality. The movie had a total take of around 5m dollars. Not enough to even put it into the top 200 if that is the case. And it did not get an Oscar. But who cares, it is was a Top 2022 movie, surely.
What does ChatGPT think?
For ChatGPT, no less, “Cinema is an art form that utilizes moving images and sound to tell stories, convey emotions, and communicate ideas to audiences”. Still, it quotes namely “audiences”. Something Scorsese forgot to mention.
But this never was purely about cinema, movies or even intellectual arrogance.
This yawning gulf between media opinion and audience in movies is just an illustration of the much wider unravelling of the credibility of our information systems. On the one hand a media establishment clinging to class reflexes and self-esteem that have hardly changed in the past 50 years. And on the other, an audience looking on, perplexed or suspicious, at being lectured with irrelevant information.
57% of French people are wary of the opinion of mainstream media. That’s how the president of the French National Assembly opened a recent conference she shared in a LinkedIn post. The video summary does not say if the reasons behind the distrust were addressed. What the media representatives immediately referenced was “verifying information”. Who does care about that if they have lost any relevance anyway?
Maybe looking also at how strikingly similar the media “best” 2023 movies are and similarly so far away from what people think, could be a start.
Because so much is available to so many, media has and will always have a role to play as a retailer of information. That means indeed picking and choosing, giving an opinion, listing and ranking. But not lecturing a public they see as an uncultured mass. That is where they would regain credibility.
And why not start with titles such as “our favourite movies” and not “the best movies”. Or maybe the saddest movies of 2023. Or even the Top 10 depressing movies of the year if they wish.
And then maybe work out why their personal favourites have been kicked off the stage and why the public is wary of their opinion.
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The post Did I Watch the Wrong Movies Again in 2023? appeared first on MNOI.