You have to hand it to Martin Scorsese, he’s relentless in his criticisms of the state of cinema today. However, this time around he’s not even shooting darts at Marvel, but more the franchise invasion at the multiplex.
In a fascinating new interview with The Guardian, Scorsese opens up about the desperate situation theater owners and audiences currently face, and the threat that certain films play in that. Superhero films are mentioned, but he’s more concerned about “the state of cinema” in the broader scope of the term.
Scorsese begins by stating what we already knew, but it should be mentioned again, he went to Netflix for “The Irishman” because no other studio wanted to shell out the cash to produce the epic. However, he then admits that he went to Netflix because he is at the tail end of his career and would rather settle than fight to have a full-scale theatrical release (or at least that’s what I gathered). In other words, it’s better to just make a movie and hope it gets played on the big screen than to fight the losing battle with greedy studios.
“Obviously, we have been discussing this a lot, that theatres have been commandeered by superhero films – you know, just people flying around and banging and crashing, which is fine if you want to see it,” Scorsese said. “It’s just that there’s no room for another kind of picture. I don’t know how many more I can make – maybe this is it. The last one. So the idea was to at least get it made and maybe show it for one day at the NFT, maybe one day at the Cinémathèque in Paris. I’m not kidding.”
He then brings up how it is unfair to have every mainstream movie screen in the country attached to loud action pictures resulting and how smaller-scaled personal films (he mentiones “Lady Bird” and “The Souvenir”) barely able to keep up.
“Just because a film is commercial doesn’t mean it can’t be art,” he explained. “What has consumed the theatres is product. A product is to be consumed and thrown away. Look at a commercial film like ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ You can watch it again and again. So the question is: how are we going to protect the art form?”
Scorsese does say it’s not just indies. More specifically, he refers back to his own experiences just a decade ago and how “The Aviator,” “Shutter Island,” and, even, “The Departed” might not abe to get made today":
“Now, you don’t have to like the picture, but you couldn’t get ‘The Aviator’ made today,” he said. “You could not get ‘Shutter Island’ made today, even with me and Leo [DiCaprio]. ‘The Departed’ got made despite itself – the star power helped. We realized when we were taking this project around that the doors are closing. So what’s going on? I looked over at the theatres right down the block – 10 screens showing the same picture.”
Now that Scorsese has taken his ire away from Marvel and more broadly into the heart of the American blockbuster, there is a lot of more to chew on and his message less now less blurry in the process. He is concerned about the art form more than anything else. Hope he continues to fight the fight, we need him.
“The Irishman” is available on Netflix now.