Leave it to 36-year-old Ari Aster to pull a Scorsese and tell us that the cinema he loves so dearly is in its final days.
No, really, that’s what he told Eric Kohn in an interview published today on IndieWire:
“Film seems to be dying. So few people go to the theater for small films or even medium-sized films, but then records are being broken for these giant tentpole films. It’s not like people aren’t going anymore, but the audience has changed. I don’t really feel like I have my finger on the pulse on anything because the films I love are…”
He trailed off, then continued. “It’s not that they’re diminishing in number. They’re still being made,” he said. “They’re just not being supported by audiences.”
Hey, Ari — you’re preaching to the choir. Do I believe, as Scorsese famously said a few years ago, that “cinema is dying”? Not completely. It could just be cyclical. However, I do believe freedom of expression is dwindling.
Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create.
Today, big studios, film writers, critics, journalists, believe that virtue, not content or talent, matters more. Any dissenter is cancel-cultured, doxxed, and deplatformed. That’s the bigger problem. This infestation of strict ideology that keeps showing up in both mainstream and non-mainstream filmmaking.
How can an artist possibly thrive in this environment? So far, the majority of artists are remaining silent. There are exceptions and those exceptions are making the movies that matter in this current age. There needs to be more of them, not less.
Yes, Aster’s excuse that tentpoles have taken over isn’t far from the other truth when it comes to the “death” of cinema. Millions of young cinephiles are detached and comfortable in solitude. Many suffer from prolonged adolescence. The popular movies of today are a result of that.
At the end of the day though, it comes down to the ideology-infested times we live in and not necessarily the immaturity of today’s blockbusters. Breaking out from the hive-mentality is now a must for any artist who wants to create genuinely interesting art.
Is “The Exorcist” truly the greatest horror film ever made, or has time crowned a new champion of fear? Maybe it’s “The Shining,” ‘Texas Chainsaw,’ “Psycho,” or something entirely unexpected that still keeps you up at night.