There was a dustup last fall over an op-ed by Martin Scorsese in the New York Times and his earlier interview with Empire magazine. Hardly surprising! With the exception of his own delightful Hugo and his tireless World Cinema Project rescues of global film history, Scorsese is known for his own brand: a cinematic realism of hard streets, hard men, and hard mob battlegrounds, always set in specific pasts New York, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Boston and always etching the DNA of masculinity onto the screen with unfailingly precise craftsmanship.
Why, though, was there such a rush to call Scorsese to judgement, with sides shaping up for or against superhero movies? In fact, though, media attention at the end of was typically more focused on the films being touted for the Oscars and Golden Globes than on the infrastructure of the industry. Oh, and on one other thing: the impeachment of a president. And that is where I began to discern a much bigger problem.
In a year of rising fascism, climate collapse, and massive demonstrations, the playlist of movie contenders was stunning: The Irishman, Marriage Story, Joker, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Ford v Ferrari, Little Women β¦ well, you get the idea.
Cinema, writ large, has become a wonderful way to reshape the past; television, to escape the present; and Facebook, to determine the future. The cinema is in danger of completely abdicating its responsibility to its own society and historical moment, turning aside from the very real power that adheres to screens and narratives.
The U. A determination to focus on genre, production values, and performances is, although traditional, hardly laudable, for if there were ever a genuine, to-the-barricades moment, this is it.
