A movie, like any form of entertainment, should evoke an emotional response. So should a song, a fictional novel, or a good television series. A film shouldn't leave you sitting there, in a theater seat or on your couch, thinking, "Well, there are two hours of my life I'll never get back."
What's more, the first time you see a good film should leave traces in your long-term memory. I remember the summer of 1978, when I took a local gal named Roxanne - we called her "Foxy Roxy," for reasons that may be obvious if you remember the lingo of the '70s - to see a new movie, Animal House. Roxy and I laughed so hard our sides hurt. That was the only date we went on, but the movie was a great choice. I also remember going to see The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, with a different girl, who later became my first wife; that has a rather more mixed association in my memory.
Those movies made me feel good. The first one was funny. The second was a slam-bang adventure flick. I will say that only one movie has brought a tear to my eye, ever, and that was the end of Saving Private Ryan, when that old man looked at his wife, after reliving the experience of his World War 2 service and the admonishment of the man who had led the team to bring him out to earn all they had done. The old man said to his wife, the person who knew him best, "Tell me I'm a good man. Tell me I've led a good life."
Wow. That hit hard, and not just because my uncle was in the 101st in World War 2.
So what happened? A recent opinion piece in The LA Times (re-pubbed by MSN) by scribe Alixandra Kupcik asks some questions.
There was a time when Hollywood knew how to make audiences feel joy — leaving us lighter as we left the cinema than when we walked in.
Films today can still stir emotion, but the optimism they once offered has grown rare. Movies are more convenient than ever, with most stories reaching us through streaming — but the experience has thinned. The TV screen glows cold in our living rooms, now just one of many designed to distract us. We no longer sit in the dark beside strangers, sharing the same breath when the lights go down. The ritual has been replaced by access, and something vital has slipped away.
That "something vital" seems to have been the desire to entertain. Too many movies don't evoke an emotional response, or if they do, it's too likely to be frustration or anger. If they don't, it is because too many producers and directors, in movies and television both, just don't seem to have a good grasp of the art - or don't seem to give two hoots about the source material, going all in on "woke" horse squeeze instead. A great example: For many, many years, I wished for a film or television adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, an enormous, millennia-spanning series of novels that set the standard for what modern science fiction should be. Then AppleTV gave it a shot - and completely and utterly screwed it up.
Then there's the new and mysterious lack of imagination, the inability to come up with anything new, as evidenced by the endless stream of Jurassic Something movies.
Here's an interesting point, though:
As that experience disappeared, so too has the romance and tenderness that once lived in works by directors like Rob Reiner, Nancy Meyers, Nora Ephron, Sydney Pollack, Cameron Crowe, James L. Brooks, and Garry and Penny Marshall. Their films held on to that optimism without pretending everything was fine. Even afternoon light through a kitchen window could signal a turning point.
Studios now seem to chase only what appears most marketable, where big budgets, star power and box-office potential can outweigh the story itself. Everything feels heavy now, as if warmth has gone out of fashion.
Well, as far as marketable, they do have to make a profit, like any other business.
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But while I enjoy happy movies, I like some escape from reality, too. A movie doesn't have to be a feel-good film or a romance to make you feel as though sitting there for two hours was worthwhile. An action/adventure can do the same, with an inspirational hero winning against impossible odds, such as in both adaptations of Charles Portis's novel True Grit, and, I should note, it's Mattie Ross who is the real hero of both films. I also have a sneaky affection for the first two Expendables films, where they brought in an '80s action-star fan's dream team in a great, hard-hitting punch-out of a film where the good guys won.
Movies can inspire us. They can entertain us. They can raise us to anger, or they can make us laugh. But too many of the more recent films I've seen lately, products of the old Hollywood machine, just seem to leave me at "Meh."
Hollywood used to turn out wonderful films. Movies like Gone With the Wind, like Casablanca, like High Noon, inspired us. Movies like The Big Broadcast of 1938 and Some Like it Hot made us laugh. That's not happening as much today, and that's a sad state of affairs. But there are still a few gems out there, if you know where to look; I'm harboring a little cautious optimism for this upcoming film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, which I read as a young man. We'll see.
