Theories and Professionals

More movie talk. Taken from something I wrote a few months ago in a discussion. I could give a context to the points I'm arguing, but the piece stands alone well. It's not necessary.

The ability for anyone to make independent films at little cost is making film less about theories and ideas and more about directness. The young filmmaker who wants to just emulate his favorite filmmakers can do so and these days has a better chance to make it in the film industry because of it.

Even if he goes to film school he will have little pressure to understand historical theories. The school will focus on the technical while making every student only take a few classes about the theories and ideas about film. They won't have to be fully integrated in this education because their graduation will mainly depend on their short films. Thing is, most people don't want to understand those theories anyways. Scholars have made sure to make film a deft art with a lot to learn that it is becoming more the art of specialists instead of amateur fans and enthusiasts.

Learning about the art of film isn't just reading the newest books about film like it was in the 60s. It's reading a whole array of books that develop ideas and theories and multiplies them into numerous different disciplines and concentrations. In literature you have to be a specialist. You can't read every great book. There isn't enough time to do so. In film you can watch every great film, but now you can't read every idea about all those films.

But film isn't unique with this problem. In the late 50s jazz developed technically to be so complex that it went from being the trendiest thing at a college like Harvard to something only for specialists. Students at Harvard grew to love folk music because it was simple and its pleasure was immediate. The history of music since then has been that music has developed the means so anyone can play it and succeed at it. Most indie bands these days aren't challenging anything. I'm always shocked that the White Stripes are so praised but yet I can re-produce Meg White's drumming with relative ease and I have almost no experience in drumming. The garage band mentality rules.

The idea is to keep it from ruling in film. Film needs to have film artists who are professionals and have a serious mentality toward their subjects. To me, Wes Anderson is at best good candy. He just makes light and entertaining movies, but because he has style to boot, people put him up on a higher level. He doesn't deserve the praise. It's a lot easier for an up and coming filmmaker to emulate Wes Anderson than it is for them to emulate Michelangelo Antonioni. Nobody wants to take on the largeness of his ideas. They want to make films that seem like they curb the mainstream but really have the immediate pleasures of Hollywood.

I have a feeling I'll continue to be more and more the contrarian all the time with how far things are dwindling. Movies will always be mass entertainment, but serious film may become a regulated art form like painting, poetry and serious theater.