While Martin Scorsese‘s new movie “Silence” offers a look at a crisis of faith, it would seem the director himself is currently having a crisis about the state of movies. Earlier this month the director admitted he didn’t watch much contemporary cinema because the films didn’t hold much meaning for him, and in a new chat with Associated Press, Scorsese elaborates on the kind of moviemaking that is fading away, if not disappeared completely.
“Cinema is gone. The cinema I grew up with and that I’m making, it’s gone,” he said. “The theater will always be there for that communal experience, there’s no doubt. But what kind of experience is it going to be? Is it always going to be a theme-park movie? I sound like an old man, which I am. The big screen for us in the ’50s, you go from Westerns to ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ to the special experience of ‘2001‘ in 1968. The experience of seeing ‘Vertigo‘ and ‘The Searchers‘ in VistaVision.”
He has a point. Anything that isn’t a tentpole, or an Oscar contender, is increasingly playing in limited release, with many audiences who aren’t in major markets left to watch them on VOD or Netflix. As Scorsese notes, there was a time when everything from dramas to thrillers were seen as big experiences, but these days, the idea of cinematic spectacle only seems to be attached to blockbuster movies. As for the notion that TV is where enriching cinema is headed, Scorsese doesn’t buy it.
“TV, I don’t think has taken that place. Not yet. I tried it. I had success to a certain extent. ‘Vinyl‘ we tried but we found that the atmosphere for the type of picture we wanted to make — the nature of the language, the drugs, the sex, depicting the rock ‘n’ roll world of the ’70s — we got a lot of resistance. So I don’t know about that freedom,” he explained.
Hmm…sounds like there’s an untold story behind the collapse of “Vinyl,” HBO‘s hugely expensive misfire that was canceled after one season. Hopefully that tale emerges someday.
As for the future, Scorsese isn’t entirely pessimistic and suggests that the Trump presidency could spur a creative rush like American cinema saw in the 1970s. We’ll see….
“Silence” opens on December 23rd.