Did you know that “Zero Dark Thirty” is already dead in the water in the Oscar race?
It was news to me too, not only because it’s the new consensus title amongst critics as the best picture of the year, but mainly because it’s already January 1st and I still haven’t seen it!
Kathryn Bigelow’s film is in a peculiar place this year as the most talked about movie of the year that no one has watched yet. Controversy over being Obama propaganda and an advocate of using torture in interrogation, “ZDT” has stirred innumerable debate amongst critics, Academy voters and Hollywood insiders, but it doesn’t release wide until January 11.
“Zero Dark Thirty” is still a sure-fire Oscar nominee if not a guaranteed winner, but the wave of discussion may have peaked too soon. Because Oscar nominations come out the day before the movie is released, the press may already have moved on by the time “ZDT” hits the Midwest. The general public can’t help but be way behind the curve.
“Zero Dark Thirty” is just one example of how movie culture is limping beside TV and music. With a wave of great movies this fall, critics were quick to declare 2012 a terrific year for the movies while simultaneously penning columns that declared cinema itself dead.
It sounds like an oxymoron, and no can seem to figure out why these movies with such rich critical discourse are being forgotten about in place of cheesy family movies and gargantuan blockbusters.
They can’t figure it out because they’re part of the problem. Film criticism has remained exclusive while intelligent discussion about other forms of pop culture has been effortlessly provided to the masses. We’ve resigned to the belief that people who are deeply interested in the movies will come looking for criticism while the rest just read for recommendations. We’ve isolated ourselves from the national conversation.
People can now watch TV and listen to music like critics. I can immediately stream Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” on Spotify and read Pitchfork’s review all on the day it comes out. I can watch the new episode of “Parks and Recreation” and read Alan Sepinwall’s review the next morning, if not within hours. And if I’ve missed it, I can watch it the next day on Hulu. In both cases, I can be part of the critical discussion as soon as the paid critics are, and I can have just as loud of a voice on my blog and on Twitter.
Here’s the life cycle for a critically acclaimed movie: The movie (let’s say, “Amour”) is released at X Film Festival (Cannes) to a few thousand people, many of them journalists. Journalists write recaps and reviews and gush about it in inner circles (Palme D’Or winner, record setting win streak by Michael Haneke). Six months pass, and the movie is released in maybe a few dozen theaters nationwide in the midst of Oscar season (three theaters in this case, on December 21). Blogs, The A.V. Club and those who live in New York or Los Angeles cover the movie as if you do have immediate access to it or as if it will eventually play in your state (you don’t, and it won’t). Critics write one review or think piece in a thousand as every movie fights for buzz. Maybe it gets a few first place recommendations on year-end lists, but mostly it’s relegated to the middle of the list behind titles you’ve actually heard of (seven 1st place votes and 5th place overall according to Metacritic). Maybe it gets nominated for Best Picture or wins Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars (both are toss ups), but you’ll watch it on Netflix Instant around the time that the 2013 X Film Festival is starting. Repeat.
Suffice it to say, it’s hard to keep up with the buzz. You have to be a certain level of committed to the movies to follow a film and its narrative all the way to its eventual wide release, and this gets us back to the idea of exclusivity in the movies.
How many people are going to become film buffs this way? The immediacy with which other forms of media are distributed is disrupting the way the movies are intrinsically supposed to be watched. And in the case of something like “Zero Dark Thirty,” the press is moving all too quickly for most to keep up. The controversy and excitement is there, but the content itself isn’t.
I bring this up as a warning because early this year, it was the music press that looked irrelevant by covering something with such embarrassing swiftness. Her name was and is Lana Del Ray, and in a matter of months, she went from the new queen of indie pop, a “Gangster Nancy Sinatra,” to being the whipping girl behind her debut LP “Born to Die.” After an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” the press was ready to bury her alive before her album had even dropped, and since then she’s fought her way back into the cultural consciousness.
In this case, the public proved to the music press that they should be the one leading the cultural discourse, not necessarily the other way around. As critics, we can be trendsetters and lead the discussion to places it otherwise wouldn’t have reached, but as journalists we should be covering what’s newsworthy to most, not to few.
In fact, we’ve had to play catch up in the last few years. Movies like “Avatar,” “Inception” and even this year’s “The Avengers” became such cultural smashes that critics had to return to these movies with think pieces and contrarian opinions long after their initial reviews had been published. We had moved on to arguably more interesting, better movies while the public rightfully realized there was more to be said.
The only time in recent memory critical discussion and audience buzz actually kept pace for a culturally significant film was in 2011 with “The Tree of Life.” The movie won at Cannes and was released that same summer, and critics were writing lengthy analyses just as Sean Penn’s negative comments and an art house theater’s warning to patrons went viral. But that was an example of a movie that was met with as much vitriol as praise. When was the last time we had a movie that reflected the public and critics’ enthusiasm as thoroughly as “Breaking Bad” or Adele has?
I’m not sure how to fix this problem without a major overhaul of the market of the movies or the way we cover them. I know that much of it has to do with the intense politics behind getting an Oscar, so perhaps an earlier awards calendar and a system that didn’t market movies to press when they’re eligible and to the public when they’re economically viable would be an improvement.
There’s also the possibility that if we valued the movies themselves more than the hype surrounding them, it might lead to better criticism. The Internet is flooded with casting news, plot speculations and sequel rumors as though it were a new TV episode coming next week, not next year, and the movie almost never seems to match up to the anticipation. Matt Singer of Criticwire calls this “perpetual sneak preview culture,” and he’s made a New Year’s Resolution to amend this.
But neither of these things solves the problem that movies are made to be seen and shared in a theater at a set time, and we’re a culture who always wants their art on demand.
Should we have review embargoes on festival movies? Should we switch everything to digital if it means better distribution for indie films? Should we follow the lead of some studios and release movies like “Arbitrage” simultaneously in theaters and on demand?
I’m not ready to call cinema dead. The movies are too good for that. But unless something is done, we’ll have to accept that the people who really love the movies are an endangered species.
For more on this topic, here as always is the wonderful Jim Emerson, although I’ll confess that he’s the one who has claimed that amongst people who read criticism regularly, it is, always has been and always will be selective, which I don’t agree with. Forgive me for not finding what article he wrote this in.