On the deadness of cinema

A discussion on the question of whether the cinema is dead is going on over at the new Guardian culture blog. By which they mean the bricks and mortar rather than the actual films.

I posted my own worthless opinion, highlighting my particular disdain for so-called arthouse cinemas in particular (and multiplexes). This was characterised as "narrow-minded" by Don, who claims to work in one, "for nothing, purely for the love of cinema."

Which, I'm afraid, is exactly what I was talking about. I didn't want to get into one of those silly internet slanging matches, but it's precisely this impression that you are interrupting people who are having a good time with their little clique of arthouse cinema buddies that makes arthouses uncomfortable. Or is it just me?

I freely admit that I'm a grumpy old git, but I just don't want to go to a place staffed by volunteers who are there "for the love of cinema." Please don't do me any favours. It's just a horrible experience to pay to enter a place staffed by people who treat punters as inconveniences, getting in the way of their passion.

If the staff are there for the love of cinema (which is to say, to get in for free), why are the customers there? Because they enjoy being ignored by fluffy-jumpered yeah-nos who obviously think their "love of the cinema" outscores "paying to get in" in the Top Trumps game of culture and consumption?

The whole concept of "art house" itself is part of the same Top Trumps game, an artificial marketing construct designed to allow one group of people to set themselves apart from another. The art house film is as subject to crapness and knee-jerk convention as any other form of film, coded to flatter the delusional punter's intelligence. Take a film like Closer, for example, which is being advertised on TV at the moment (on DVD) as if it's some extraordinary, intense, life-changing film. In fact, it's a very very dull filmed play, unsuccessfully transferred to the cinematic medium, and featuring just 4 characters, who blather on for scene after scene in the portentous way of sixth form drama club productions.

But put it on in an art house cinema and people will troop along to see it, as if it mattered, and they'll put up with the boredom, because "art house" films are supposed to be boring, that's how you can tell how intelligent you are.

I call it War and Peace syndrome, named after the kind of people who try to prove how intelligent they are by reading the biggest book they can think of. And the biggest book they can think of is War and Peace.

If you're really intelligent, you can see the art in anything, if it's there to find. In Toy Story, for example, or in The Terminator, Deep Rising, Aliens, Roman Holiday, and all kinds of blockbusters, whether you like them or not. I've seen decent films in art cinemas. Hal Hartley's Trust was one I enjoyed, though I'm not sure I'd enjoy it today. On the other hand, My Own Private Idaho made me want to kill myself. But the implication of the art-house volunteers is that their cause is a worthy one, worth working for for nothing, that everything shown is by definition of a higher quality - a view I simply don't share.