While watching La Dolce Vita last week, one thought was always in the corner of my mind: why are old movies so indecipherable? Has storytelling progressed, or have movie-goers become dumber? To give another example, I didn’t even know what to make of Kurosawa’s version of Gorky’s The Lower Depths. Mark and I attempted to watch it but we had to give up not far into the movie (he left before me hehe). Also on my list of weirdos/pioneers (take your pick): Stan Brakhage and Godfrey Reggio.

Perhaps the grammar of film has changed? Movie-making is not as mature an art as writing, after all. What was once understandable is obscure now.

Should films be easy to understand? From a commercial perspective, I think so considering how expensive films are. The very structure of film almost dictates it; the viewers are held captive in a cinema with no option of rewinding to comtemplate a challenging scene. Thus the basic story has to be understandable in the first viewing. Unlike a book, which you can reread at leisure, you have to pay to watch a movie twice—something that people do not do as a matter of course.

Digital technology has the potential to change the status quo by enabling producers to make movies for less, and thus take greater risks. Risks like alienating the audience or exploring niche subjects. This happens to some degree, but then what? They languish for lack of a distributor. Again, this is where technology may come to the rescue. If cinemas won’t show the films we want, we can stream them off the Internet. Not as satisfying as watching it in the cinema, but you can’t have it all, yet.

The dilemma with film is between treating it as an art and as a commercial product. Hollywood tries to do both, leaving more towards the latter. Their marketing gurus say it is more lucrative to make a few blockbusters than a lot of little projects so that is what they produce. The blockbusters can then subsidize riskier projects like those readers of this blog might enjoy.

Maybe it makes sense to churn out a potboiler before embarking on one’s magnum opus?