Defining Art Cinema in a Modern World
Art cinema is often defined as an artistic or experimental work expressing symbolic meaning through the medium of film. It is ambiguous, aesthetically rich , complex, and sadly it’s often defined as commercially unfit for the mass audience.
I first want to make an important distinction between experimental works like the short films by David Lynch, Maya Deren, Andy Warhol, and films like Un Chien Andalou. They are art cinema, but they are purely experimental pieces working within the high art aesthetic in the purest sense. They are both art and experimental. We understand them as having their own clearly defined category in the world of cinema.
With films like Under the Skin (2013), Mulholland Drive (2001), The Great Beauty (2013), The Tree of Life (2011), Anomalisa (2015), Moonlight (2016), and The Neon Demon (2016) is the line between art cinema and ‘other’ (commercial) films being moved, or possibly, blurred? This short list of films were popular and each was rather groundbreaking in their own respective ways. Were they massive commercial successes? Not in the Big Studio sense. These kinds of films, this kind of cinema, is still very niche in every sense of the word. But that niche is massive, and growing. It can be hard to classify these films, we feel a need to classify everything into boxes as we all know, so where do these films fit? I still consider them to be art cinema. They also fit under the umbrella of indie films, cerebral dramas, and think pieces on societal issues. They bridge this space between commercial films and art cinema. Yet, for the most part, they remain unpopular (compared to commercial films), or worse, unknown to the masses of the film going public. These are simply not films mass audiences go to see.
I saw these films at my local theater, in my small college town, so why this void, if I have access to them, why aren’t they becoming more popular? When I went to the theater to see these films the theater was almost always nearly empty. I also understand how film distribution works and how company’s choose where to show their films and all of that business jazz that surrounds theaters and films distribution. I understand that company’s do not give films like these large promotional budgets, and they get limited theatrical releases. But in today’s world, with countless streaming platforms and On-Demand services, these kinds of films are still failing to breach that niche. I am in no way saying that company’s like LD, Village Roadside, a24, Open Road, Focus Features, or The Weinstein Company should go the way of large corporate giants. They need to keep doing exactly what they have been doing, which is producing beautiful and important cinema.
So, what does all of this mean for modern art cinema? It is certainly evolving, becoming more universal, and overall I don’t think there has been a time when art films have been more readily available in such a variety of ways. I can watch 8 1/2 off of my smart TV using Amazon Instant Video, or I can order films from websites like The Criterion Collection or The Cohan Media Group. I go to my local Barns and Noble and I can buy magazines like Senses of Cinema, Sight and Sound, and of course Film Comment. And yet despite all of this availability, modern art film is still segregated into it’s niche, however massive that niche is.
Full disclosure, I’m a film student with a unquenchable drive to read about, study, and watch as much film as I possibly can. So I run into this collision of tastes (commercial vs. non-commercial films)often in my daily life. I’m told those films I watch are weird, too emotional, upsetting, boring, and my personal favorite response is “I don’t want to think when I watch a film, I just want to be entertained”. I understand this is all a question of taste in the end, but why do films like the one’s I mentioned above continue to be shrouded in the veil of ‘difficult’ and ‘art house’ cinema? Take, for example, visiting an art gallery. You go around and look at all the different styles of painting from surrealist to Dada to cubist, and realism. We might not understand the purpose and meaning of all of these paintings, but we certainly gaze at them with deep appreciation and awe. Why is it that films like Mulholland Drive and Under the Skin don’t receive the same kind of admiration from the mass public as those paintings do? Both painting and film are art, both are complex, you can enjoy them even if you don’t fully understand everything about them. They are not all that different, and yet in eyes of some they clearly are different, unreachable even.
From where I’m standing art cinema is flourishing, readily available, and popular among certain crowds. This kind of cinema will continue to flourish, this is not my concern. My concern is the continually upheld idea that these kinds of films are ‘difficult’ and inaccessible. This is simply not true, we might be talking about a more intellectual form of entertainment but it by no means is inaccessible to the masses. Art cinema in today’s world is simply a different kind of cinema, it’s not commercial. In many ways the distinction is as simply as that, one must consider the connotations that go along with something that is defined as commercial or not however. Let’s bridge this gap in taste, let’s not be afraid to think deeply and to be made emotional by films, if you open yourself to them you might be surprised by what you unearth.
“Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.” — Martin Scorsese
