The Four Kinds of People

When it comes to movies there are, by my best estimation, four kinds of people in the world. The first kind considers the motion picture industry to be nothing more than a speck on the map of humanity. These people rarely, if ever, watch movies in any format (theatrically, Blu-ray, DVD, etc.). They feel that they have better, more productive things to do than sit in front of a screen for a couple hours. Ironically, these very same people will generally set aside time to view programs on network television that generally waste the very power and potential this visual medium was created for (HBO's original programming is an often glorious exception). These people probably and unfortunately, in my opinion, represent the majority.

The second kind are those who go to the theater on occasion, know the names of a few actors here and there, and may even be caught discussing a movie with friends. However, while these people may enjoy watching movies now and again, they by no means pretend, or care to pretend, that they are movie buffs. In my eyes, as a nearly fanatical cinephile, this group is alright. Sure, more often than not they may appear to have poor taste, but they don’t pretend to be anything they aren’t. If they’re going to criticize a film, other than the most basic “good movie” or “bad movie” comment, it will probably be related to the fact that there was too much butter on their popcorn or there wasn’t enough ice in their 40 oz. Coca-Cola. In other words, these folks just don’t take movies all that seriously. They can enjoy them, they can discuss them in simple terms, but in the end, movies don’t really mean anything to them, and they can admit it.

The third group is the worst of the bunch, and I used to be one of them so I’m speaking from personal experience. This breed fancies themselves to be huge movie buffs. They buy Blu-rays or DVDs often, they discuss movies regularly, and they might even have an extremely nice media room devoted to the experience. The problem is this: they are phonies. How does one spot a pseudo-cinephile, you ask? It's pretty easy. The pseudo-cinephile will limit themselves, willingly, to the point of having no clue what movies really are, or what they can be. They usually refuse to watch silent films even if they’ve never seen any. They rarely, if ever, watch movies in black-and-white, or even in color if produced before 1970. They don’t believe that animation can tell a mature, adult story, as it’s to be used exclusively for “kid’s stuff”. They also fail to understand that motion pictures are a universal language, made in numerous countries of the world. In other words, they don’t watch foreign films, and usually it's because they fear reading subtitles or they’re downright racist. As if that's not enough, having whittled the “worthy” films down to about five-percent of those in existence, these people also pick and choose between genres! Some say they “don’t like horror,” for others it’s, “I don’t like Westerns.” For others still it’s, “I hate romance movies.”
 

Furthermore, these people tend to possess little knowledge of film directors (the movie industry’s equivalent of a novel’s author, a painting’s painter, or a song’s composer) unless their name begins with Steven and ends with Spielberg. Nor have they any clue about cinematographers, composers, writers, etc. These are the people that make a movie happen. For group three, however, it’s usually all about the actors. Don’t get me wrong, I respect actors as much as any film buff, but they are only one piece of the puzzle with a single purpose: to serve the director. Tom Cruise said it best when he admitted, “film is a director’s medium.” Mel Gibson has stated that he prefers directing to acting because it gives him more control to tell the story his way. Moving on to vicious extremes now, Alfred Hitchcock said, “actors should be treated like cattle,” and Robert Bresson’s style treats them as “models” or “puppets”.

Despite their necessary talents, actors are chess pieces to be manipulated by the filmmaker. Proof can be seen in the career of the wonderful Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. He made well over one hundred films, but his greatest work as an actor was always found in the same place; the sixteen pictures he made with director Akira Kurosawa. Mifune himself said, “I am proud of nothing that I have done other than with him.” Actually Mifune made some pretty good movies with other directors, but Kurosawa was able to make masterpieces (Ikiru in 1952, Ran in 1985, etc.) without Mifune. So who was more important to whom? Great directors make an actor better. Period.

Alas, it is apparent that the people of group three seem to think "the actors make everything up as they go along,” as Joe Gillis cynically states in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950). At any rate, trying to talk sense to these people is like trying to help someone who can’t stop gambling or drinking. They are obsessive in the belief that there is nothing wrong with them, and that they are well on their way down the yellow brick road of cinematic truth. Nonetheless, they will forever be the joke that real cinephiles laugh about. My advice to them? Take it to the next level or join group two and stop pretending.

Now for the fourth group: the true movie buffs. Their Blu-ray collection likely spans from the earliest days of cinema to the present time. No country that has ever produced a film is left out. Why? Because in almost every country where films exist, there exist films that are great. Of course, bad films are made around the world too, but that's a given.

Movie buffs don’t pick and choose between genres either. A decent example would be the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Not only is the picture foreign, but it’s also a fantasy created in the Chinese idiom. People seem almost weightless as they fly through the air, walk on tree branches, or run along rooftops in the film’s many spectacular action sequences. This could, potentially, turn off those who are not accustomed to the wuxia genre. However, should one look at Crouching Tiger objectively, it is clearly telling a traditional story in an unconventional way. It is a movie about characters, with the recklessness of youth as a part of the tale, and unrequited love as another. The very same story could have been told in an American fantasy, or even, perhaps, an American drama. Simply because it wasn’t, and because it is, in fact, a Chinese film where people can fly, is no reason, on its own, to dislike it. This is what the true cinephile knows. He/she is open to the styles of other cultures, and is aware that, in the end, humans are humans; any story from any country can, for the most part, be related to by the people of another. That is actually one of the beauties of film, and indeed of any art form; the ability to transcend cultural barriers.

The cinephile also gives credit to the director as the “author” of the film that appears up on the screen. Thanks to the French film theorist André Bazin and François Truffaut, the French director and critic, this was given a name back in the 1950's. They called it "auteur theory" which means that, despite the collaborative nature of filmmaking, the director is the creator and his vision is paramount. Auteur theory has had its critics over the years, including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, but I am a firm believer in it. There are exceptions, of course, particularly when the directing credit is misapplied. This happened often in the silent era, when the films of Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, and Harold Lloyd often gave directing credit to others, when all evidence makes it clear these three men possessed, and exercised, full creative control.

There is simply no more accurate way to determine whether a film may be worth one’s time than to consider the filmmaker. A current favorite of mine is Alexander Payne, the writer/director of Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), and Sideways (2004). Though his latest film, The Descendants (2011), is arguably his weakest, it was still quite good. I went into it with certain expectations based on his previous work, and those expectations were met, for the most part. It’s all about track records. Granted, even directors can slip up, they’re only human after all, but this method remains preferable. Seeing a film because of an actor often results in a great deal of disappointment. Let's take Tom Hanks, for example. One can end up at such extreme ends of the quality spectrum as Turner & Hooch (1989) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).

It’s the same for writers, if indeed the writer isn’t also the director. One can not measure their interest in a film based on the screenwriter, because even the best screenplay can be butchered by a bad filmmaker. Hell, even actress Monica Bellucci, of all people, said, “For me, the most important thing when I make a choice is a director and then, a script. If you have a script that's not great, and a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who's not good, never, never are you going to have a good movie. So, for me, the most important thing is the director and their vision."

A recent filmmaker with a very unique style is David Fincher. The dark, dank, and perspiring environments of Alien 3 (1992) don’t look very far removed from those of Seven (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011). Also, the way his camera chases victims in the alien’s point-of-view in Alien 3, spinning upside down and gliding along the walls, isn’t far off from his later moves where he sends the camera through walls, ducts, and wiring in Fight Club and Panic Room (2002). My point is, it's a good thing if one enjoys a director’s personal style since it is their imprint, or stamp (not an actor’s, nor a writer’s, or even a cinematographer’s), one will see on any films they’re involved in. If one enjoys Seven, then one will most likely enjoy The Game and Fight Club.

I mentioned that cinematographers don’t always leave an imprint, and I feel the need to elaborate. Granted, cinematographers are the ones actually shooting what is on the screen. They have a vast working knowledge of the way lighting works and how the right lens can mean the difference between success and failure in a scene. I have an immense respect for cinematographers, just as I do for actors and writers, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand. It was even the legendary Gregg Toland who taught Orson Welles most of the ins and outs of the medium. Sven Nykvist, Gordon Willis, Kazuo Miyagawa, Emmanuel Lubezki, Toland, etc. are some phenomenally talented examples. Still, the cinematographer, like the actor, functions as a tool to be used by the filmmaker. The director sees what he wants, as a picture in his head, and aids the cinematographer in selecting angles, how much light to apply in the scene, and very often what lens to use as well (though I suppose this might piss off a veteran cinematographer).

One of the better examples I can think of is the case of Asakazu Nakai and Kazuo Miyagawa, who both worked on Kurosawa pictures at points in their lives. Both are very respected in their field, with Miyagawa often being considered the best ever from Japan. The problem is, Takao Saito, another cinematographer, stated that Kurosawa was extremely easy to work with because he knew exactly what he wanted in every aspect of the shoot. He told the cinematographers precisely what was needed of them, leaving little room to improvise. This is why all of Kurosawa’s pictures look wonderful, regardless of who shot them. In the end, as talented as those cinematographers are, it is Kurosawa’s presence that really creates everything from the quality of the images to the performances of the actors.

Needless to say, it’s the same situation with editors. Even when the director doesn’t do the editing himself, he is either present in the editing room or approving what the editor is doing. For the record, since I seem to be mentioning Kurosawa a lot, he did his own editing most of the time and was considered by many to be the greatest editor in the world. At any rate, the end result, what you actually get on the screen after months of hard work from various collaborators is, without debate, the director’s vision.

Another test to determine the real cinephile from the phony? The real cinephile will get what I'm saying here; the pseudo-cinephile will likely get defensive. The other two kinds of people are off the hook on this one because they probably aren't even reading this. If they are, they likely didn't make it this far because they simply don't care. Not caring at all is fine. It's halfway caring instead of caring all the way that frustrates me.