Cavemen of the Multiplex: The Struggle to Consume Cinema Properly

Recently, I attended a screening of Nicolas Winding Refn film “Drive,” starring Ryan Gosling, and, while I experienced a wonderful story about the struggle for normalcy in the face of brutality, a far more important life lesson was learned from the silhouetted heads that filled my theater – the majority of moviegoers have no idea how to take in a film.

Now, before we continue, it should be noted that we’re not discussing simple poor theater etiquette. The problem here is something more cerebral and most likely the actual catalyst to why that warm glow of cell phone screens have become so common place in the shadows of your local theater. What we’re looking at is the moviegoing populace’s inability to consume film as an art form or the challenges that it brings.

Deep into the second act of “Drive,” we find Gosling’s character, the Driver, heavily mixed up with two different factions that push him far out of his comfort zone. The first is a merciless mob boss and his men, who spill blood without remorse, and the second is the Driver’s neighbor, a woman he has fallen for and silently sworn to protect. In both cases, director Refn takes us out of the normal conventions found in cinematic storytelling (at least in American film) and forces his audience to experience these moments in ways that they were neither expecting or comfortable with.

For example, when the quietness of the film takes a sudden and shocking turn in it second act, depicting several moments of graphic and brutal mob violence, the majority of my theater found themselves laughing out loud in that “can you believe this” tone, subsequently shirking off any responsibility towards actually engaging with the horror that had been brought forth. Also, as the Driver and his neighbor looked longingly at each other in silence for periods greater than it takes some rom-com characters to meet and then “hit the hay,” my pack of theatergoers were fidgeting as if they had dumped their popcorn in their shorts. “Do something!” one patron yelled out to the screen as others flipped open their phones to do God knows what.

So why does this sort of thing happen? What makes an audience laugh at gore and dismiss subtlety? Simply put, the need to relieve tension. Whether of a violent or sexual nature, today’s audience seems to only be able to take so much before they break. This is natural. The body itself seeks to kill tension and laughter is one of its greatest weapons. By firing up and then cooling down your stress response through a chuckle, you increase your heart rate and blood pressure and bring about a calming feeling that allows you to be physiologically less effected by what your are experiencing. This is fine in everyday situations, but certainly a deterrent to society’s ability to consume art on a more emotional and gut level.

But film is a baby of an art form, at roughly 150 years old, and the biggest obstacle towards better consumption of what it brings to the silver screen is simply mankind’s immaturity with the medium. Though we have set up ways as a culture on how to properly observe a painting or piece of music, we are still Cavemen when it comes to cinema- simply dragging our clubs into the multiplex and, for the most part, taking in films made by a system that doesn’t mind keeping us at our Neanderthal stage. Because of this, it is only natural for people to be frustrated when a film doesn’t just spoon feed them or goes against their previous assumptions of what film can do. These are growing pains and, with films like “Drive” or even Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” as another current example, our culture is forced to expand their minds to what they are watching if they venture to better appreciate the process that is going on.

So there is hope. Take for example the art of theatre, both plays and musicals. When Sweeney Todd cuts the throat of another victim or Blanche and Stanley stare at each other, ripe with passion, no one in the audience lets out a laugh or begs them to move on. To be quiet and watch the action has become a part of how we consume theatre and, as time goes by, hopefully we will see cinema find its own way up the evolutionary chain and a maturing of its consumption will take place. Only time will tell.

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To stay up to date on all of Nathan’s posts about the art and industry of cinema, check out his Facebook and Twitter pages.

Does Rotten Tomatoes Hurt the Cinema Experience?

In August of 1999, Senh Duong launched Rotten Tomatoes, a website that gives easy access to a variety of film critics and averages out their analysis on individual films to a single numeric percentage- deeming each motion picture featured either “fresh” (positive reviews are at least 60% of the pooled critics) or “rotten” (positive reviews are less than 60% of the pooled critics). Today, Rotten Tomatoes has grown from its humble roots (pun entirely intended) to become the biggest aggregate film-review website on the internet, garnering over 12 million viewers a month and drawing its percentiles from more than 450 online and print writers.

Though only twelve years old, Rotten Tomatoes’ impact on Hollywood is certainly evident as the scores they lay out can practically send people running to or fleeing  from the multiplexes and, for filmmakers, this simple website can be like an emperor at a gladiator game, holding out his thumb to either save or kill their careers. But, while some consider Rotten Tomatoes’ success to be a helpful aid to moviegoers and a proponent for society’s continuing need for film criticism, others suggest that the simplicity used in deciding a film’s quality and its grade-like final percentage score may just showcase the mold growing in the website’s own process.

As its opposers have claimed, Rotten Tomatoes main issue seems to stem from its rather black and white way of delivering final judgment towards a film. Either “fresh” or “rotten,” there is very little room left for context or discussion to why one film might be better than another besides the final percent scores and even that is tainted by the fact that there is no standard amount of reviews to weigh everything against. This means one film can have a few reviews and another hundreds but, in the end, their scores compare them as equals. This hardly seems to make Rotten Tomatoes the great movie aid to the undecided theatergoer that it seems to be on the surface.

Also, actual film criticism doesn’t really factor into a film’s end score as they are based on the number of positive reviews a film has received and the critical strength of these pieces are ignored. This means a film could be “100% fresh” without gathering any real praise simply because it hasn’t received any outright damning feedback.

But, beyond the more technical aspects to why Rotten Tomatoes may not be as great as it seems, there is a ripple effect to what it accomplishes and this might just in fact ruin the entire film watching experience. For we must all ask ourselves, “Is it actually justifiable to rate any film with a single numeric entity and could this culminated score based on simple math actually make us critically lazy as a society or, at the very least, biased towards an opinion towards a film well before its opening credits even roll?”

A personal story. For years I had been one to check up with Rotten Tomatoes before picking a film to spend my money on and, nine times out of ten, they’ve steered me right. There is a reason their formula is so popular. I could also be heard saying to friends who would defend the newest explosion by Michael Bay that I had no interest in his film simply because of its critically low “tomato rating” and that no other consideration was necessary. I was wrong. My use of Rotten Tomatoes had created an apathy towards actual film criticism and developed thought. All I needed was a final percentage score and I was eager to either root for or jeer against any film in question. In fact, I even began speaking of films as if they were on the stock exchange. “Did you see the tomato score for such and such? It went down three percent today!”

Somewhere along the line, I realized that my experiences at the theater were starting to feel different. Though I wouldn’t say I had a bad time at the movies, everything suddenly felt preprogrammed. I would laugh at a film not because it was funny, but because Rotten Tomatoes had decided it “fresh.” I stopped scooting to the edge of my seat if a thriller had been deemed “not that scary” in the small blurb Rotten Tomatoes puts with its scores. I had, in fact, stopped experiencing films altogether. For my opinions were now being handed to me before I had ever entered the theater. If a film was “fresh” I expected certain things and, if ”rotten,” a set of others. I had ceased to go in with a blank page and see what the film’s story wanted to paint on my brain- it had all become connect-the-dots.

So I gave it up. No more Rotten Tomatoes. Now this certainly didn’t mean I was suddenly in line for the next “Transformers.” My tastes for cinema had not changed they just weren’t defined by a percentage based on a website’s opinion about a critic’s thoughts. Now, whether a film was good or bad, I could now know my opinion was based on the information I had personally gathered about a motion picture.

So, does this mean film criticism isn’t necessary as we should base all our thoughts on what we ultimately experience? No. There are a few film critics whose opinion I take because I believe we share similar views and values when it comes to the quality of film as art, but I treat these writers as I would any friend who had already seen the film before me. Listening to these seasoned movie goer’s opinion is one thing. Basing your feelings on a calculated percentile is another. But, when it comes right down to it, they are both opinion, but not my opinion, for that is now ultimately decided by me alone when the end credits roll, the lights go up, and I throw that overpriced popcorn tub away.

As a society, we must be wary of treating art as something that we can judged and labeled like a pig at the state fair. Though Rotten Tomatoes is certainly the largest offender, the website Metacritic is also guilty and the likes of Entertainment Weekly love to grade a film like its a pop quiz. The fact is all films, even the bad ones, deserve an audience who, in the end, think for themselves.

Final note: In May of this year, Rotten Tomatoes was sold to another movie-oriented website, Flixter, which is itself owned by a little motion picture company called Warner Brothers. If that doesn’t rate as “rotten” I don’t know what will.

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To stay up to date on all of Nathan’s posts about the art and industry of cinema, check out his Facebook and Twitter pages.

Huntington University Alumni Profile

So my alma mater, Huntington University, has written up a small article about my career and my time studying and teaching at the school. It’s a fun little piece so check it out here!