on the classics...

I love movies. Watching, reading about, studying, making, experiencing. If we have a uniquely American art-form, that it. Not that all movies can be called art, obviously. Go see anything directed by Michael Bay, Paul Anderson, or shat out by the morons at Happy Madison productions. Yes, lots of movies suck. Most, if we’re being realistic. But at its best, cinema moves us in a way paintings and music simply can’t touch (and yes, I know that’s heresy). Studio art is strictly visual, music strictly auditory. Limited sensory stimulus means limited mental engagement. We can appreciate a Renoir or an Ansel Adams or Beethoven, study and intellectualize all we want, but there is nothing visceral about these actions. And let’s be real, humans are adrenaline junkies. Nothing makes us happier than the flight-or-fight response ramping in a setting we intellectually understand to be perfectly safe. Go see Planet Earth in Imax, then tell me if Renoir gives you the same thrill. 

Now, the none of you still reading might be wondering why I’m saying all this. I went to see Prometheus with my girlfriend a few days ago. Fun movie. Shit script, as others have discussed much better elsewhere, but Ridley Scott is in full-on asskicking mode with the visuals. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend and made the mistake of explaining the look of the film as Caravaggio painting the 22nd century. I stand by that comparison, but he basically scoffed at the idea of modern Hollywood producing anything to rival a master painter. My question: why the fuck not? Have we intellectually regressed to the point that nothing we make now can compare to the classics? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to point out and mock the problems with our society. I also thank my lucky stars every day to have been born at a time when I can reasonably be expected to see eighty years old. 

The past is past, people. It was good, foundational, and now its dust. Open your eyes and see some of the beauty surrounding us. Accept that what we have now is worth something, and maybe we figure out a way to keep evolving instead of looking backwards all the time.