The Follies of Film Narrative

Film is, predominantly, a medium. Some may argue for its’ worth as art; I would argue for its’ worth as art. But, like music, and theatre, and opera, it is a medium. It is a relatively new medium, when you consider the rich lineage of plays and the way that music has been a part of most societies since societies began. It is, analysis could proffer, the actualisation of the kinds of stories passed down for generations, scrawled on the walls of caves, myths willed into truth, living on the collective minds of all those listening.

This I find to be an ultimately unfair, yet not entirely unexpected treatment, of film as a medium. My question is; why is film so often treated as a visual companion to the linear novel?

I love film for the treasures it can yield when someone interesting has set their mind to it, yet I am not in disagreement with that great sycophant Guy Debord in his somewhat damning assertion that “most films only merit being cut up to compose other works”. It is sad that film seems to only warrant notice when it is in service of some plot or other (and as Jungian archetypes can tell us, the number of those plots and devices is not dissimilar to a patch of ground slowly falling away piece by piece; they are limited).

I turn to films such as “Man With A Movie Camera”, the works of David Lynch, Jan Svankmajer, the early Dadaist works (which I especially implore you to track down on YouTube) as examples of what film can really do when we divorce it from the silly notion of it having to tell a story. Film should be a pure thing, untethered from anything but it’s own forward trajectory, and some theme or other; a symbiosis of theme and form, in tandem. If this sounds like too much, then that’s a pity, since countless auteurs have proven that it is possible.

None of this, you would get from a trip down to the local cinema. The conflation of cinema and marketing has, to me, been ruinous for its general worth as a medium (as indeed it is for any medium when business and profit margins become involved). Merchants such as Roger Corman, who cannot see a film outside of it’s worth as a money-spinner, have effectively killed it dead. We joke and laugh about atrocities such as “Sharknado”, but we go to see it, and more get made; who is the joke really on?

But do not think that this is film snobbery. A great many renowned filmmakers have for their whole lives peddled garbage, and we have willingly queued up to see it. I talk of Spielberg, Lucas, Corman; shrewd and calculating businessmen whose films add nothing to any sense of wider culture outside of themselves. They can be entertaining in and of their pre-ordained moment, and some it is necessary to see due to their worth amongst the populace, but they keep is in bondage, away from genuine works of art which might have some kind of further ramification, that point to something other than themselves.

This is sad; we should not fear experimentation and boldness, but rather expect them. Consider this a short call to arms, a mini-manifestor for those disillusioned with a medium capable of greatness but so often reduced to a cipheresque curio, telling us where to look, what to say, what to think about. We should choose what we think about, and not be limited by pop-culture conventions.

Anyone who has witnessed the raw power of a Haneke, a McQueen, a Truffaut, and countless others, will attest that they leave others in the dust. Let Hollywood be left in the dust; sieze the reins and see something new, not something rehashed, reheated, regurgitated.