The Shrunken Cinema
8 March 2004

I AM big. It's the pictures that got small.
- Norma Desmond

It's always an interesting sign when the first thing you feel a need to do upon starting a new project is explain its title. I don't say it's a good sign or a bad sign, you understand. Just ... interesting.

Frankly, these pages of somewhat off-plumb film essays have the name "Shrunken Cinema" partially because smallcinema.com was already taken. But I'm glad it turned out that way. Upon reflection, I think a SHRUNKEN cinema is more accurate; "small cinema" is passive and leaves out the important fact of how it BECAME small. It leaves out the blame.

I am referring to you, sitting in your living room, watching films on your television. And I am referring to myself. I am referring to all of our peers, and the public in general. We are what shrank the movies, us and our enormous televisions and our DVD players - and more of us are contributing to that shrinkage every year. I don't plan to have grandchildren, so I will content myself with telling other people's grandchildren that, yes, I was alive and watching during the period when movies - in the sense of going-to-a-theatre-and-looking-at-a-big-screen movies - died peacefully after a long illness.

I may be premature. The theatrical moviegoing experience may not ever die completely, or it may die much later than I think it will. But it seems clear that the decline is not imaginary. When people talk about films not being what they used to be, perk your ears up and pay attention. They are not just being cranks.

Mind you, I do not always feel consumed with guilt about this. For one thing, the movie theatres are a rigged and very expensive game. I'm not entirely clear why major film companies continue to act in their own worst interests by playing the game of money the way they do it. I don't approve of the astronomical amounts some actors get paid, and I don't approve of willingness to pay it. I don't approve of movie companies then needing to take such a large chunk of the ticket revenues that the theatres starve to death. I believe the mantra of Hollywood should be "make it cheap and make it interesting."

Unfortunately, it's difficult to cheaply make the sort of films that still reliably draw the only people who can be trusted to attend theatres regularly: Teenagers. They like films with lots of noise, light, explosions, and special effects - none of which are cheap. Sometimes I feel a responsibility to try to improve this paradigm by giving my patronage to smaller, quieter films meant for grown-ups. Other times I feel like it's far too late for that and I should just opt out of the game as often as possible and let the whole thing decline and fall without me.

Actually, I like films with lots of explosions too, and unfortunately these are still the best to see in a theatre, where the whiz-bang portions can be displayed to optimum effect. I also like small, quiet films but - here's the problem: I like watching them at home much, much better.

I make a very strange audience. I lack a certain amount of patience. It's not a short attention span per se, although I'm sure I have one of those as well; it has to do primarily with the nature of the material. There are some types of characters and situations that just bore me to tears every time, no matter how well done they are, and others that are guaranteed to make me squirm in my seat and want to run screaming from the theatre.

This makes some films - the ones without explosions - a very bad risk in a theatre, because if you've ponied up a second mortgage for your uncomfortable seat, you become reluctant to abandon ship (and thereby admit you have blown your cash on a dud). I know because I have walked out on a film in the last decade (it was Being John Malkovich, and that's a story for another day), and I was amazed at the courage I had to muster to do so, even though I felt as though a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I finally did it.

On the other hand, at home you have the freedom to get up and go pretend to get a drink during the scenes that make you uncomfortable (if you are watching with someone else), or hit the fast-forward button and skip the agony entirely (if you are watching alone). This automatically makes certain films more interesting, easier to gamble on. And, of course, the Power button on your remote control is simultaneously the greatest advantage and the greatest weakness of watching a movie in your house. What are you losing, anyway? A three-dollar rental fee?

This is also the greatest weakness of home viewing because, frankly, the bar is too low. It's way too easy to tune out or turn off, not just when you absolutely need to, but also during times when you should be paying more attention. It's difficult for movies to absorb us as completely in the home as in the theatre; there are other things competing for our attention. The lighting, the seating, the distance and size of the screen, everything that in a theatre screams I AM THE MOVIE. LOOK AT ME is missing in the home-viewing experience.

- - -

The point of all this is not to bury the movies, nor to praise them, but to bring to your attention, however obliquely, the crucial fact: We don't watch movies the same way at home as in theatres. We CAN'T. Yet, even as the home experience becomes the primary means of seeing films for most of us, almost no film essayists or critics are writing from the perspective of the home viewer. These writers are, almost unanimously, purists who prefer to bury their heads in the sand and insist that if you are not seeing a film in the theatre, you are not really seeing the film.

Well, I am not a purist, and I don't believe in denial. I say you ARE seeing the film, so don't let those folks worry you too much about what you might be missing. However, you should also bear in mind that you, at home, are probably not seeing exactly the same film they did in the theatre.

I'm not talking about editing. I'm talking about perception.

I saw a film called XXX in a theatre. I liked it at the time (and I will talk about it a little in a future essay, when I dissect Bond films). My spouse hated it, absolutely hated it. I didn't think it was Oscar material by any means, but I felt it was nicely put-together, fast-paced, reasonably compelling eye candy, which is all I expected from it.

A few months later, when it became available on DVD, I rented it and watched it one night when the spouse was out and I needed some mild entertainment. Again, expectations were low, but this time, the film failed them. The scenes which I thought were amusing were not so amusing, and the pacing wasn't as even and fast as I had recalled. It dragged. The film had reduced itself to a number of reasonably nifty set pieces/stunts, and a whole lot of nothing in between.

Some of it had changed because I was seeing it for the second time; I generally suspend disbelief so completely the first time I watch something that I don't notice the flaws ... until I go back and look again. But some of it had changed because of the home-viewing environment.

There is a good and bad side to Short Attention Span Home Theatre, and both sides are exactly the same. (Sort of Zen, isn't it?) Being able to speed past or tune out when I don't care to focus on what the film is doing may allow me to watch a film that I wouldn't dare try to sit through in the theatre; it may also make it more likely that I will see which parts of a film don't stand up to close scrutiny. On the other hand, it may also induce me to lose patience quickly with a film that demands/rewards a fair amount of it.

The home theatre means that Lawrence of Arabia, a film critics love and I have always felt was tedious, is now something I can enjoy because I can skip to the good bits and dodge past the hours of lovingly photographed sand; but it also means I no longer give Cabaret the respect it deserves because I often find myself in too much of a hurry to watch it holistically and just run through the musical numbers I like. It means that a slow mood piece like Lost in Translation is now within my purview but that a slow mood piece like Citizen Kane will never have its former grandeur for me. It is a completely different game, with a different set of rules.

These essays are meant for the home viewer. Although they may talk about seeing films on the Big Screen once in a while, no film will be "reviewed" here until it's been seen on DVD in the shrunken cinema at least once. It is the small-screen viewing, not the big-screen one, that is the focus. Sometimes, the essay will be about seeing the film many times - because it is a special quality that rewards repeat viewings, and that's the stuff of which DVD collections are made.

Again, purists will not be especially rewarded. I don't like sacred cows and I don't have a problem with just wanting the Good Bits, especially if the spaces between the Good Bits are tedious. If you are looking for the grand, old-fashioned movie experience, you won't find it here; I don't believe in it.

It's dead. It died a long while back. And it's time to move on to the way people actually watch movies nowadays.

Long live the shrunken cinema.

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