Psycho. #1
In this first instalment of Animus' new advice column for cinephiles, Caspar Salmon addresses persistent rumours that cinema might be dying
Hi Caspar, do you agree that cinema is caught at a crossroads between inevitable oblivion and a fetishising, vanishingly niche culture that is sure to calcify it as an art form?
-Someone Who Exists, Extremely True In Essence
Hey SWEETIE,
People have been ringing a bell for the death of cinema for about as long as cinema has existed, and yet cinema seems to have always - just about - managed to survive through the years, bringing us such recent masterworks as Anatomy of a Fall (dir. Justine Triet) or The Beekeeper (dir., I want to say, Jason Statham…?).
I confess to some frustration with the way cinema’s saviours and evangelists, the people fighting the good fight for the art form that has fascinated me throughout my life - the saints, indeed, who struggle to preserve our common heritage of film, tend to be tedious finger-wagging pains in the arse, muttering to themselves about motion-smoothing or the way cinemas are temples or whatever. Cinema was never a sacrosanct art form; its first viewers watched films on old bits of sheet, and what’s more it fucking worked. Some of the greatest directors grew up watching old Technicolor masterpieces on black and white televisions smaller than certain modern-day sex toys - that, too, still exerted a power.
The dangers of streaming, and the rivalry of long-form television for our ever depleted attention spans, are important considerations for filmmakers and industry workers, but I do worry that the obverse - film list culture, and a growing fetishisation of the physical form of cinema, in so many exquisitely designed, fucking expensive box sets from the Criterion Collection - will cause film to become a dusty old museum. Film isn’t a charity! Film isn’t your five a day or the plastic bag charge! It isn’t starchy clothes on a Sunday in the third pew! It isn’t the Adoration of the Magi! Watch a film on your phone, dubbed into Spanish; pause a crappy Youtube recording of a classic so you can jerk off to Gregory Peck; see a film at the cinema if you have one near you, and let’s all give cinema the benefit of the doubt that it has a bit more life left in it, the strength to suffer a few more setbacks, to bend and adapt, and keep providing.
Send your questions anonymously to Caspar at this link, no personal information is collected.