“Two-thirds of all feature films ever made have been made since the turn of the millennium”
I read an astonishing statistic the other day (care of Stephen Follows obvs) that two thirds of all feature films ever made have been made since the turn of the millennium. One of the artefacts of being (hopefully) halfway through my life is that films made in the middle to end of the last century take on a false perspective. The distortion bends both ways. Filmmakers wear their influences with pride, often obsessively so. Producers’ eyes too are always on the rear view, trying to mirror past successes. At the same time runs the collective sigh that everything is worse now and thanks to streaming and computer games and social media and AI, the audience have moved on and no one cares. So it’s stimulating to think, a quarter of the way through this century, most films are recent.
Don’t take this as bromide. I don’t discount that this might also mean that more than two thirds of all films ever made aren’t that great. I think I’d probably lean towards that view whenever they were made. Equally I’m not saying things aren’t hard. I am though perhaps saying that hard/easy is the wrong scale. Who out there ever finds it easy to make a film? Sure Luca Guadagnino seems to knock ‘em out bimonthly but a quick dip into his interviews finds him longing to retire and saying “I used to see making films as a kind of paradise and I now realise it’s kind of a hell, to be honest.” Disingenuous? Perhaps a little, but however else you imagine the process of filmmaking to be I doubt it’s ever not hard.
The sheer volume of production says nothing of creative quality or cultural impact but it does speak to the fact that someone somewhere thinks someone wants this. Yes it’s a vocation and passion blinds us. Yes there’s no fool bigger than those fooling themselves. But I was recently at a talk at a film market and everyone was sagely agreeing that no one wanted to watch films anymore and I looked around the room which was rammed to the rafters and thought again that the numbers and the sentiment didn’t add up. If we all really agreed that this was over, why were we all there? A mass delusion?
Film is the art of illusion, the focusing of a million falsehoods into a single point that looks like truth. Appropriately the economics that underpin the art are also famously a trick of the light. We all know the basic sleight of hand of hollywood accounting where the pay-out of profitability is constantly kicked down the road by a hundred tiny considerations. Ticket prices are too high, cinemas are failing, distribution companies struggling, production companies rudderless and Oscar hopefuls are living pay cheque to pay cheque. Maybe.
I’m in too deep but I think if I had to pick a problem facing cinema in the next 25 years I’d still plump for complete social collapse caused by environmental trauma. But then, I’m an optimist.