We love to bring down oppressive regimes — at least in our films. What does this say about our ability to recognize our own situation regarding our desire for greater freedoms? Are we tapping our desire for change with the stories we tell? Are our artists as free to explore this desire for change as we think? Do they have to take the quiet road when walking that talk? If they are somehow oppressed, how and where is the oppression manifest? What can we learn by examining the work we made, distributed, and consumed this year?
In other words, if art is partially about showing us all that we can aspire to as individuals, communities, and a planet, what are our films telling us about where we should be headed this coming year?
Our examination shouldn’t stop there though. That’s just what being said, about what secondary expression is spoken by the primary. A real understanding is even larger. So many films are getting made. We are overwhelmed with choices of what to see, by the noise. But what isn’t being said in the process? What is the silence speaking about?
What subjects does the money forbid from the discussion? How do our artists have to sneak them in for them to ever be heard? Do we ever really get to examine what power really means? Are we force to survive on the shorthand of presenting advanced weaponry in our work? Do we ever get presented on screen what control or the lack of liberty actually means for those that suffer under its hand? Or is the wrongly accused a fitting stand-in for all the other limits that we suffer under? Is enough ever shown? Our are our senses deadened by the repetition of what is presented?
Think about it when it comes to the cornucopia we are given in documentary form: we get the suffering galore (and the triumph of resolving it), but rarely are we shown where our own fingerprints are in the means of the control. We (the audience and the filmmakers both) are trained to actually look away from the causes and believe that our empathy with the victims is sufficient.
When we look at the great movies made this year, what ones did we never get offered? And why? If only we could see those!
I had a blast at the popcorn movies I saw this year, be they on the big screen or on the small. And on one hand, my top “escapist” pleasures seemed to have no relation to each other, but on the other hand they were saying the same thing over and over again, and I couldn’t help but like what I was getting. The message they fed me was “revolt!”. The bigger the movie they were, the more they showed me that people are not happy with the current order. We want something else. We want to bring down our leaders. We have no trust in those in charge. We have no faith in the system. We want to see things in a different way. Time to upset the applecart. The dream machine said to wake up.
And the people responded by buying tickets… for the most part.
Snowpiercer. Guardians Of The Galaxy. The Planet Of The Apes. The Lego Movie. Lucy. Edge Of Tomorrow. Mockingjay Pt1. Citzenfour. And of course there is Selma, capturing a key moment in one of greatest social change movements ever and at such a critical time for the country and the world; if Selma doesn’t help us recognize the connection from Selma to Ferguson, how much the struggle for justice and equality goes on, what will?
What did I learn at the movies this year? I have learned that the wrong people are in control and they want to keep everyone else down. I have seen that the community must rise up. We are all but steps in the march of progress. We must make alliances across our diverse groups. Access new knowledge. Trust a different sort of leader. Keep on trying despite the setbacks. Crush the false construct. And speak truth to power.
In fact, the list that offered such lessons continued on, even when the audience did not come out as much. This year we did not just get offered Jimi Hendrix but we also got James Brown. I found both Jimi: Time Is On My Side and Get On Up each a blast — stories of leaders that threw down the old order and turned the world around. And in A Most Violent Year, I saw shades of Abe Polonsky’s Force Of Evil, in it’s metaphor for all capitalism being violence, crime, and brutality.
Most of these messages, mind you, were not so overt. I was waiting for others to take notice and pen this piece for me, but perhaps others were seeing something else when they watched what I watched. And none of these films really made me change my life. After all, they are only movies. Has The Global Entertainment Complex successfully learned how to commidify our dissent into popcorn flicks? Is our desire to resist nullified by quiet dramatizations on the big screen? And why did so many creative talents feel the need to put A Big Change up and out there this year?
It may seem like our artists are avoiding the important subjects at times, or at least struggle to and want a pass when they fail to, but maybe it is because they are not getting specific, but staying general, looking at the big picture, and seeing that everything has got to change, that everything will change, eventually. Maybe. Maybe not.
