Between Two Worlds

Here we are again. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest living American filmmaker, was asked what he thought of the Marvel pantheon of superhero movies that lately have so dominated the American movie industry. “I tried, you know?" he said. "But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”(1)

The Guardian report then pointed out what it need't have, that
"Earlier this year, Avengers: Endgame became the highest grossing film in history after topping $2.8bn at the global box office (fifth highest after adjusting for inflation). Eight other titles from the same studio feature in the Top 30 (when factored without inflation)."

Dragging in the head of Marvel Productions, Kevin Feige, to - feebly - defend his studio's lack of genuine critical approval and the conspicuous absence of any awards, the Guardian quoted him: “Maybe it’s easy to dismiss VFX or flying people or spaceships or billion dollar grosses ... I think it is easy to say that you have already been awarded in a certain way. Hitchcock never won best director, so it’s very nice, but it doesn’t mean everything. I would much rather be in a room full of engaged fans.” Feige may as well have said that his billions in profits are a far different kind of award for his studio's products.

It always amuses me when, no matter how stupefyingly wealthy people have been made by their work, whether it's the makers of superhero movies or J. K. Rowling or Andrew Lloyd Webber, they not only make occasional attempts to defend the quality of their work, but they also do something utterly counter intuitive: they do something they aren't at all good at - creating something radically different from their usual work. For instance, in 1982, Andrew Lloyd Webber interrupted his boring routine of writing one smash hit West End and Broadway musical after another by composing, of all things, a Requiem. It was inspired, so Lloyd Webber explained, by the death of his father. It premiered in New York in 1985, conducted by Lorin Maazel, with featured performances by Placido Domingo and Sarah Brightman, Lloyd Webber's wife at the time. New York magazine music critic Peter G. Davis set the tone for the critical reception that Lloyd Webber's Requiem received: "I never found much musical merit in Lloyd Webber's Evita or Cats, but at least those shows never had the nerve to masquerade as high art. The Requiem does, and it is depressing to see so much money and media hype squandered on such a pretentious and crushingly trivial hunk of junk."

More recently, in 2012, J. K. Rowling's novel The Casual Vacancy, her first post-Harry Potter work and the first directed at adult readers, was published. She told an interviewer (also at The Guardian): "I just needed to write this book. I like it a lot, I'm proud of it, and that counts for me... And, to an extent, you know what? The worst that can happen is that everyone says, 'Well, that was dreadful, she should have stuck to writing for kids' and I can take that. So, yeah, I'll put it out there, and if everyone says, 'Well, that's shockingly bad—back to wizards with you', then obviously I won't be throwing a party. But I will live. I will live."(2)

Of course, none of the reviews were completely negative, even if most of them implied that they wished Rowling would return to her wizards, because it was what they wanted from her. The book sold phenomenally well - for a "serious" novel, but far below the bar set by the Harry Potter series. So why did she need to write the book? Why is there this strange desire in commercially successful writers, composers, and filmmakers, for critical acclaim?

Now, Martin Scorsese, as critically revered as he is today, had to occasionally stoop to making a commercial film every now and then - if only to convince nervous producers that he was bankable and that it wouldn't kill them to allow him to take risks and make a personal, serious statement in the medium he loved. Scorsese knew that if he hadn't made The Color of Money in 1986, he couldn't have made The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. Or if he hadn't remade Cape Fear in 1991, The Age of Innocence would never have been green-lighted. He's made a few more commercial films (The Aviator, Shutter Island), along with a few long-awaited, cherished projects (Gangs of New York, Silence). At least Scorsese knows the difference, knows that movie audiences are mostly cattle that follow the herd wherever it goes.(3) He has learned the hard way what George Orwell pointed out seventy years ago, that "POPULAR success ... does not seem to have any connection, positive or negative, with critical acclaim." This doesn't signify that the coincidence of critical and popular success is impossible. When it does occur, as when Saul Bellow's novel Herzog became a national bestseller, it's a happy accident. I applaud Martin Scorsese for using his position to speak out against the prevailing appetite for crap and stand up for cinema - a word that has a completely different meaning for him than it does for technicians like Zack Snyder and James Gunn. Let them cry all the way to the bank if they don't like what Scorsese has to say.

But ask Kevin Feige (who is, after all, a businessman who uses movies to make his fortune) if he would exchange a few of his billions for some of the hard-won prestige that Martin Scorsese now carries. We're all much better off that he sticks to the mechanics of his superhero movies and not dabble in serious waters. "There is one advantage to being shallow," Thomas Hardy wrote. "You cannot drown there."



(1) "Martin Scorsese says Marvel movies are 'not cinema'", Catherine Shoard, The Guardian, 4 October 2019.
(2) "JK Rowling: 'The worst that can happen is that, everyone says That's shockingly bad'". The Guardian, 22 September 2012.
(3) The irony is that there is a middle range of films that Scorsese makes, like Goodfellas and, from the looks of it, The Irishman that manage to be both excellent and popular.