Roger Ebert, practically royalty at the Cannes film fest, is on to something when he talks about “real movies”:
We should start a Campaign for Real Movies. These also would not be carbonated by CGI or 3D. They would be carefully created by artists, from original recipes, i.e., screenplays. Each movie would be different. There would be no effort to force them into conformity with commercial formulas.
These notions took shape while I was viewing some well-made Real Movies I’ve seen this year at Cannes: Bertrand Tavernier’s “La Princess de Montpensier,” Im Sangson’s “The Housemaid,” Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s “Un Homme Who Crie,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Biutiful,” Oliver Schmitz’s “Life, Above All,” and Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry.”
These aren’t all masterpieces, although some are, but they’re all Real Movies. None follows a familiar story arc. All involve intense involvement with their characters. All do something that is perhaps the most important thing a movie can do: They take us outside our personal box of time and space, and invite us to empathize with those of other times, places, races, creeds, classes and prospects. I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
What do you think, readers? Have real movies vanished from the American landscape? Why is it we’ve decided that movies have to be money makers or they have no value?
