You know what’s cool? Movies that offer something more than the sullen pseudo-politics of “Joker” or the elaborate pro-status-quo theatrics of “Avengers.” Movies that, rather than fetishizing self-pity or sentimentalizing domination, illuminate the cruelty, the comedy and the grace of the human condition. To question the apparent preferences of millions of consumers is to risk being labeled a snob.īut to paraphrase Justin Timberlake’s character in “The Social Network”: a billion dollars isn’t cool.
Accusing Scorsese (and his defenders) of elitism was exemplary pseudo-populism, a defense of corporate hegemony disguised as a celebration of mass taste. Members of the aggrieved superhero-loving community - some of whom draw Disney paychecks - tut-tutted Scorsese for being old, out of touch, overrated and, most of all, elitist. The dust-up that followed his remarks was predictable.
(Yes, I know: We saw a lot of sequels, too.) Movie theaters, meanwhile, are dominated by franchise, I.P.-driven spectacles like the entities in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Scorsese singled out, in an interview in Empire magazine and then in a New York Times Op-Ed, as “not cinema.” A big chunk of our collective attention - we don’t yet know how big, or with what consequences - is migrating to streaming platforms whose offerings include a lot of the stand-alone single-episode narratives that we used to see mainly in theaters. The art form is in one of its periodic identity crises. Not only for making “The Irishman,” his best movie in a long time and one of the best of 2019 (see below), but also for reminding the world of the value of cinema. Scott’s List | Manohla Dargis’s ListĪs the movie year winds down, I would like to express my gratitude to Martin Scorsese.
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