Marvel? Marvel is noise. It’s content. The cinematic equivalent of eating popcorn for dinner and calling it a meal. It fills you up for two hours and leaves you spiritually malnourished. You cheer when the purple alien gets punched, and you call it catharsis. But have you ever felt anything? Have you ever watched Bresson? Have you ever wept during Tokyo Story as life’s quiet heartbreak seeped into your bones like rain on an old photograph?
Real cinema does not handhold you through plot. It does not pause to explain. It simply is. Tarkovsky once said that film is “sculpting in time.” Superhero films, horror movies and all their kind, meanwhile, is sculpted in green screen, manufavtured in post-production in a server farm in Burbank.
You see, when I watch Persona, I am engaged in a dialogue with the filmmaker. Bergman stares into my soul and asks: Who are you? When I watch an action film, I stare into the void - and the void sells me Mountain Dew.
Cinema used to mean something. Now it’s a franchise. A universe. A line of Funko Pops. But you cannot merchandise human emotion. You cannot make a toy out of alienation.
So yes, enjoy your little quips, your mid-credit scenes, your ironic detachment. But when you’re ready for something real, something that hurts, something that doesn’t need to wink at you every five seconds, I’ll be here.
In a half-empty theater. Watching Andrei Rublev.
Crying softly.
Drinking an espresso that cost more than your Disney+ subscription.
Because that, my friends…
That is cinema.
Now Anon, pull up a seat, let's play some Jefre Cantu-Ledesma in the background, and discuss some real films.
