The Relatability Problem

Favorite movie as a kid? I loved  The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. Just say Toy Story or something, it’s okay.

Why are we lying about our favorite movies? Like, I know it’s not 2001: A Space Odyssey,  you know it’s not 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m so tired of “oh what are your  4 favorite films?

” “Uh uhh [? ? ?

]” Do people even like movies anymore? Of course, the idea that some movie fans aren’t into classic or highbrow cinema is  nothing new. I’ve been there myself and believe that it is to some extent just a natural part  of a developing passion.

But at the same time, I think we also can’t deny that our general  relation to cinema has been changing, and that this change has been negatively affecting our  willingness to engage with movies that are less conventional, more challenging, and that just  altogether demand a more pro-active curiosity. I do think there is a sense  of duality in the text… Forgive me if I don’t tell you the latest Marvel  movie or Legally Blonde, no I think that I bring much more insight into this discussion… It’s not bad to admit that you like movies that just make you smile :) Indeed, the way we watch movies, the way we go about our lives in general, is  vastly different now than it was 20 years ago, and today, I want to examine the impact that  all of this has had on us, the audience, in an attempt to unify the variety of  interconnected developments that have been changing our relation to cinema, and offer  a more comprehensive understanding that explains, among other things, why we’ve become so obsessed  with relatability and characters who are “literally me”, why we’re increasingly reducing  the value of movies to the socio-political or moral messages they contain, and why it is that  even when we do genuinely want to develop our knowledge of and passion for cinema, we still end  up behind our pc, watching something like Argylle, while playing Fortnite on a second screen. Let’s  talk about the death of cinematic curiosity.

Brought to you by MUBI. Part 1: Into the “Literally Me” Movie Era Barbie, wake up. After the initial hype surrounding Greta Gerwig’s Barbie settled  down, as film critic Caitlin Quinlan wrote in her fascinating article “If It Makes You Cry, It Must  Be Good”, there remained one central question: who was the film for?

Indeed, many of the discussions  and critiques that followed the socially conscious adventure through Barbie land seemed to inevitably  circle back to different notions of what Barbie set out to be in the first place. To some, its  feminist themes felt too simple to be meaningful beyond serving as an entry-level introduction for  younger audiences. Though others found there was also plenty here about nostalgia, adulthood and  identity, both for women and for men.

For Quinlan, however, the answer doesn’t really matter.  The important thing is that Barbie grossed over 1 billion dollars at the box office.  Clearly, it was a movie for everyone.

Ken is me? And I’m Barbie. The success of Barbie, as Quinlin argues, exemplifies a growing trend in storytelling and  filmmaking, one that is increasingly focused on, and obsessed with relatability.

It’s a larger  sign of the times really, just one part of a greater cultural shift in which our attention  has become one of the most valued resources, and in which relatability is proving  to be the most effective way to mine it. In his New York Times piece “Why Do We Obsess  Over What’s ‘Relatable’? ”, which is also mentioned by Quinlan, Jeremy D.

Larson writes; “Relatability  is the chief psychological lubricant that glides you thoughtlessly down the curated, endless  scroll of your feed. It is the coin of the digital-media realm, a mealy concept that delights  advertisers and publishers alike because it all but guarantees to garner a reader’s attention. ” In  this sense, relatability is the natural next step from likeability; it’s that which transforms  a merely positive attitude towards something into a much stronger, more intimate relationship. 

It’s the reason why so many major brands now act like they’re people. Why politicians, CEO’s and  other leaders seem more concerned with performing how much they’re just one of us, instead of  actually demonstrating that they are capable and conscientious individuals who we can we trust  to perform a difficult job. And why every actor in a bad production now seems to be in on the joke.

You definitely did not see me in Madame Web. Best season ever! Because yes, with cinema too, relatability has become key.

Going back to  Quinlan’s article, she observes how stories have increasingly been stripped from specificity  and intimacy in favor of generalized themes and references that are designed to relate to as  many people as possible. Barbie demonstrated this not only through its critical and financial  success, but also by clearly achieving some kind of cultural crescendo with a grand speech  that was praised by audiences for being, above anything else, extremely relatable. You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that  out, you're accused of complaining.

Now, you might wonder, weren’t America Ferrera’s  words about womanhood not relatable precisely because they weren’t generic and instead spoke to  the experience of a specific demographic? Well, yes, and no. While representation in cinema is a  good thing and can definitely add specificity to a movie, what we’ve been seeing a lot of in  the recent years is a sort of capitalization on representational politics, the rise of  inclusive stories that, as Quinlan notes, have the appearance of being specific  by centering marginalized identities, but which at the same time, also tend to  deny their protagonists anything more than superficial characterizations, with the  result being a series of characters, story moments and grand speeches that all manage to wrap  bland statements of empowerment in the trappings of a more specific relatability.

It’s as if  studios are carefully calibrating the exact right balance between being specific enough to get the  accolades for representation, but not so much that they actually have to sacrifice marketability. All this however, is not just an issue with the bigger studios and franchises. It’s also the  smaller and independent movies that according to Quinlan are suffering from underwritten stories  and underdeveloped characters because of their appeal towards relatability.

“In Celine Song’s  Past Lives or Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, two independent successes of the year, viewers  learn little about the central characters other than how they have (very broadly) been shaped  by (the equally very broad concepts of) love or loss. Claims that these questions of identity  are part of the films’ design, and not unambitious writing cop-outs, are spurious. ” Now, I must  say that, as someone who was deeply moved by All of Us Strangers, and as someone who has made a  whole essay on Past Lives that specifically argues how the question of identity is indeed a part  of the movie’s design, this is the point where the argument really hit me personally, and where I  found it to be most challenging.

For while I agree with the general observation that movies like  these do rely heavily on the notion of audience self-recognition; that they serve to a large  extent as avatars, or blank canvas narratives, as Quinlan refers to it, onto which we can project  our own feelings and experiences. I also can’t but wonder, is this really such a bad thing? Is it not  in fact one of the most powerful traits of cinema that it can invoke this kind of relatability,  that it allows us to momentarily pour ourselves into other characters, into other stories, and  in that process, to vicariously experience some kind of catharsis or transformation?

Again, the answer seems to be yes, and no. Of course, channeling your own being  through cinema can be deeply meaningful. In fact, my whole channel wouldn’t exist if I didn’t  believe that was true.

But I can also see the larger issue that Quinlan seems to be getting at;  that this relatability, this beautiful and rather spontaneous relational quality that can develop  between a story and its audience, is increasingly being commodified; that it’s increasingly  becoming a deliberate business tactic; an exploit that co-opts our natural capacity for  emotionality into a broader quest for attention and profit. “it’s all commodified in the end;” –  Quinlan concludes – “and so the mass entertainment and smaller indies meet, both capitalising on  emotion. ” And besides the problem that cinema, and everything really, is becoming blander and  blander and as a result, a growingly homogenous and shapeless mass in pursuit of maximum reach;  overlit and underwritten.

Easy to understand, easy to consume. This has also been having real  implications for us, and for our relation to cinema as a whole. The way we look at movies, the  things we expect from them, it’s all changing, or rather; it’s being narrowed down, it’s all  being recontextualized, reframed through the lens of relatability, of what we understand,  and perhaps above all, of what we agree with.

Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there? If you’ve spend enough time in movie circles on the internet, you’ve probably seen that meme where  seemingly random movie characters are now being described as “literally me”. Though coming  in a variety of forms relating to a variety of demographics, the most popular version, which  I’ve also seen being referred to as Sigma Cinema, is the one with men connecting over a collection  of movies with edgy characters who they perceive to be, well, literally them.

Ranging from  relatively recent releases such as Joker or Drve, all the way back to older classics like Fight  Club and Taxi Drver, the unifying quality here, it seems, is a shared frustration with and  subsequent feeling of alienation from our present society and humanity in general. I simply am not there. At this point, you can probably already see  that the defining trait of this relationship is relatability, but what’s interesting  here is that this new categorization, or I guess; meme-ification of cinema wasn’t  part of any deliberate marketing strategy, it wasn’t some top-down corporate concept. 

Instead it arose specifically out of the audience, out of people who found a new way to approach and  connect with a variety of movies. And as such, we can also begin to observe the resulting  effects of the commodification of relatability on our own cinematic attitude and psychology. For one notable characteristic of these “literally me” memes is that they don’t really promote  engagement with the actual texts of these movies, they’re not treated as an invitation to get  at the root of why these characters are the way that they are, or even to examine the exact  nature of their frustration beyond a few generic observations about the current state of the world.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we  can buy shit we don’t need. No, it’s merely about relishing in the relatable  emotion at the surface, the disillusioned loners, the sad rainy atmospheres, all that which  captures the same feelings that the “literally me” audience already had, while maintaining a willful  ignorance towards everything else. In other words, it’s relatability being used as a comfort blanket,  as a means for a sort of affirmative complacency; a way to validate one’s beliefs and feelings  without actually having to examine them, let alone confront them in a truly meaningful way.

I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore. And this leads us into the second  issue, which is the increasing usage of; Cinema as Self-Righteous Moralism While the “literally me” memes are a rather specific example, they do point to  a bigger, more fundamental problem in the way we’ve come to engage with cinema. Because to  return once more to Caitlin Quinlan’s article, this increasing shift towards relatability by  selling audiences on stories they will understand, and the growing expectation of comfort and  affirmation that has resulted from it, is only worsening an already troubling development, which  is the rise of a cinematic culture that no longer welcomes discussion and conflict as a fundamental  part of the artform, and as an inevitable aspect of our engagement with it.

Or to put it like this;  the gradual conditioning towards relatability, and towards desiring affirmation, also extends  to our more essential values and beliefs, which has caused us to increasingly obsess over  good movies and bad movies, not in a filmmaking or storytelling sense, but in a moral one. And  so we ask; does this movie align with my values? Does it reflect what I believe to be good and  true in the world?

Or does it conflict with my beliefs? Does it contain ideas that I perceive to  be uncomfortable, harmful, or just flat out wrong? Was it conceived or executed in a way that  I find misguided or transgressive?

In short, to what extent is this piece of media, as the  now so often used buzzword goes, ‘problematic’? As with relatability, the idea of critically  discussing the content of a movie is not bad in itself. Quite the opposite in fact.

Again, my  channel wouldn’t exist if I didn’t also believe that movies have an educational function,  that they can directly and indirectly inform our worldview, which naturally implies that  they can therefore also promote ideas that are more regressive, that serve to uphold misguided,  outdated or harmful stereotypes that do warrant a more critical examination. But an essential part  of this process is the willingness to embrace discomfort, the act of allowing yourself to be  challenged and to really consider conflicting beliefs and ideas, which has never been an easy  thing to do, but nowadays, it does feel especially difficult. It’s like it’s become increasingly  normalized, even if only on a subconscious level, that instead of welcoming critical discussion as  an invitation to broaden your perspective, it is treated as an attack that has to be deflected.

An  obvious example of this would be the dismissive response against inclusivity and representation. This is the person they hired to play their woke Snow White – Where now you either eat this pronoun  shit, eat this gay lesbian witch shit – let’s go over the top 5 woke Hollywood disasters of 2023. While there is, as we’ve already discussed, a meaningful conversation to be had about the  capitalization on marginalized peoples and their stories leading to a sort of forced or shallow  diversity.

There are also plenty of examples in which we find subversions of or commentaries  on storytelling tropes and sociopolitical norms that are actually done very well, or at least,  thoughtful enough to inspire real dialogue, but which are nevertheless immediately brushed aside  as being ‘woke’, another often used buzzword. While the problem of wokeness, as I guess it is  called, generally pretends to refer only to that forced kind of diversity, in reality it rarely  comes with actual argumentative substance and rather seems to have become just a reflexive  response against any form of diversity. On top of that, in many conversative circles wokeness has  come to indicate more than a mere undesirability, a sign that a movie simply isn’t for them,  it has also come to imply a moral negative; meaning that wokeness is, in their view, something  that is actually harming cinema and society as a whole, and which in the most extreme cases, is  therefore perceived as something that must be actively combatted instead of merely ignored.

But we see such overreaction or over-obsession on the extremer ends on the other side of  the spectrum too, where I can’t help but feel stories are being overvalued for  their perceived educational function, for how well they serve the cause, so to say. An  in my opinion reductive perspective on the art of cinema that only encourages more ambiguous  and more contentious works to be ignored, as if the very presence of any form of  conflict, contradiction or complication, whether it’s an outdated trope, a perceived  lack of inclusion, a misguided casting choice, a slightly too controversial subject, or some  other minor transgression, is such an irredeemable sin that it automatically disqualifies a piece of  media from being engaged with or valued. And yet, it’s this relational development that I  nevertheless find highly fascinating, and that I believe warrants further examination, because  whereas the anti-woke movement mostly tends to be rooted in bigotry, what we see here, I think, are  the deeper implications of decades of neo-liberal individualization; the greater societal shift  towards the idea that people are completely autonomous, that they can, and must, master the  whole of their lives on their own.

Because when combined with the growing dominion of the consumer  society, the result is not only a world in which the individual has become the expected driving  force of all action, but also one in which that pursuit of self-actualization, and therefore,  all of our moral action, and any form of self-expression really, has become almost entirely  reframed through the act of consumption. In other words, what we’ve been experiencing is the slow  internalization of idea that the burden of the world’s conscience rests on our shoulders, and  that to express the right beliefs means to consume the right products, and to watch the right movies. Aside from this trend ignoring that individuals are still limited by time, place and circumstance,  intrinsically bound to others, and generally exist within greater societal units that determine  the course of our collective lives as much, if not more so, than any one individual can, it is  also here that we risk another form of affirmative complacency as the very act of endorsing some  product or brand, or in the context of this discussion, championing a piece of media that  conveys something that we consider to be positive, or inversely; condemning it when it contains  something that we perceive to be harmful, can become its own source of self-righteous  satisfaction.

It encourages the audience, as David Mamet once articulated in his critique  of Schindler’s List; “to reward themselves for seeing that the villain's bad; and, in the liberal  fallacy, of feeling this perception is a moral accomplishment. ” And this is a risk because it  can so easily become a sort of self-reinforcing feedback loop that turns watching cinema from  a means to an end, to a purpose unto itself; where instead treating movies as a way to engage  in self-reflection, and perhaps even change one’s actual behavior, it becomes satisfying enough to  merely observe and acknowledge; to agree with the works that affirms our beliefs, and judge those  that don’t. In fact, I’d say it’s easier than ever to get stuck in this loop, for if there’s one  thing late stage capitalism does very well is incorporating critiques into itself, you know,  it’s why we have big studio anti-corporatism, status quo revolutionism, all giving the illusion  that some kind of upset is on the horizon, and that you’re pro-actively engaged in the  cause, while in actuality, you’re just passively consuming; moral action as the non-contentious  shaping and re-shaping of the discourse, articulating and re-writing what is already  understood and agreed with, as if one more formulation, one more cinematic depiction,  is somehow going to make the difference.

What we do, is just create - sympathy. We create-  we create admirers. We don't create followers.

To be fair, it's hard to make one generalized  statement here because the extent of the issue really depends on the individual; whereas a  particular movie might just be a facilitator of complacency for one person, a passive  affirmation that allows them to indulge in the satisfaction of having the right beliefs,  without really putting them to work. To another, that same movie might be a genuine catalyst for  action, a transformative experience that actually motivates them to make a significant change  in their worldview or behavior. But still, when looking at in broad strokes, it does  feel like the works that are most embraced are the ones that do fall into that sphere  of relatability, of the easily understood, and the easily agreed with.

While those  that present themselves as less legible, and more ambiguous, struggle to truly become  a meaningful part of the conversation. In her article, Quinlan does bring up 3 anomalies,  3 movies from last year, Killers of the Flower Moon, May December and Tar, that all, in some  way, implicate their storytellers and their audiences into the fabric of their text in  a way that subverts easy relatability and promotes a certain degree of discomfort. Byron got her drunk, and I did the rest.

“A narrative gambit at the end of Killers  sees the director take aim at the notion of mass entertainment and his own implications  in it – the sensationalisation of true crime, in particular, and the ubiquity of morbid  curiosity in today’s audiences. May December was similarly interrogative of this while Tár’s  cancel culture commentary also pointed the finger, even if who it was pointed at was up for debate. ” Unfortunately the architect of your soul appears to be social media.

Personally, I would also include Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest here as a work that  examines the nature of human evil, not just in a historical sense, but also in the here and now as  it ultimately provokes us to critically question where our own ‘zone of interest’ ends, what  darkness we are hiding behind its rose-covered walls, and what evil we are casually ignoring,  even though its cries permeate our everyday waking existence? The point is, as Quinlan concludes,  that these movies defied becoming simple objects to be easily consumed or spewed out by  audiences hungry for self-righteous satisfaction, and were all the more interesting by having built  into their design a sort of meta-level conflict, a conflict not just in the text, in the story  of the movie itself, but also in the form, in its very relationship with the audience. And more fundamentally, what I believe unites these works and others like it is that they  seem to share the same conviction that today seems to be so eagerly denied; that history is  messy, and that human beings are complicated.

We are filled with contradictions, with values that  we unwaveringly adhere to in some aspects of our lives, but completely ignore in others.  Desires that we may wish we didn’t have but that affect our actions nevertheless. And  biases that prevent us from truly considering the very part of ourselves that most need critical  examination.

They reveal how, at its center, there is something illegible, impenetrable about  the human condition, and about human society as a whole, something that cannot be reduced to easily  understandable truisms, neatly defined moralities, and other passively affirmative certainties.  And subsequently invite us, as uncomfortable and unsatisfying it can be, to really sit  with these contradictions, these unresolvable impossibilities, because it is here, in this  mystifying obfuscation, that we can’t help but turn inwards, and where, somewhat paradoxically,  a more honest and more intimate truth can emerge. Wisdom is holding two contradictory  truths in our mind, simultaneously.

You give into the rhythm, every  time, tension never breaks. Naturally, it’s a mode of engagement that demands  vulnerability, a willingness to open oneself up and invite conflict into one’s inner being. And  while it might be easy to conclude that this is something we all just need to be doing more of,  I do believe we have to consider that there is a time and place for this, that there are certain  external and internal conditions that need to be met in order to be truly ready for such active  self-reflection.

But here too, things aren’t as they used to be, and this is where we get to  the outer edges, the all-enveloping context within which everything else we have discussed so  far is taking place, and that is the problem of; The Overwhelming Constant Stimulants In an interview with Cormac McCarthy, the famed author of, among other works, Blood  Meridian, The Road and No Country for Old Men, McCarthy observed that while people will  apparently read mystery novels of any length, “the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a  hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that.  If you think you're going to write something like The Brothers Karamazov or Moby Dick, go  ahead. Nobody will read it.

I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their  intentions, their brains are different. ” Now, while McCarthy comes across as a bit hyperbolic  here, he does seem to speak to something that also relates to cinema, which is the idea that  changes in our broader cultural landscape also affect how we perceive and engage with  certain pieces of media on an individual level, that they can re-wire our brains, so to say.

At this point, we’ve talked a lot about the shift towards relatability, both in the sense that this  is increasingly what cinema is offering as well as in the sense that this is increasingly what  we seem to desire. But as for the why of it all, we have to consider our relation to cinema in  more practical terms, or; the where and how we’re meeting the movies in the first place. For  all this easily consumed, relatable content is not just being sold to us by corporations in some  conscious transaction in a store, or sought out by ourselves in some deliberate quest to satisfy  a need.

No, nowadays it is just constantly and quietly fed to us by algorithms on the many online  platforms that have come dominate our screens and, in a very real sense, our entire lives. By now,  we’re all familiar with it; the endless stream of content curated specifically to us, all day, every  day. Limited access has become overabundance.

The chance encounter has been replaced with  precision targeting. It obviously feeds into our conditioning towards relatability and comfort,  after all; if that’s the stuff that’s always right in front of us, then that’s what we’re going to  consume, right? But it’s a bit more complicated than that.

It’s not just that relatable  content is ubiquitous and easily accessible, it’s also becoming a sort of navigational  quality in this sea of overabundance. I’m sure you’ve had this too; where you want  to watch something but you become stuck in that browsing mode, just scrolling down movie  after movie, platform after platform, until that limited window we had to actually watch a movie  has already closed. Unlike traditional television, where you just tune in to whatever’s playing. 

Now, nothing starts until you click on it, and every option is just one brick in a giant  wall of content. It’s somewhat of a paradox; we have more access than ever before,  all of cinema right at our fingertips, pre-organized even to our taste, and yet the  barrier for engagement can feel higher than ever. Choice may equal freedom, but clearly, too  much of it is crippling.

No wonder we so often end up going for the low-hanging fruit, the easy  pick that is clearest in its promise and needs the least consideration. And no wonder we can’t get  ourselves to watch a 90 minute arthouse piece, but will binge a whole of season of the latest  trending show over the weekend; it’s not a lack of time that’s the issue; it’s constantly having  to choose, constantly having to re-immerse ourselves that we want to get a break from. But it gets worse, because it’s not just our entertainment; it’s the whole of our lives that  has been reshaped like this; always connected, always engaged.

Ours is the age of constantly  being exposed, constantly being locked in, the age of depression and burn-out. It might be  too soon to have this discussion as, relatively speaking, we’ve only barely entered into this  phase of modernity, so please treat this only as a preliminary hypothesis, but I can’t help but  wonder to what extent the value of cinema and art in general, or rather; the willingness to engage  with these, is lessened because we’re already so constantly overstimulated, and so constantly  pulled into every conversation. Take the pandemic for example; one of the greatest global  events in recent history, and yet, are you really aching to relive it in a movie?

To be drawn into  some complex artistic discussion about it? Or you also still in that state where you, as most movies  seem to reflect, kind of want to pretend it never happened? To me at least, it definitely felt like  by the end of it, people weren’t just tired of the event itself and the direct impact it had on them,  but were also just so exhausted from the constant discourse around it, which was just a 24/7  onslaught of discussions with everyone fiercely debating, in good faith and bad, though mostly  bad, mortality rates, lockdown effectiveness, vaccination programs, international differences,  long-term health risks, psychological effects, sociological effects, the could have done this,  should have done that, the what do you think, who was at fault here, who can we blame,  where do you stand, what do you think?

It's not that these questions don’t matter at all,  but it’s just too much, and too fast. For just as you feel like you’ve parsed enough information  to get a sense of what’s going on, and to be able to start separating the important bits from the  empty shouting, the next issue is already here, and the flood of noise begins all over again.  It’s like being trapped in a swarm of locusts moving from one crop field to the next.

Even if  you don’t want be a part of it, there is no real escaping it. It’s all-invasive, and it feels like  it has been quietly breaking down something sacred about cinema too, which is that idea that  movies always offered a distinctive space that you consciously and willingly enter into for  a distinctive experience, you know, to watch a movie is to cross a certain threshold, both in a  literal sense as you enter into a movie theater or settle in on the couch at home, as well as  psychologically as you mentally prepare yourself, even if only subconsciously, to be transported  into a story and to open yourself up for whatever it offers. What really becomes of this experience  when that transitional ritual has been desecrated, when we already are in that liminal  space, in that state of contention, all the time.

Again, it’s no wonder that we  so often end up going for the easy watch, that we’ve come to treat cinema as an escape. But perhaps the greatest tragedy here is that we’re not even really doing that. For me at  least, if I had a long and stressful day, I’m not seeking out true escapism in the form of  movies like The Lord of the Rings or Pirates of the Caribbean, you know, something that truly  takes me out of it for a while and will have genuinely nourished me by the end of it.

Because  the thing about actually having fun is that it’s also an active form of engagement, and when you’re  tired or overstimulated, that’s not what you want, you want to be disengaged, you want something  that grabs your attention enough to distract you, but not so much that you can’t also scroll  down social media while you’re at it, do some chores around the house, or indeed, play  Fortnite on a second screen. It’s a phenomenon that’s been getting some attention. For example,  in her article “Psychology of concentration: why the world is now addicted to ‘background TV’”,  Kayleigh Dry found people would increasingly turn on something that is easily consumed or that  they have already seen loads of times, just to have some background noise, like a mild sedative. 

It helps, as one of her interviewees explained; to drown out the inner monologues, which can  become annoying and even anxiety-inducing at times. Clearly, this is not using cinema as an  escape, this is using it as mindless comfort. Now, I realize this is all starting to sound a  bit bleak, and especially for a channel that is specifically about the potential for and dynamics  of conveying something meaningful through cinema, this future doesn’t seem to look very bright.

But  keep in mind that this is just one hypothesis, and that while it may seem to forewarn some kind  of fundamental collapse, it might just as well merely signify a temporary upset; a momentary  lapse that is only going to remind us of what we actually want, what we actually need, and which in  time, will lead us back towards true nourishment. I have no doubt that truly balancing out our  lives against the current phase of modernity is going to be one of the bigger challenges of our  time, one that I can’t possibly begin to pose a meaningful answer to. But still, I do have faith  that, at least when it comes to movies, all this is not going to be absolute death of cinematic  curiosity.

Maybe it is true that new times require new perspectives on what the relationship  between cinema and its audience can look like, maybe there are some traditional ideals that we  need to let go off, and new ones that we should embrace, but then again, both the Brothers  Karamazov and Moby Dick are still being read, great thought-provoking movies are still being  made, and still being appreciated, in some ways maybe even more so than ever as they can help  to navigate the noise, help us clarify a world out of focus. Obviously, there is some timeless  quality here that will never fully go away. But why then all this alarmism?

Why proclaim the  death of cinematic curiosity if it is in fact, not dead at all? Well, because for so  many people today, it can absolutely feel like it is. And they might want some  understanding of why that is, and a reminder that it doesn’t have to be.

I know I did. For while it might seem like I wrote this video just to examine some broader cultural trends,  and maybe even to take a shot at some groups who aren’t treating cinema as they should, in  reality though, I made it just as much for myself; because I too have been drawn in by, and arguably  grown to overvalue, the comfort of relatability; I too have misused movies as an easy source  for moral satisfaction, as a way to delude myself into believing I was a better person than  I actually am; an issue which I’ve also explored in another video relating more specifically to  masculinity and false ideals of the heroic self; and I too have been postponing so many movies that  I know will actually offer something of value, to instead mindlessly settle for the cinematic  equivalent of empty calories. And I wish I didn’t, I wish I wouldn’t waste so much time like this. 

Once in a while is fine, but it was getting too much, and something had to change. Not only  because it brings me no real pleasure and in fact only tends to leave me frustrated, it also  simply contradicts the basic ideals that I want to live my life by. There is so much beauty in  cinema, so much value in having our experiences, our inner beings, reflected back to us, so much  transformative power in challenging ourselves with new perspectives, in broadening our horizons,  and so much joy in just truly being transported into the world of a story, truly losing yourself  for a moment to another reality.

And I guess if there’s one simple yet potent source of hope here  is that you can get this back, or at least remind yourself of this. Just as a simple walk in the  forest can be instantly grounding and nourishing, I’ve found that it just takes one reinvigorating  cinematic experience to remember everything that made you feel so passionate about cinema in  the first place. And while you may not always be able to hold on to that spark, some days it is  enough to rekindle that flame and keep it burning, to find yourself back in a movie-watching habit  where you are once again driven by real curiosity, and where cinema becomes truly exciting again.

This year alone, there have already been a number of movies that got me so enthusiastic that I’ve  been diving into cinema like I haven’t done in a long time; rewatching a variety of classics,  exploring some fascinating avant-garde stuff, and just really making the space and the time  for new cinematic experiences. One movie that’s definitely going to be on my favorites of the year  list is The Settlers, a Chilean historical epic about a mixed-race sniper who is brought along on  an English military expedition to secure the lands of a wealthy estate, but which quickly turns into  a violent manhunt for the native population. While it’s not a direct adaptation of Cormac McCarthy,  the author who I mentioned earlier, in spirit, it does come very close to Blood Meridian, the one  novel of his that has been deemed unfilmable.

For at its heart, The Settlers is a savage tale  of colonialism and genocide. While obviously thoroughly violent, it’s never exploitative and  reflects this brutal part of history like the landscapes that enveloped it; cold and quiet, yet  strangely captivating, as if you can’t help but be drawn inwards. It’s the kind of movie, as we  also talked about earlier, that effectively makes you part of its subject, that makes you reflect on  the darkness resting within all human beings, and on the greater forces that bring it into motion. 

It was just a deeply meaningful experience, and I wouldn’t have found it if it wasn’t for MUBI. Yes, they are the sponsor of today’s video and if you want to just go ahead and check out The  Settlers, which is playing exclusively on their platform, be sure to use my personal link to get  an extended free trial. But if you want to give me an extra minute, let me tell you the real reason  I’ve been so fond of this online cinema.

Because what I realized as I was writing this video, is  that MUBI might be the one platform that doesn’t just algorithmically cater to your comfort, but  instead is centered around actual curation. I’ve said this before in previous MUBI spots, you know,  “it’s a curated online cinema streaming handpicked exceptional movies from around the globe. ” But  these last few weeks, the value of this has just become so much more explicit as I’ve found that  the best way to keep my cinematic curiosity active is to immerse myself in the various categories  that MUBI offers, and really dedicate myself to go deep into a certain genre, theme, or era.

You’ll  discover that there is this sort of accumulative effect where the more you trigger your cinematic  curiosity, the stronger it gets, and where the broadening of your horizon also comes with the  expansion of appreciation, or at least, with the expansion of understanding. Because of course, the  goal is not necessarily that you like everything, it’s about developing taste and insight, and for  this a movie that doesn’t quite work for you can be just as informative. So yeah, to conclude, I’d  definitely recommend becoming the butt of the joke of those disgruntled TikTokers.

Go watch The  Settlers, go try and find that old French movie called [? ? ?

], and if you’re gonna do so on MUBI,  do use my personal link to get 30 days for free, that’s mubi. com/likestoriesofold  to claim your extended free trial.