Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is attending the Cannes Film Festival this week and recently participated on a panel there about the future of cinema in the age of streaming.
Del Toro alongside Paolo Sorrentino, Gaspar Noe, Michael Hazanavicius and Abel Ferrara all spoke at the panel about their concerns for what’s to come as cinema’s rich history may get lost in the flood to fill the ever-growing hunger of streaming’s demand for more.
Del Toro says (via Indiewire) that though more movies and TV shows are in production than ever, cinema could easily be reduced from art to mere content in the push to build up SVOD service libraries:
“There are many answers to what the future is. The one I know is not what we have right now. It is not sustainable. In so many ways, what we have belongs to an older structure. That’s how profound the change is. We are finding that it is more than the delivery system that is changing. It’s the relationship to the audience that is shifting. Do we hold it, or do we seek and be adventurous?
We are in the present losing more movies from the past faster than ever before. It seems like we aren’t, but the mere disappearance of physical media is already having corporations curating what we watch, faster for us. The future doesn’t belong to us, so our duty is not to ourselves, but to the future, for the people who come after.
Things are getting done, but are they being seen?. This begs the question of what a ‘movie’ is. We have to question ourselves. Are we arguing about the size of the screen or the size of the ideas? Are we arguing that cinema can only exist as certain footage, or is it something that holds us with visuals and music and sounds and transports us to a place no other art can?”
Del Toro is by no means decrying streaming, his next film is the stop motion animated “Pinocchio” for Netflix. The way the system is now though he says “we produce more than ever, and we can watch less than ever” and everyone has dozens of films and TV series they have yet to catch up with – “we are all behind”.
He is also not a fan of the terms ‘content’ and ‘pipeline’ – especially together, calling their usage ‘pernicious’ as it alludes to something short term and disposable:
“Whatever they describe, they don’t describe art. They don’t describe cinema, because they talk about impermanence, something we’ve just got to flush through. It has to keep moving. In my mind, a beautiful work of audiovisual storytelling should hold its place next to a novel, a painting. We don’t talk about paintings. We only talk about paintings when we’re in front of it. A painting is always new.”
Del Toro says filmmakers can’t be shy about using the platforms out there, and maintaining the integrity of cinema in the future requires several things. First, the audience must actively seek out and discover experiences on their own (as opposed to those chosen by an algorithm for them), whilst artists also need to be rebels and butt heads against those who demand slavishness to formula and corporate interests. He has hope either way, but understands the future is coming either way:
“Film as a phenomenon, as a cultural phenomenon, has shifted its importance. The future will present itself, no matter if we want it or not. It just shows up. It slaps us in the face or pats us in the back, whatever it wants, but it will show up.”
His comments come as earlier this week “Ad Astra” and “The Lost City of Z” director James Gray spoke about the changing cinema landscape in a 2.5-minute piece that has been widely shared and sums up well the danger of a limited theatrical palette and what it means for cinema overall:
#Cannes2022 ‘Armageddon Time’ Director James Gray On Why Studios Should Be Able To Lose Money On Art Specialty Divisions https://t.co/SgodYB80uM pic.twitter.com/Zno5g6uVQz
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 22, 2022
The comments come as streaming itself faces a future that for the first time seems to be unclear as Netflix’s first-quarter downturn in subscribers and the large ‘corrections’ in Big Media stocks are being seen as something of a tipping point. This has caused the various media giants to reassess their digital strategies as the days of ‘subscriber growth’ alone aren’t good enough anymore – actual profitability is now key.
Still, the consumer thirst for streaming isn’t abating. Recent research from UK media consultancy firm Omdia (via Deadline) has found the number subscribing to video services in that country grew by 11% last year with people still spending more on streaming services despite the cost-of-living crisis – even cutting other spending has allowed them to subscribe or re-subscribe to extra services.
Where this is all heading? Who knows, but the ride is far from over yet.
