There’s a lot of content in the Paul Schrader interview and it is very complex. I had to read it back and forth to understand it. One thing that attracts me the most in that article, is about the ideologies around those directors and how they are affected by those ideologies.

This article talked about Renoir grew up in a” liberal artistic environment, which privileged the visual and celebrated the vitality and richness of everyday life and the human appetite for experience.” I have seen Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), Renoir vividly recreated the environment and atmosphere of the first World War, and captures them with deep depth of field. Most importantly, I was deeply moved by the humanity embedded in the film. The friendship between two officers had above stances, the honorable death of the French officer and the connection of a German farmerette and the refugee soldier are the highlights of humanity in this film. These all come from Renoir’s upbringing environment. On the other hand, Schrader comes from a totally opposite background, a background of Calvinism and ascetic minimalism. That is why his writing of script is filled with darkness, pessimism, like Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) (though I haven’t seen these two films).

The point is, we don’t do these anymore, or at least not in the mainstream films. Films nowadays still discuss politics and all the “-isms”, but on a too large scale that individuals may find them hard to relate. When modern films touch on political or societal issues, they often hold the flags for “all women” or “all black people” or “all Asian” (I was going to stop at “all black people” but I realized that may make me sound like a racist). Filmmakers today have lost the voice of individuals. In La Grande Illusion, though it’s under the circumstance of World War between countries and patriotism, nationalism and militarism were taking places at the time, Renoir still found the angle to tell a story where humanity shines in individual. We can hardly achieve that today.

Maybe it is because the repression of individualism in modern society. The idea of ‘being a member of the community’ is prospering more than ever. People are told certain dos and don’ts, and everyone is forced to fit in the society the same way. There are even certain standards set for well-being. As a result, mainstream films today has become all about telling the stories of symbolized character or characters, characters that the audience want to identify with. Want to identify with, but they do not. These characters and stories are designed for consumption, they are for people to like, but not represent anyone, not to mention humanity. These films are even only one step away from being propaganda. Film is an art, arts reflect the public, they do not shape the public.

It is noticeable that under this circumstance, films like Joker (2019) and Parasite (2019) flourished out of the film market and appealed to millions of audiences. The characters in these films broke away from the community/society bound (more likely being banished), and the films picked up the perspectives of those individuals, characteristic individuals that the audience can identify with. They stayed away from the trending topics, but once again embedded issues of classes and wealth differences that most films today are afraid of because these issues rooted too deep in the society. These are the films we need more of.

P.s. I feel I talk too much about ideology but not enough about coverage in these reflections. I will start to talk about decoupage from the next one.