Guillermo del Toro Explains That the Current State of Cinema Is "Not Sustainable"

Director Guillermo del Toro is up at the Cannes Film Festival, and while he was there he spoke at a symposium about the current state of cinema and how it’s not sustainable, as well as its evolution, future, and survival.

When talking about the Pandemic and how it jump-started the evolution of viewing films, the filmmaker said: “It took one pandemic to shake it all up. We survived the pandemic because we had three things: Food, medicine, and stories. The three things sustained us for so many months and years. We understand we are in the craft of doing a thing that is of primary importance to do. At the same time, it’s not only the pandemic, where we are as filmmakers, where we are as a culture, didn’t just happen to us. We were very actively participating to get us to where we are. Film as a phenomenon, as a cultural phenomenon, has shifted its importance.”

The pandemic opened up a whole new way of viewing movies. Since studios couldn’t release them in theaters they started releasing them on streaming services so that people could watch films at home. A lot of people thought that would lead to the death of movie theaters, but I never believed that would happen, and thankfully that wasn’t the case. Movie theaters are back in full force, but Del Toro believes that the current state of cinema isn’t sustainable.

He explains: “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,” del Toro compared it to the 1920s transition from silent films to talkies “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?”

I don’t know about you, but I love watching movies in a darkened theater with fellow movie fans. There’s something special about that and it is my favorite way of watching a movie. It the only place where I can be fully engulfed in a story that a film tells. But, now people can watch movies whenever, however, and where ever they want.

The filmmaker then talks about the disappearance of physical media saying: “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.”

He goes on to share: “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? … 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 is trying to figure out where things need to be fixed saying: “Where we are as cinema, and the state we find ourselves in is the responsibility of distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers, and creators. We have to question where the communication is broken, where we can patch it.”

He concludes by saying: “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.”

Del Toro is right. Cinema and the way people are watching movies are changing. But, in the end, it’s all about telling great stories. When a movie is good the audience is fully engaged. In regards to the kinds of films that are made, it’s time for studios and filmmakers to "seek and be adventurous.”

Source: Indiewire