Paul Schrader
As you probably know by now, writer-director Paul Schrader (whose book "Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer" I consider an indispensable part of my film library) has a hefty article in the current Film Comment in which he discusses his abandoned book project, based on the idea of a 60-film cinematic canon.
Aesthetics, like the canon, is a narrative. It has a beginning, middle, and end. To understand the canon is to understand its narrative. Art is a narrative. Life is a narrative. The universe is a narrative. To understand the universe is to understand its history. Each and every thing is part of a story—beginning, middle, and end.I've always found Schrader to be a fascinating writer ("Obsession," "Taxi Driver," "Last Temptation of Christ") and director ("Blue Collar," "Light of Day," Light Sleeper," "Affliction"), and I can see how he might view life as a "narrative" (he is, after all, a professional storyteller), but I don't agree with him. Life isn't a story. We pattern-seeking animals (my favorite phrase) just find it more comprehensible when we pretend that it is.The much-debated “end of Art� is not the end of painting and sculpture (they abound), but the closing of the plastic arts’ narrative. Life is full of ends; species die or become outmoded. There are still horses, but the horse’s role in transportation has come to an end. Likewise movies. We’re making horseshoes. [...]
I’ve always been interested in films that address the contemporary situation. Historical films interest me more as history than art. I have, perhaps, 10 years of films left in me, and I’m perfectly content to ride the broken-down horse called movies into the cinematic sunset. But if I were starting out (at the beginning of my narrative, so to speak), I doubt I’d turn to films as defined by the 20th century for personal expression.
Beginnings, middles and endings are more often than not elusive, in life and in movies. When I think of my favorite films in these terms, I wonder: What is the beginning of the story of "Citizen Kane," or "Mulholland Drive," or "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," or "Nashville," or "Taxi Driver"? What is the end? For me, these films are great in part because they don't insist on neatly defined linear storytelling. (Still, movies do give some kind of shape and structure to experience; lives, as they are lived, don't have much narrative structure.)
Evolution itself -- and I appreciate Schrader's contention that cinema is evolving into new forms, whatever they may be -- resists the beginning-middle-end formulation, because everything is always in a state of flux. Evolution does not start or end -- it's all middle. A species may come into being, and may die off, but other branches will continue to grow and die and change. On the other hand, a story is still a story, no matter what form or language or medium is used to tell it. And storytelling has been around for thousands of years, because that's a fundamental way we give shape to experience. So, will telling stories with images be all that much different from what we know now -- even if the grammar and the language and the form all change?
As for Schrader's canon, it's not online and I haven't seen the magazine yet. But, having published an old canon (of sorts) of my own (from 1999) recently, I love the way Schrader sets up his:
The notion of a canon, any canon—literary, musical, painting—is 20th-century heresy. A film canon is particularly problematic because the demise of the literary canon coincides, not coincidentally, with the advent and rise of moving pictures. There is much debate about the canons but no agreement. Not only is there no agreement about what a canon should include, there’s no agreement about whether there should be canons at all. Or, if there is agreement, it is this: canons are bad—elitist, sexist, racist, outmoded, and politically incorrect.Yet de facto film canons exist—in abundance. They exist in college curriculums, they exist in yearly 10-best lists, they exist in best-of-all-time lists of every sort. Canon formation has become the equivalent of 19th-century anti-sodomy laws: repudiated in principle, performed in practice. Canons exist because they serve a function; they are needed. And the need increases with each new wave of films. What I propose is to go back in order to go forward. To examine the history of canon formation, cherry-pick the criteria that best apply to film, and select a list of films that meet the highest criteria. [...]
Film studies’ subordination to these “isms� hasn’t reached the grotesque proportions Bloom ["The Western Canon"] speaks of, but it’s catching up. Film departments abound with resentful academics. Film is not literature, of course, and the issues involved, though similar, are not the same. The greatest difference is that there is still a debate about whether motion pictures are art at all.
I’m very interested in reading the entire article to see where Shrader is taking this. At first glance I really don’t agree with it and to be honest I really don’t understand the point he is trying to make based on the three paragraphs provided.
He states that art, life, and the universe are narrative and yet says that the end of narrative film is at a close. So film that is art, reflective of life or the universe will no longer be made? The reason he gives is because it’s “outmoded.�
Maybe I’m just missing something, but I think that narrative films as well as personal films will always continue to be made and continue to enthrall audiences. The structure may change and bend from time to time, but I think it will always endure in some form or another.
I love Paul Schrader! Transcendental Style in Film and the Schrader on Schrader books are excellent! Schrader is right on target on that link that you posted Jim! The idea here is we are becoming something else! I'm glad that he mentioned Ray Kurzweil's visionary book! Along with Jeff Hawkins and Joel Garreau!
Movies and storytelling multimedia are merging and exploding into something else! Is like mutant turtles having sex with robots and humans! Because of this extraordinary changes we need new, radical and visionary criticism! Not nostalgic whiners trying to recreate the past! We need to reflect on this extraordinary events that are and will continue happening! Good examples of interest film criticism using cognitive science! A good example of that is british philosopher Colin Mcginn - The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact! Just take a look at the work of The Third Culture to see how potential future ,good,interesting visionary film and media criticism could be! That's it for now!
His copy of Essential Cinema is going to get as worn out as his copy of Pickpocket.
Actually Schrader's contention that life and the history of the universe is a narrative/story with a beginning, middle and end makes a lot of sense to me, but then again I, like Schrader, am very sympathetic to a "Calvinistic" understanding of reality.
Life as narrative? Eh. I. think I agree with you Jim. Canons however practical they can be to someone learning about film should be left behind at some point for a wider scope of what cinema is and can be. The problem with relying on canons or lists is that ones tastes never get a chance to fully develop. Yes, it's fun to watch all of those classics on the AFI top 100 list, and to complain that there aren't more current flicks in there. But if that's all you're going to watch your minds going to stop working, it's going to jam up. It's just like reading about politics, if you're not reading several view points your vision is going to become so single minded you're going to sound elementary to someone more well versed, no matter how big your vocabulary is. People who live by film canons will stop seeing the world through eyes that could really influence and truly affect them. The worst of this is the canon of television shows produced on a yearly basis - the sitcoms and copy cat police dramas lull everyone into a sense of complacency, never to be challenged or heightened.
On canons: naturally, as a budding film connoisseur, published canons were—actually still are—essential. As time goes on, however, more and more I realize that the existence of canons is, itself, antithetical to itself. I don’t think that any creator of such a thing (myself definitely included—making lists is like valium to me) would or could even conceive that any of his/her readers will take his/her word as the ultimate unquestionable authoritative last word on the matter (although something akin to that is not unknown to happen—there’s a phenomenon of infectious enthusiasm that radiates from the greatest writings onto the reader that is often unavoidable). It seems to me that anyone who’s serious about film and its history and its landmarks (or just movies they really really like) would be understanding and respectful enough about social response and Divergent Human Experience to know that person A may loathe movie X, that person B may like movie Y but not Z, or that person C may have no interest in movies X but loves Z and therefore might like movie Y. Our canon-maker, in this instance, is simply authoring a record of his/her own biases, prejudices, tastes, influences, etc. etc. and should not be taken as anything other than an insight to the hopefully film-literate and (in the best scenarios) trustworthy and educated creator. The most productive impetus for attempting a canonical list is to want to inspire your readers to seek out more films, or by attempting to shed light on films that have had less-than-stellar reputations. Whether it’s by including the obscurer films, or whether it’s by including the more list-friendly Dr. Strangelove in the hopes that more will be inspired to seek out Barry Lyndon (for my money, Lyndon is the better film, though they’re both tremendous), the intention should be the same—namely, to cultivate in others a similar approach, or at least interest, towards cinema. Any claim of objective comprehensiveness is the claim of a charlatan. (Is it really possible that there are only 100 “essential films�? Or 1001?) The creator should always be ready to defend his/her inclusions, and should always be ready to accept dissenting opinions. But most importantly, the creator should always keep in mind that his/her word is not holy writ.
We have our year-end critic top ten pieces. We have our AFIs and their 100 Greatest… broadcasts. We have our Sight and Sound polls. We have our classroom curriculums and film professors. We have our Leydons and Schneiders. We even have our essential Essential lists on Amazon.com. What disturbs me is not that there are so many different lists claiming essentialness and finding that there are often major discrepancies. I find the occurrence of non-unanimity thrilling. It’s when the lists start to look exactly the same that I start to lose sleep. A trip to the Internet Movie Database’s top 250 confirms to me that many movie-goers, indeed, many educated folk who would no doubt be willing to wear a big red stamp saying CINEPHILE on their chests, operate under the influence of canonical consensus. Don’t misunderstand me… there are many pictures far less worthy of unabashed praise than Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai. But how many of these voters do you think have voted for, or even seen for that matter, Welles’s magnificent The Magnificent Ambersons or Kurosawa’s politically complex Sanjuro? A good fraction less in both cases. Much of that may be due to unavailability, but the root of that problem lies in the critical consensuses to those respective films. (This is why Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole isn’t out on DVD, but we have, like… four versions of Some Like It Hot.) In fact, the imdb’s top 250 is made up almost entirely of films that people are told to see in order to be film literate (and a handful of more recent, flashy pictures devoid of much in the way of consequentiality). And this isn’t exclusive to the imdb. Practically every online poll points to the exact same conclusion: people are told what’s good and people eat it up. Why are there such eclectic responses to modern masterpieces like A Taste of Cherry, but it would be liken to heresy if one was to say to say that The Seventh Seal is bad? Conversely, to suggest that Peckinpah’s ninja-thriller The Killer Elite is a better action film than Nolan’s ninja-flavored Batman Begins is tantamount to admitting that you kill puppies. For the record, I hold both of the aforementioned opinions.
Anyway, I’m not sure that my ramblings have much of a direction anymore, but thank you for reading if you’ve gotten this far. In the end, I think I’m agreeing with Schrader (best film? Affliction) essentially, in that lists are needed, and possibly in our nature to produce, but are ultimately bad because of their exclusive nature. But why not indulge? They’re a fun way to express one’s self—isn’t it said that you can tell a lot about a person by what kinds of movies they like? When tackling a list, the maker should be ready to accept the fact that what they’re doing is fruitless as an exercise in comprehensive representation. Instead, when approached with the candid intention of giving your audience a window into yourself, essential film lists are great.
As an ironic capper to this long-winded and probably nonsensical letter, here’s a list of the five greatest movies ever made, in alphabetical order:
Barry Lyndon
Black Orpheus
Children of Paradise
Nashville
The Truman Show
Thanks for your time. Your blog is great!
PATRICK
I'll proffer two brief observations about Schrader's unsurprisingly intelligent and eloquent essay:
1. Schrader devotes much attention to how the technological development of film itself (viz. Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") was a key element in the fall of the canon, thus complicating the erection of a film canon in the classical (or 19th-century) sense of the word. Yet while his linking of film to evolving technology is certainly astute, his predictable sci-fi scenarios for the future of film overlook the fact that, while the form in which films (or any medium) are consumed are certainly relevant to their effect upon the audience, the content (of themes, storytelling, etc) of same retains some (for lack of a less incriminating word) universal characteristics. The bulk of the narrative feature films (which Schrader considers the only category worthy of being included in a canon) which we consume today, sans contemporary context and language, would have been snugly at home in the world of Victorian sentimental fiction.
2. Drawing attention to Jonathan Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema, wherein Rosenbaum labels a number of films "classics", Schrader opines that for the life of him he has no idea how Rosenbaum arrives at this judgment. Putting aside for the moment the fact that Rosenbaum titles his list of classics "1,000 Favorites (A Personal Canon)", Schrader is nonetheless stressing a very important point: that to free the best of cinema from the tyranny of taste, we must develop an objective means of appraising the highest achievements that cinema has to offer us - and having had more half-assed philosophical blog discussions around this topic than I care to remember, "objective" in this sense signifies "the codified opinions of a large majority of intelligent and informed commentators over a sustained period of time." All well and good - except that when Schrader then comes to list his 60 canonical works, in amongst the usual suspects are films so inexplicable in that company that only the vicissitudes of personal taste could have occasioned their presence.
Which is not to demean Schrader's enterprise as a whole, since film criticism needs to be freed from many of the enemies and obstacles he identifies. But, taking into consideration the fact that what was supposed to be a book has been transformed into a long article, I prefer Rosenbaum's positing of an "open" canon (which does not preclude judgment or rational evaluation) to Schrader's more restrictive list, which, from the evidence on view here, appears to be a simple repository of the inarguable with a few instances of the highly questionable (I love The Big Lebowski as much as any man, but Pauly, c'mon).
I find Schrader a brilliant man, but - like you, Jim - I feel he misses the mark on this one.
One example of this would be the way he compares the fall of the practical use of the horse, to film. I've never really considered movies to be a practical item like the horse once was (going A to B), so to assume that film is headed for the same fate seems like a stretch.
I can't disagree strongly enough with Schrader. He's saying that movies are dead, and therefore the past cannot inform the future. Doing a project on that basis is, for him, impossible and irrelevant. It's stated plainly enough here:
The are two problems with his analysis. One, he offers no evidence that movies are in decline. Two, he says "It is no longer possible for a young filmgoer to watch the history of film and make up his or her own mind: there are just too many movies. It’s barely possible to keep up with the yearly output of audiovisual entertainment on TV and in theaters...". Talk about a non sequitur. If movies are dead, then why are there so many new ones every year? It's true that Hollywood may be completely out of the business of making serious movies, adhering to the "standards" of the canon he's talking about, but so what? Interesting movies are being produced anyway, outside the Hollywood system. And the technophobia doesn't make much sense either. There have been technological changes in the medium of film going back to the 19th century. We don't crank the cameras by hand anymore. There were plenty of doom-sayers when TV came along, but movies somehow managed to survive, and flourish. Does it make so much difference if we're using digital cameras, or using CGI? I think not. Schrader is like a 1930s critic complaining about color, or a 1950s critic complaining about television. The Woody Allen "change equals death" paradigm is typically used by stolid, conservative thinkers who couple greatness with antiquity.
People ascribe all sorts of nefarious connotiations to the word "canon," as if it conceals a DaVinci Code-like conspiracy. But canon formation is not something an individual or even a group can accomplish. Making a "100 Best" anything list is not deciding on a canon. A canon forms gradually and never achieves a final state. But a film's canonical status (or lack thereof) is also not simply a matter of in or out; the canon is not rightly imagined as a box but as a series of concentric circles. Some films are central and will always be so, but at the margins the canon is quite fluid.
As fo centrality, no one who wants to be able to articulate his or her opinions on film can avoid a serious engagement with (in no particular order) City Lights, M, Metropolis, Nosferatu, Alexander Nevsky, The General, Some Like it Hot, Lawrence of Arabia, Double Indemnity, Seven Samurai, The 400 Blows, Citizen Kane, Ran, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Paths of Glory, Jaws, Annie Hall, and others. Those films will always come up in the conversation.
Of course, if someone wants to make the argument that one or more of these is over-rated and should be considered less central than they are, and that Say Anything or Alien or Cross of Iron or High Fidelity (all films I treasure) deserves more acclaim, fine. Maybe one can bring attention to an unappreciated masterpiece, or bump a film a ring or two closer to the canonical center or further from it. But at the center, the canon isn't going to change much, nor should it.
The same is true in literature, which has a much longer history. Some writers were long unjustly ignored -- Aphra Behn and John Clare come to mind -- and in recent years have been added to the outer rings of the canon. But they aren't going to push Keats or Wordsworth or Rilke, let alone Shakespeare, out of their more central positions.
If the canon were to be miraculously wiped clean tomorrow, we would need to start deciding on (and fighting over) a new one within minutes. The alternative is the complete balkanization of the love of film, in which we lack a frame of reference and therefore all talk past each other.
It's an interesting article, though honestly I'm less interested in Schrader's rather abstract attempt to place his "narrative" of film history within a particular (and rather apocalyptic) history of aesthetics than I am with the films he chooses based on his proffered criteria: beauty, strangeness, unity of form and subject matter, tradition, and repeatabilty, viewer engagement, and morality.
He is wrong. It is not the end of movies, nor is it the end of me sticking things up my butt. Far, FAR up my butt. Clinically far. You know what I'm getting at?
He is wrong. It is not the end of movies, nor is it the end of me sticking things up my butt. Far, FAR up my butt. Clinically far. You know what I'm getting at?
Had you read the article closely you would have noticed that Schrader referred to a book by Ray Kurzweil called "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology." The book basically proposes that technological evolution is exponential and that when machines learn to think intelligently, the rate progression of invention will snowball to a state in which humans will have the capacity to use technology to alter their own biology. At this point a new age will dawn upon the universe in which this new form proceeds to alter the physical universe to its liking. History has proven that when technology, the means of production and of distribution, are changed, the art of cinema changes with it. As Geoffery Cheshire pointed out in his article "Death of Film, Decay of Cinema" that when digital projection takes over the movie as we know it will fundementally change. As technology, and film is a technological medium, begins to progress more and more rapidly, narrative forms will change with it, coming to more closely resemble television. Thus, cinema as we understand it, is nearing it's death. As is mankind the way we currently understand it, according to Schrader.