David and Goliath at the Movies

Having recently watched the Danish import "At the Wedding", it's impossible not to recognize just how different foreign film is from the Hollywood machine. One reviewer had this to say, "Danish cinema has gained an international reputation as cynical and severe. The humor is grim, the drama is grimmer, and the production values are ascetic."

Nowadays, grim is not a word to be found in Hollywood's big budget productions (no one watches the small budget ones). In fact, the trend appears to be tacking a wedding or a happy ending onto the end of every drama to provide some inappropriate and misplaced levity. The lesson learned here is that American audiences don't do tears (except for sappy tears of joy) or seriousness.

Watching "At the Wedding" was disengaging for the first few minutes because the pace was much slower and more erratic. The light seemed overly stark, rather natural. It's so easy to forget that every scene is tinted by hundreds of filters that most 'A', 'B', and some 'C' movies use nowadays. Maybe we would like to believe that the world is a melodramatic and chill blue or gray, or brilliant yellow and orange in hue, but it also takes away from the acting. Similarly, the silences in "At the Wedding" were disconcerting at first because there wasn't any music announcing the mood and emotion of every scene. We don't even realize that music and the camera angles are just as vital as any of the actors.

Movies are technology, and technology has grown unbelievable in the last century. There is an art to better cinematography, more filters, CGI, and the layers of complexity that Hollywood movies embody. It's marvelous and destructive at the same time. With more sophistication, the core of cinema, the acting, is being replaced by visual and audio effects. Cinema has reached a point where the art has grown into a manufactured wasteland of cheap thrills. When the trade is too good, the tools of the trade often cover up the fact that there's no substance.

Independent films, though "inexpertly shot" and crude, capture the human condition and some of the rawness that's missing in overly smooth blockbusters. Sometimes, when we've come so far that we don't even recognize ourselves, it's good to go back to the basics. Then we work ourselves up from there again, and hopefully don't end up at the same place again.