Other planets

David Thomson has written an angry, passionate polemic calling for cinema about ordinary life. In particular, he defends Yasujiro Ozu against modern interpretations of the director as being essentially a formalist, and he attacks James Cameron's spectacular 3D science fiction movie Avatar. Thomson starts with a powerful but probably untrue statement:

Family is where we learn everything, including the sweeping urge to be done with family. Family is a basis of every narrative art, even if it offers us the humbling insight that our lives are all so ordinary and alike as to be worthless or without lofty significance. For most of us, family determines who will be at our funeral, and with what mixed feelings. Family asserts that we are higher than animals, and is the undertone and the consideration that leaves every one of us, if not afraid, then stilled, as we go to bed at night.

(For an opposing viewpoint, recall the Gen X/slacker emphasis on friends as a new family, which reached its apotheosis on the incestuous TV show Friends, or Tim's remarks from the final episode of Ricky Gervais's The Office: "The people you work with are people you were just throw together with. You know, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice, and yet you spend more time with them then you do your friends or your family. But probably all you've got in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for 8 hours a day.")

He is sharply dismissive of Avatar - a spectacular film that has been occasionally lauded for its political theme (by George Monbiot and by opponents of the Chinese government) while being attacked by others for its simplistic storytelling, numerous plot holes, and resemblances to FernGully: The Last Rainforest or Dances With Wolves. Thomson insists on the importance of Ozu's domestic subject matter and plain style in opposition to the 3D extragavance of James Cameron's film, and points to the basic flaw of all computer graphics movies:

I will not dispute the level of spectacle in Avatar. And I am nostalgic enough about the engineering of prolonged battle scenes to concede that James Cameron has not lost the touch with armed struggle that he displayed in Aliens and the Terminator films. But Avatar is garbage, too, and that can only be pinpointed by stressing its abject subject matter and its inability to see that the most spectacular thing the movies ever had to offer (see Renoir, Ophüls, Ozu, Bresson ... well, just keep seeing) is the human face as its mind alters or saddens.

You may say, don't be so solemn, don't pose the history of the movies as that blunt choice – Ozu or Avatar – when clearly there is room for so much more. But I think the cultural dilemma is as acute as this awkward choice suggests, and I fear that a culture – especially a culture of the young – will forget the existence of Ozu, and those whose films were always the fullest engagement of movies with this awkward but irresistible subject matter.

In defending the centrality of family, he launches a rather unfair attack on Paul Schrader: a double failure as a sensationalistic filmmaker who can't even get funding these days - nobody would deny that Schrader's filmography as writer or director is variable, but anybody whose credits include Taxi Driver, Mishima, The Last Temptation of Christ, Raging Bull, Light Sleeper, and Affliction stands not only as a talented film artist but someone who has pinpointed many of the obsessions of his age while dealing with timeless themes of redemption, art, sacrifice, and even occasionally family. There is no reason why a sensationalist film cannot deal with real themes - just as Elizabethan and Jacobean drama did despite the murders and swordfights - though it is true that many filmmakers put in far less effort than Schrader into articulating a personal vision and following it to extremes (perhaps Thomson thinks film should be less personal and more social - although curiously he has in the past championed James Toback, a second-class Schrader if ever there was one).

Thomson's final version of his point is fairer, focussing not on theme (he concedes Avatar addresses many themes) but referring perhaps to the texture or surface of film rather than its depths:

More and more of our movies – I am thinking of mainstream, English-speaking cinema – bear very little reference to life as lived.

Science fiction or realist drama can equally well explore many of the same themes, and surely even Thomson would agree that not all art should be realist (there is surely space in film for Michael Powell or Robert Bresson). But representing life as it is lived, as it is experienced by individuals, looking at family, work, the day-to-day quotidian basis of getting out of bed and keeping going till you can sleep at night, is not a priority for British or American cinema. The recent mumblecore movement seemed to be an attempt, but one which made no attempt to represent lives other than those of its filmmakers, and thus failed to say anything about most people's life. There are filmmakers capable of making this work, but few people seem to go see their movies, and fewer give them money to make new films.

Readers' comments on the article included many accusing Thomson of snobbery and saying ordinary people want escapist nonsense or alcoholic inebriation after a day at work; those saying that many people enjoy depressing small-scale family drama on TV, e.g. Eastenders; and someone pointed out that far from being an honest depiction of modern family life, Ozu's films were right-wing propaganda encouraging women to remain in the family and defending the traditional Japanese order after the turmoil of 1945.