Being Present to the Present

A FEW YEARS AGO, Woody Allen made a subtle cinematic joke about writers and artists harking back to “the good old days,” while soaking up—and co-creating—the atmosphere of 1920s Paris. If ever there was a “good old days,” some might think it was 1920s Paris. The joke of Midnight in Paris was that even people who live in the good old days are nostalgic for their own version. People feel the same way about movies: “They don’t make them like they used to” is the common refrain.

A recent online discussion asserted that movies were better before the millennium, proposing 27(!) reasons why. But a closer look discerns positive, more nuanced news. There definitely seem to be more bad films around, but there are also more good films, partly because simply more films get made. And they don’t make them like they used to—contemporary movies are more psychologically nuanced and sociologically diverse than ever. Compare some Academy Award Best Picture nominees and winners of five decades: The Graduate, Annie Hall, The Last Emperor, Titanic, No Country for Old Men, and Moonlight. You can see a transition from white male-centered dramedies or epics of the “exoticized other” to a pro-feminist movie, a serious engagement with the human shadow, and a profoundly humane story about LGBTQ people of color.

It does seem that the most popular movies today are usually forgettable theme park rides, whereas until about 25 years ago annual box office top 10s usually contained a handful of artful dramas. But movies are not getting worse—in 2017, Endless Poetry, Patti Cake$, Mother!, Maudie, Beatriz at Dinner, The Lost City of Z, A Ghost Story, War for the Planet of the Apes, Okja,and The Big Sick easily stand alongside any 10 of the best films of any previous year. This matters for reasons similar to how we approach contemporary affairs: Believing that everything is worse today is part of the same process that leads people to vote for the past.

Instead of “They don’t make them like they used to,” perhaps it’s truer to say, “It’s me who changed.” Perhaps we remember good old days because they remind us of when wonder came more easily, before we felt the burdens of the world. This may be even truer now, as we grapple with the bombardment of electronic info-noise. When I was much younger, going to the movies was a treat, sometimes a spectacle. Now I can watch an epic on a screen smaller than a deck of cards, and the available choices seem overwhelming. But I also can see more cinematic wonder than ever, and those wonders may be just as wise as the icons of the past.