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140: Are Awards Season Movies Doomed at Theaters? Plus: ‘Emancipation’ reviewed!

December 13, 2022
Notes
Transcript
On this week’s episode, Sonny Bunch (The Bulwark), Alyssa Rosenberg (The Washington Post), and Peter Suderman (Reason) ask if awards season fare has a place at the multiplex any longer. Are prestige pictures doomed to a streaming-only existence in the near future? Or will audiences come back? And then we review the streaming service Apple TV+’s award season venture Emancipation. Does it have a shot at Oscar gold? Make sure to swing by Bulwark+ this Friday for our bonus episode on streaming service Netflix’s awards season animated fare, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. We are truly living in a golden age of stop-motion animation. And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend! 

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:11

    Welcome back to across the movie I presented by Bulwark Plus. I am your host, Sunny Punch, Culture Editor of The Bulwark I’m joined as always by Elizabeth Rosenberg of The Washington Post and Peter Zimmerman of Reason Magazine. Listen, Peter. How are you today? I’m swell.
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:23

    I am happy to be talking about movies with friends.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:27

    Or stop being controversies and controversies, no one is going to see the awards caliber films. At least that’s what Brooks Barnes has to say in The New York Times. That’s his takeaway from the box office results thus far through the award season, Tarr, and she said have both taken in and around five and a half million dollars despite costing thirty five and fifty five million respectively to make and market. The fablement cost forty million dollars plus marketing and has made less than eight million. Armageddon time cost thirty million and has grossed less than two.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:53

    Divotion cost a hundred million dollars and earned just fourteen. Why the double drone Well, it could be the cannibalization inherent to releasing so many movies aimed at the same sorts of audiences over such a short period of time. Maybe it’s competition from TV. Why go to the movies when you have the crown and white lotus and the Wednesday to catch up on? Perhaps it’s lingering coronavirus fears, given that older audiences are more susceptible to the disease, and we’re seeing a new surge in cases.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:19

    And these are movies that are aimed at older audiences as Brooks Barnes kind of tongue and cheeknotes older includes everybody over the age of thirty five. So the geriatrics on this show, in addition to everybody else, that’s who goes see these movies. Or maybe it’s that sophisticated audiences have nowhere to go as too many art house and indie minded theaters closed during the pandemic. Maybe the Maybe the people are just tired over all of the sorts of award season movies we’re getting, movies about, you know, look, it’s racism and inequality and homophobia and oppression. That’s that’s we’re tired of it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:51

    We’re tired of it. We wanna laugh as one of the sources in Brooks’ piece says. Personally, I think it has to do with two factors. Factor the first, Hollywood has trained moviegoers to watch prestige pictures at home with Flicks like Koda and power of the dog last year racking up tons of nominations and awards. When you train people to watch awards season stuff at home, that’s where they’re gonna watch it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:10

    Factor the second and I think this may be more crucial and possibly more simple and simultaneously much more complicated. Audiences have no idea where to watch these movies. Think about how they used to or how they still roll these movies out. Right? There’s a round of publicity on the festival circuit where these pictures debut, but where virtually no one can see them.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:29

    Then they get a limited release in New York City and LA and maybe Chicago for a couple of weeks two months later before they expand more cities a month after that. By the time they’re in six hundred or so screens, the initial wave of PR is months behind us, meaning that folks have no idea What to see? Where to see it? When it’s coming out? Where it’s out?
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:48

    What’s going on? Where do people see ads anymore? Think about the most basic questions. Right? Where are they gonna look at banners on websites?
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:55

    We all ignore those. We if we’re not actively blocking them. Promoted tweets, I almost never see any of those. Facebook ads, I guess. I don’t know.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:03

    No one reads daily newspapers. We killed radio for podcasts and streaming services. When audiences go to fewer movies as they have been going to fewer movies, they see fewer trailers for movies. So they have less idea of what’s coming up. The decline in the award season movie is, I think, at least in part, a story about the decline in advertising and the decline in local criticism.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:23

    Once upon a time, every city had multiple critics writing at multiple newspapers telling them what was out there and what to watch. Nowadays, everyone is a national critic. Critics time their reviews to drop all at once rather than when something comes out in their city because that’s the best way to shape the critical narrative number one, and also earn precious precious clicks. Precious clicks. We gotta get those clicks.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:44

    Right? And that leads to reviews being, frankly, less useful for platforming releases and less useful to the viewers who live in cities outside of New York City and Los Angeles. It’s less useful for the readers. That’s the crime here. It’s less useful for the readers.
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:00

    Because why I always I’m I’m a man of the people as you guys know. I always try to time my reviews for release on the Friday a movie opens or at Friday it opens wider. Rather than ten to twenty days beforehand or two months beforehand. It’s me saying to the reader, hey, here’s what’s out this week. You should go see it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:19

    But I digress. Peter, why do you think that people aren’t showing up for the fancy movies during the fancy movie season? I agree with everything that you said actually because for
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:28

    once, Sunny is totally and completely right. But I would add a couple of other factors. The first one is home viewing has just gotten a lot better. And so maybe not a lot better since twenty nineteen, but I think a little bit better since twenty nineteen. And just in part, because people spend a lot of money on televisions and on sound systems, on sound bars, and sort of upgrades to their theatrical experience during the pandemic, because people were stuck at home, had no way to spend money outside the home.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:55

    So there was a huge amount of home upgrading that happened during that time. So relatively speaking, even in the past three years. The home experience has just gotten a lot better, but let’s let’s Let’s bring it back to like nineteen ninety seven when, you know, you and I were in high school, Sunny. There were people who had big screen television and there were even surround sound systems that people had in their homes. You know, I had friends who had Bose surround sound systems with, you know, those little subwoofers that like juice the base in kind of dumb ways, but everybody thought they were awesome back then because for the technology the time they were.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:29

    But for the most part, if you went into even a a relatively successful upper middle class home in most of America. You were gonna find like a thirty two inch boxy television. That was showing stuff in, I think, like, two forty i or something like that right up, sort of pan and scan, four to three, like, just the picture quality, the size, the scale of it. If you were watching movies, you were watching them on VHS or just whenever they were broadcast on maybe HBO, or CBS or something like that with commercials. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:01

    So you at best, you were gonna get VHS quality. Yes. Yes. Some people had laser disc players. Some people.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:07

    But almost no one had laser disc players. And even then some of that stuff was shown in Pantgin, now almost everyone. Has the ability to watch a movie in pretty good quality, even if they haven’t turned off the motion smoothing, like it’s just so much better to watch a movie on a forty two inch television today or up sixty five. Right? Even if it’s not the best OLED Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:29

    Like the just the the difference in quality in homes and the the penetration of of into homes of gigantic pretty good televisions is not quite universal, but even even people who are not, you know, super rich have big televisions these days. And just makes a huge difference. You can now watch a movie whatever you want and also at relatively high quality or at least comparatively high quality in a way that was not true twenty years ago and that’s obviously going to change the market. Meanwhile, movie theaters have not gotten that much better. And so I think that it’s just sort of that that inherently raises the cost of going out in addition to the fact that the cost of going out has gone up.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:14

    Right? But it raises the cost just in the sense that if the baseline experience of watching at home is much better, then the difference between the two. The difference between watching at home and watching it on a, you know, at a theater is you’re gonna you mean, it’s it’s just not gonna be as big a difference. So I think that’s a a genuinely a big deal. And I’m not talking about custom home theater installs, and I’m not talking about people have spent thousands of dollars on their sound systems.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:40

    I’m talking about it’s just very normal to walk into a middle class home now and find a giant television and soundbar. Compare that to two thousand five or nineteen ninety five or nineteen eighty five. Huge difference plus, all of its on demand. Right? It’s all just there when you want it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:54

    Do you don’t have to drive to a video store? You don’t have to have a big VHS library? And that just makes a huge difference. And you combine that with studios training people to watch things at home because, you know, they’re releasing them that way, but also a full year where In most parts of the country or at least many parts, theaters were either closed or might as well have been closed. And that in and of itself sort of creates an anti momentum.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:20

    If you went a year without going to the movies, you in some sense, have to have become comfortable not going to the movies, and it’s only weirdos like us who who can’t notch, who kind of who got, like, who got crazy because we didn’t go to the movies for a year. And that and, like, all of those things just combine for a world in which it’s just a lot harder to bring people out to a theater.
  • Speaker 3
    0:08:44

    Alyssa, I
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:44

    wanna I wanna hit on I wanna emphasize one point that Peter and I both made here, which is is you know, I I take Peter’s point about image quality and all that, but I frankly am like I’m slightly I I I I don’t put that much stock in because here’s what I’ve learned about people is that they will gladly take a reduction in quality of a thing for easier access and convenience. So that thing. This is what we see with streaming streaming video. It’s what we see with streaming audio. It like, people don’t want to put in an LP and listen to an LP.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:12

    They want access to every song you ever made, and they want it on Spotify coming straight to their food, coming straight to their phone. So I that like, I my my argument here would be less than it’s about the quality than the convenience. Right? I mean, you’re you’re you’re a mom with kids. If you have a choice between going to see something in theaters and staying home and watching it, which are you gonna do?
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:29

    Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:09:29

    and I think it’s useful for me to think I mean, because, look, I love going to the movies. I have a job where I can just, like, go to the movies in the middle of the day. My movie, like, unlike most Americans, my movie going options got radically better during the pandemic because I moved much closer to DC’s, like last independent like, nonprofit movie theater, which shows first run stuff and is a walking distance from my house. And we got not one, but two alamo warehouses within like a twenty minute drive from my house. So I think it’s more useful to think in terms of the threshold for, like, when do my husband and I go to see a movie?
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:03

    Right? And it’s generally when it’s something that we’re pretty sure we’re both gonna enjoy, not necessarily that we’re gonna be blown away by, but we’re pretty sure it’s gonna be a good time something that feels like it should be watched on a big screen. And, you know, those become the tests of when are we gonna, you know, when are we gonna have the nanny stay late? When are we gonna pay a babysitter? It’s kind of gotten whittled down to superhero movies.
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:28

    And I’m certain powers to admit that because, like, we both like good movies. We often, you know, we’ll trade off. You know, I’ll go see a screening like I’m gonna go do with Avatar tonight, and then I’ll take the kids another night so he can go with her. But you know, even as a critic, even as someone who either sees generally
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:45

    at
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:45

    least one movie in a theater a week, you know, the date night movie has gotten really whittled down to the kind of the sure thing for us. And even, you know, that sure thing, I’m sort of putting in air quotes since I’m super burned out in a lot of these movies, but it’s sort of the thing that we can kinda justify the overall experience. Well, but also
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:03

    the thing that every you know everyone’s gonna be talking about. Right? The thing that you know that all your friends are gonna be talking about, that the online are gonna be talking about even even a, you know, even a movie that kind of underperforms like Black Panther, Wakanda forever, which, you know, has has done four hundred million instead of six hundred million. Like, that’s a movie that that’s gonna be the second highest, third highest grossing movie of the year. And
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:24

    I think, you know, the point that you kind of glossed over and that shows up in the story is you know, the question of whether the theatrical experience is worth it. And we’ve talked about this on on the show sometimes like a lot of the big chain theaters are frankly that not not that nice to visit. Right? I mean, there, you know, there is like, the theater at gallery place downtown, I find basically invisible because the chances are when I go there that something will be radically off without the sound of projection. You know, the only thing to eat is just garbage.
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:59

    Like, really
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:00

    Garbage that you have to wait in line for for twenty minutes. And
  • Speaker 3
    0:12:03

    frankly, it’s often not that clean. And like, you know, I’m almost forty. Like, I’d like the bathrooms to be usable at a theater if I’m gonna pay, you know, fifteen dollars for a ticket. And one of the reasons that the Alamo and my, you know, local independent movie theater have become must goes for me is because they’re both immaculate. All of the time.
  • Speaker 3
    0:12:22

    Right? Like, you know, the alimos are spotless. The food is pretty good. And going there is like an actually pleasant experience in both places. You know, the the local independent theater, you know, they they don’t have as much money to plow into investments.
  • Speaker 3
    0:12:37

    They’re not, you know, getting whatever percentage of Disney movies they, you know, the chains get, etcetera. So they don’t have as much to invest in production and sound, but It’s pleasant. I can generally count on the audiences to behave well, particularly at the Alamo Aware, like they basically take you out and shoot you if you don’t. But when you’re asking people to do
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:56

    they’re nicer than that. That’s an exaggeration.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:59

    Yes.
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:00

    I would support their I would support Frontier Justice at the Alamo. It’s the only the only death penalty offense is disrupting a movie. You know, when something already requires sort of big opportunity cost, and then just the physical plant and the experience are gonna be miserable on some level. That makes it harder to go. You know?
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:21

    And, I mean, when you’re, like, thirteen, like, okay. Who cares if the floors are sticky? Like, you’re probably the Jackass building your popcorn anyway. But at a certain point, when you’re paying the sitter and it’s like you’re a rare night out and the physical plant is unpleasant or hard to navigate, you know, that’s I I do think that and it look, it’s really hard. Right?
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:41

    Like, I sympathize with the theater chains, which are, you know, unless you get to benefit from a meme stock frenzy and pay down a bunch of your debt. It’s hard to figure out how to make the investments in infrastructure you know, figure out what paying, like, good projectionists, everything else. So I I am sympathetic to the Legacy Theatre chains and to serve the struggling independents. But, you know, you have there’s a reason that IMAX has sort of been the thing that’s done well while everything else is in trouble is because they create a sense that it’s a premium experience. And, you know and look, there aren’t a lot of kind of low cost casual entertainment options left in you know, in the American market, but theaters in particular, I think have not accustomed themselves to the fact that they’re a premium product
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:30

    and they kind of have to act like it. Since you bring up low cost entertainment options, that that brings us to the other thing that we haven’t mentioned, which is competition from television content, which is just I mean, compared to fifteen years ago, there’s there’s so much more And a lot of it is much better. Right? Yes. We had HBO, and you could watch deadwood in two thousand four, and the wire and sopranos.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:56

    Stuff like that. But in general, there was not a huge amount of original scripted content that was high quality. And now if you are yeah. Again, you know, I’m not trying to write out Hill Street butte blues and NYPD blue, and I was like a Babylon five fan in the nineteen nineties. I’m not saying there was none.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:11

    Yeah. No. No. No. I’m just saying that the the year first of all, sheer number of shows we simply know has gone up, but I would say the sheer the number of shows that are of relatively high quality.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:21

    That are ambitious and that are aimed at adults has also gone up and certainly the number of hours of stuff. And so if you are an adult movie goer who wants to see like a a kind of a serious somewhat ambitious drama, there’s just a lot of that on television and a lot of it is at least pretty good. There are shows that are out there that, like, most that aren’t even getting talked about that have stars. I mean, I I was watching Netflix’s inside man with Stanley Tucci over the weekend, which I bet you guys haven’t even heard of. It’s a Stanley Tucci show.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:54

    And it’s actually pretty good. It’s a coproduction with the BBC, and it’s on Netflix. And you it’s like smart and and kind of, you know, clever. And people aren’t even talking with but it’s because there’s a huge amount of stuff out there. And so, like, again, movies have to sort of have to demonstrate a specialness in a way that they did not in nineteen eighty five or even two thousand five just because there’s so much other stuff that, you know, it’s it’s at worst.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:21

    It’s like That was kind of worth an hour on my couch. I
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:25

    think specifically there is blockbuster television. Yes. Right? In the sense that you can watch blockbuster action television spectacles in, like, you can get ten hours of that and half of the dragon or, you know, twelve hours of that with Andor. And I
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:38

    mean, frankly, She Hulk is, you know, more blockbuster like, more cinematic than almost anything that was on television in nineteen ninety eight.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:45

    Yeah. But beyond that, like, again, I would argue beyond the actual quality of the television and even almost beyond the quantity, though I think that this is more tied to it, the delivery device is so much is so much different and so much more oriented toward anytime you’re at home Anytime you are trying to figure out what to do on a given night, there is a ten hour season of television that you can either start or finish or continue. And we have so much of it now that that is almost infinite. I mean, like, I they’re they’re I I haven’t started watching yellow jackets. I wanna watch that show yellow It’s, you know, I if I wanted to, I could spend a week of evenings watching that with my wife.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:23

    You know, I need to finish the crown. Right? I I could I’ve got several days worth of a crown left to watch. Mythic Quest has a new season out. If you haven’t watched Mythic Quest, there’s there’s hours and hours and you could just you could go through each and every service and find fifty hours of television to watch tonight.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:41

    In a row. And that that you just
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:44

    already paid for. That you that you
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:45

    that you are currently paying for, that you pay for every month and you aren’t using But you forgot
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:49

    to stop paying for. I mean, it’s it’s it it really is a
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:53

    it’s a problem. And I just don’t I look, I love movies, and I love movie theaters. And I I think that there is a huge structural problem that movie theaters are going to have a very, very hard
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:06

    time, competing
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:07

    with especially when it comes to award season stuff, which let’s be honest, a lot of the time. And I think this is an understated point from Barnes’s piece. It gets one kind of a one off quote. But these movies oftentimes feel like homework. They feel like you gotta eat your vegetables and see the important things that have good messages.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:25

    And I, like, I’m I’m sympathetic to the idea that, like, I’ll wait at home to do that. Wait at home. Clearly,
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:33

    the answer is Margarobbe doing a lot of Cocaine. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:35

    we’ll see. When Babylon hits theaters, I think that’s gonna be the, you know, breakthrough moment for awards. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:40

    wanna I wanna make a a really quick argument to Sony about that maybe this is okay or at least fine in some ways, which is, Sunny, you are a big booster of spero pizza. SPARO. And there is a SPARO. SPARO. SPARO.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:58

    SPARO. SPARO. SPARO. Anyway, you’re terrible at its but it’s there. And that’s an important thing is that it’s there.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:06

    It’s everywhere you are. Sbarrel or Sbarrel or Sbarrel pizza is there. And that’s that’s kind of the streaming experience. It’s not the highest quality pizza. But you know what?
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:17

    It’s the most convenient pizza and sometimes the most convenient pizza is the best pizza for you and for frankly, for a lot of
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:25

    people, especially
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:26

    if
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:26

    you’re not like a hardcore elite pizza aficionado.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:31

    Now, but I mean, that’s not
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:32

    really a man of the people. That’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:33

    not really the right that’s not really the right metaphor here. A a better metaphor is something like Well, I could go to this I could drive to the Sporo and I could eat the Sporo at the mall or I could heat up my mama’s list. In the freezer. And like that, then more people are gonna stay home and and just eat the mama celeste because even though it’s an inferior pizza to Spiro, This is getting off the rails.
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:57

    Alright. So
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:57

    we’ll talk crap about Red Baron. What do we what do we
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:00

    think is that a controversy or a controversy that award season movies are in such bad shape at the box office Peter?
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:06

    I think it is
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:08

    kind of a controversy and it’s been increasing as a controversy for well over a decade even before the pandemic. Alyssa? Controversy. It’s a
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:17

    controversy and one that I have no idea how to solve because structurally things are things are very bad and probably gonna get worse. Alright. Make sure to swing by board plus for our bonus episode this week on Guillermo del Toro’s Panukio, which is on Netflix now and is really a wonderful and beautiful stop motion animated feature. We’re gonna be talking about that. You can watch it for yourself.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:37

    Now, there’s awards season. It’s on streaming. That’s where all the award season movies are. Speaking of which, onto our main event, emancipation, which is Apple TV plus his big award season movies starring Will Smith directed by Antoine Fuqua. Amancipation is about the life of a slave named Peter, who following the emancipation proclamation escapes from slavery.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:55

    It’s chased by a maniacal slave catcher played by Ben Foster, until Peter joins up with union forces who take a photo of his scarred back that would become a rallying cry against slavery. One of the first five world images, and then he goes and rescues his family from servitude Yay. On a pure storytelling level, a man’s patient is fine as, like, gussied up exploitation flick flick. And and this is honestly the milieu in which Fuqua, who I like a lot as a director works best. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:22

    Movies like, the equalizer, tears of the sun, training day, Olympus has fallen. These are all a plus or, like, at worst a minus. John reflects that combined Stardom and archetypes into something that is both rousing and pleasing and maybe just a little bit disreputable. Fukua has a great eye for action. He has an intuitive understanding of pacing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:40

    And they all just kind of zip along really nicely. And on that level, a man’s patience is perfectly fine. Right? We see the horrors of slavery. We witness Peter’s escape.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:48

    We hold our collective breath as he flees through the swamp lands and he has to wrestle alligators. Right? Will Smith is doing an accent. He’s he’s, you know, trying to free free his family. Ben Foster in his cold dead eyes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:02

    Right? They were he was basically born to play a psychotic slavecatcher. But advanced a patient’s big problem is that it is not positioned as a kind of pulpy action film. It’s a big award season movie with big social. It’s an it’s an action movie with social resonance.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:20

    Right? And if you can imagine me just saying that in in title case because it’s so, you know, serious and important. These two things aren’t necessarily mutual exclusive. Two ideas, but they are hard to meld that this movie is more pulp than prestige, and I don’t think it quite understands that. Set aside the plot’s mechanics, set aside the acting, set aside the writing, set aside the directing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:41

    The
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:42

    biggest problem in
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:43

    this movie is that it is just hard to watch I don’t mean that because of the subject matter, though the subject matter is obviously pretty rough, you know, slavery and war and all that. I mean, it’s literally hard to watch. The movie has been color graded to within an inch it’s cinematic life. It’s just a hair away from black and white. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:59

    It’s, like, practically in gray scale this movie. And this in turn leads to, like, really awkward creative decisions, like, their CGI fire that they color with CGI red that just clashes horribly with the rest of the look. It it looks terrible. It draws attention. To how ridiculous everything looks.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:15

    And I I just found myself getting, like, more and more agitated by the digira type coloring of this whole cinematic endeavor. If you wanna shoot it in black and white and fine, shoot it in black and white, don’t release a film that looks though the negative has been soaked in mud for a month before Prince were struck. I don’t want an entire movie look looks like it was shot day for night. That’s what
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:36

    this movie looks like. Was really aggravating. A list of what on earth were the filmmakers thinking? I don’t know. And this movie, I have to admit, I just sort of zoned out during a lot of it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:48

    It is not particularly attention holding on any level. And that is, you know, sort of notable say given it I mean, I Will Smith is a wonderful actor regardless of who he smacks in the face of the Oscars. And, you know, it’s it’s harrowing subject material, but it wasn’t even like I was averted my eyes. It was just it is a very sort of detached movie in some ways. And it is almost most interesting for thinking about as a movie.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:16

    It’s it’s an opportunity to talk about sort of what kinds of stories one can and can’t tell about slavery and what kind of enslaved people get to be characters. In movies. Right? And, you know, there is a sort of a requisite resourcefulness, nobility, humorlessness, you know, sort of matchless courage that, you know, is so de rigor in a movie like this. And it’s obviously at play here that it makes it very difficult to make Hollywood movies about slaves as people.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:54

    Right? And this is one of the many things that feel so striking about when Tarantino’s jango and chain is that, like, it’s a movie about slavery that is funny. It’s sexy. It’s weird. You know, the, like, jango himself is allowed to be like a kind of magnetic sex object.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:12

    And the characters who, you know, in again, in Django and chain, you know, the characters who are slaves and are collaborators with the white regime. Right? You have this character played by Samuel Jackson who, you know, is allowed to kind of be a monster. Right? And a manifestation has one of these sort of stock characters who’s kind of writing, you know, a black character who’s writing mutely along with the slave catchers.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:34

    You know, he’s sort of condemned. He’s like, you’re the you’re the worst kind shortly before he’s killed. But again, he’s like he’s not a person. And I think I have been complaining about that in a lot of movies lately. And I think it’s legitimately extremely hard to make this to make movies about slavery that have that tonal variety that allow characters who are enslaved to be like bad or unpleasant or annoying or you know, less than completely heroic because of the sort of political moment that we’re in.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:07

    And the thing is, you know, this movie is sort of set up to be the story of how this photograph is taken. And that would have been in many ways a much more interesting movie than the one we actually see. It would not have been sort of a good pulpy action movie, but you know, it just kinda, like, comes in at the end. Right? And there’s no follow-up.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:26

    There’s no imagining the really interesting question, which is, like, how does Peter feel about this photo? Right? Like, does he know that it becomes the subject of sort of a nationwide sensation? Like, that is you know, telling the story about if the photograph gets taken, like, the halfway or even, like, the end of the first act break, and then you tell the story of the photograph, That provides much more space for the person who is the subject of that photograph to sort of step into the frame as an object and as a person. Right?
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:57

    I mean, if you spend more time on Peter as a free person, there is more kind of political and narrative space for him to be a human being instead of just an archetype. And I, you know, I don’t know how to get around this cinematic quandary. Right? I mean, Quentin Tarantino can do this because by definition, he’s a kind of glass in a sort of brave enough to do this sort of thing. But there is just not a lot of emotional or political or artistic space for black filmmakers.
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:24

    And I think, frankly, probably for most black actors to play enslaved people who feel like people and who are not
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:33

    in
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:33

    the process of being reduced to the sort of their dignity and their right to freedom in a way made on persons on screen. Yeah. Peter, what
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:42

    did you what did you make of a emancipation? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:46

    often like Antoine Fuqua as a director and I will also say, I’ve I’ve interviewed him and he’s just like a great friendly, like, warm smark thoughtful dude. But this unfortunately is not a great film. I don’t think it’s quite awful, but it’s it’s really not very good. I think it’s best when it deals in pulpy action moments, but also in sort of visual world building, just some of the the sequences of sort of what it’s like at a seeing a slave camp in its operations. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:16

    These are big kind of epic you know, shots and sequences. There’s really interesting, I I think, drone photography in this movie where the camera sort of soars around an area and shows you not just what the space looks like but how all the people are interacting with each other and with the space. And some stuff that I I don’t think I have ever quite seen before, but I totally agree that it was just a bizarre decision to film it or to color grade it after the fact in not quite black and white with occasional, you know, gray blues. Just a very weird effect that yeah. Like like both of you, I found genuinely difficult to keep watching for the two hour plus running time.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:56

    The only thing I could think of as a reason for why this might have been done is that the movie sometimes seems to want to quote is wrong, but maybe allude to Schindler’s list and it felt like maybe that’s a that was the thinking behind this was that this is in the same way that Schindler’s list was, you know, all in black. Right? That this should be sort of heavily sort of reduced, so you’re just seeing the kind of you’re seeing the shadows of it. Right? I don’t know.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:25

    It I just don’t think it worked at all. I
  • Speaker 3
    0:29:28

    assumed it was because it’s leading up to making a point about the power of black and white photography. It could
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:33

    be that or, like, designed to kind of mimic the daguerreotype you know, color scheme. I, like, I frankly kept waiting for, like, for lack of a better word, a wizard of Oz moment. Where, like, the you know, everything it it, like, switches to full color and it’s like, he is free now and he’s fighting with a union and it’s things are better or when he rescues his family or just something. I I, like, was expecting and obviously that was wrong because I could not imagine another reason for the the film to be color graded this way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:05

    I thought, Alyssa’s remarks were really on point here. I mean, it’s on the one hand. It’s with sensitive subject matter like this. It’s hard to complain, oh, this movie wasn’t fun to watch. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:18

    Like that, you you feel like that’s not an appropriate complaint. At the same time, I I think, you know, I’ve I’ve read one critic, call it, misery porn. And I don’t think that’s entirely wrong, especially that first act before before he escapes, you know, from the the slave camp. And it just sort sort of seems to dwell on the misery and to make the misery to make the misery stand in for the character and for the person in a way that I don’t think actually reveals very much to us. It’s also once we get going and once you know, sort of once the escape happens, it’s very episodic.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:52

    Right? Like, there’s just sort of this thing happens and the next thing happens. And it’s this it’s almost chapterized except that the chapters don’t really lead to each other very much. It’s just kind of well here’s this incident and then that incident. And it doesn’t develop characters and through lines that that really pull you in.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:11

    And I think it’s just really odd this was positioned as a Will Smith Oscar bait project. Even totally forgetting all of the off screen Will Smith Oscar bait you know, Oscar drama, with the slap at everything last year. Because it totally robs Will Smith of what is his greatest strength, his ability to be warm and charming and kind of quirky and, you know, and even weird at times. It’s a it’s a really one note performance. That just doesn’t have many layers to it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:42

    And he’s grim and dull, and the result is a movie that is grim and dull. I wish this were much better. I I think there were some really interesting shots and sequences color grading issues aside, but I just don’t think it worked. Yeah. I mean, the movie
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:55

    is at its best during the chase and action sequences, the the battle at the end. I like, I think that’s all really well done and really well shot Fook was great at this. I mean, I’m I’m the guy who goes to the ramparts for tears of the sun once every six months or so reminds people to go to go watch it because it’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:11

    great. And even though it’s big flyovers in the big battle sequence at the end. Right? Like, that stuff is just I won’t say it’s the absolute best war sequences I’ve ever seen, but it’s just staged so much better than many contemporary directors would would stage similar sorts of sequences. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:28

    Well, and it effectively makes a point without hammering at home too hard, which is, you know, the Union Army is sending these guys into the meat grinder in a way that is more honorable and sees them more as men than the confederacy did, but that, you know, it’s on both sides of the line. They are being used as, you know, sort of almost industrial labor in this space. That’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:52

    body fodder.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:53

    Yeah. Alright. So what
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:54

    do we think? A thumbs up or a thumbs down on a man’s patient, Peter. Sadly,
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:59

    I have
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:59

    to give this a thumbs down. A
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:02

    regrettable thumbs down. I I have to give it a thumbs
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:04

    down. Again, I would I would probably give it a thumb up if not for the exceptionally bad color gray. I think, Alyssa, you said to me it looks like a movie shot through an Instagram filter. Which is which is very much how it how it feels. I just, like, I I cannot I cannot fathom the the choice here.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:23

    It does not it does not work for me. But, oh, well, not my movie. Alright. That’s it for this
  • Speaker 4
    0:33:28

    week’s show. Make sure to swing by at m a dot blower dot com for our bonus episode on Friday. Make sure to tell your friend the strong recommendation from a friend he is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences. If we don’t grow, we will die. If you did not love today’s episode, please complain to me on Twitter at sunnysunch, and I’ll convince you that it is, in fact, best show your podcast feed.
  • Speaker 4
    0:33:43

    See you guys next
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:45

    week.
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