Peter Bart: Prestige filmmakers get personal this awards season, but are audiences responding?

Avatar: the way of waterThe much talked about opening of has put films back on the agenda, but the filmmakers seem lost in the fog. James Cameron’s personality burns in the media, but the very personal work of Sam Mendes, James Gray and even Steven Spielberg has faded in recent weeks.

“Cinema is a language about to be lost,” Wim Wenders once prophesied at a Cannes film festival, but filmmakers keep trying. witness how rich in light (Mendes) Armageddon time (Grey) or even The Fables (Spielberg), all explore the efforts of young filmmakers trying to discover this language. No one has found an audience yet.

Then there’s Damien Chazelle calling Babylon, his new film, both a “hate letter and a love letter to movies.” Won and lost an Oscar the countryChazelle has a mixed-message claim, and critics seem to be taking sides as well. Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, takes place during that magical moment in Hollywood when silence turned to noise and the moguls began to seize power. The outlook looked rosy.

Would Babylon Join the line-up of unforgettable films that reflect Hollywood’s attempts to perpetuate itself – films ranging from Sunset Blvd or A star is born to The player or Bart Finn?

“We are all junkies and art is our thing,” Uncle Boris told a young Steven Spielberg The FablesRate the youngster’s feverish endeavors in the field of cinema.

Teen Spielberg’s obsession with cinema seemed like a loving throwback to Giuseppe Tornatore’s delightful 1988 film cinema paradisewhere an elderly projectionist semi-adopts a teenage film buff in Sicily.

Spielberg’s film is much more personal and complex, involving both family betrayal and encounters with anti-Semitism. The film was universally praised by critics, but is expected to earn $15 million in the US, a disappointing result compared to the huge promotional costs and previous Spielberg openings.

Those numbers were healthy compared to the non-reception of Gray’s oddly titled autobiographical film Armageddon time. It’s a moving but bleak look at coming of age in 1980s Queens that anticipates the filmmaker’s fascination with art and film and delves into an episode of racial segregation.

Gray delivered films as finely as The night is ours and Little Odessabut his attempt at self-analysis found no audience.

Mende’s wonderful title rich in light is not yet widely available in the US, but has opened to appreciative critical reception in the UK. Like Spielberg, Mendes’ film is about an emotionally complex mother-son relationship, as the son’s perception is shaped by cinema. It’s also from the 1980s.

Mende’s previous work includes 1917 and sky falls.

In a somewhat similar category Bardo, false chronicle of a handful of truths by Alejandro González Iñárritu, about his “existential” return to his homeland. The film received strong critical response and a limited release as an “art film”.

The videos come at a time when personal stories don’t typically draw strong reactions from ticket buyers. That New York Times started the trend with a page-one story titled “Oscar Prestige Films Fail to Impress” — a discovery that led to a deluge of letters to the editor.

Readers pointed to the outages of streamers, the intrusion of Covid and the lack of cinemas. Most also admitted that they had not been to the theater lately.