The Velvet Café

Last week a new rating for films was launched in Sweden. It’s called “A-rating”, where “A” stands for “approved”. The seal is meant to be used for movies that have passed the Bechdel test. (In case you’re unfamiliar with it, the requirement to pass is to have at least two named women in it, who talk to each other about something besides a man.)

Behind the initiative are four independent cinemas in cooperation with the organizations Women in Film and Television and The Agency Equalisters.

This announcement has stirred quite debate in Sweden, dividing the film critics.

The critical voices accuse the Bechdel test for not measuring equality in an accurate way. A movie can have a very strong female perspective and yet fail at the test, for instance because there’s only one female character in the movie. And a film that displays every sexist stereotype you can think of can still pass the test thanks to a throw-away scene. A rating based on the Bechdel test risks to be counterproductive and misleading.

The supporters on the other hand admit that it’s not perfect, but argue that it’s better than the alternative: nothing at all. If anything, it’s a beginning. And if someone can come up with something better, they’re welcome to take an initiative. For now being, this is what we have.

An eye-opener
So where do I stand in this?

I’ve written about the Bechdel test before at my blog, and while I’m perfectly aware of its shortcomings, I still think it’s valuable to raise awareness about the imbalances in how men and women are depictured in movies. It’s a good starting point for a conversation with people who never have reflected about those things before. You might even call it an eye-opener. For me it definitely was one. It wasn’t until I heard about this test that I started to pay attention to how often the conversation that women have with each other in movies end up being about men, as opposed to men, who talk about their careers, plans and views on the world. It’s not a perfect tool to evaluate movies, but I still think it’s got its place and I love that it’s started to pop up pretty often in the conversation we’re having in the film fan community.

But the Bechdel test is one thing and turning it into a formal rating with a stamp to be used on posters and in advertising is something else.  Do we really need more ratings of movies? We already have the age rating (which I’m fine with.) In Sweden we’ve got a theatre chain that has achieved an eco-labelling. Admittedly this doesn’t refer to the movies as such, but to the organic snacks they’re serving. However I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would come up with the idea to rate the movie from this aspect as well.

Other possible ratings
Right away I could think of a bunch of possible ratings:

C-rated (C is for climate): this movie was recorded at one spot. No air plane journeys were made during its production and only environmental friendly fuel was used in the cars.

E-rated (E is for ethnical): the same requirements as the Bechdel test, but change gender to skin colour.

ANIM-rated (No animals were harmed during the recording of the movie.)

ANIM+ – rated (Same as ANIM-rated, with the addition that only vegetarian food was served to the production crew.)

And so on. I haven’t yet come up with the requirements for LGTB-rating and D-rating (D for disabled) or B-rating (B for tolerance for different religious Beliefs), but I’m positive thereare already suggestions for this, from people who take it a lot more seriously than I do.

And frankly I think this is just wrong. Labelling of this kind may work to some extent to help consumers to make better choices in a food store, but the film market is a different creature and I can’t see how the dynamics of labelling could work here.

Movie goers won’t shop around in the theatre lobby, looking at the posters to check out what seals different movies have. At least I won’t. I base my picks of movies on my experiences of previous works by the people involved in it (directors, screenwriters, actors) and on the reputation of the movie, what ‘ve read and heard. As the feminist I am, the issue whether a movie has passed the Bechdel test or not is the last thing on my mind when I make my decision about what to watch next.

Stirring a discussion
I don’t think the A-rating will spread any further than to the four theatres that launched it. The thought occurs to me that maybe that wasn’t the idea in the first place? Most of all it seems to me like stunt, meant to start a conversation and raise awareness about how women are portrayed in movies. And if that was all this was about, they’ve certainly succeeded. I haven’t seen media paying this much attention to the issue for a long time. The question is how long it will last. Tomorrow is another day. The piece of news about the A-rating will be swapped for the latest gossip about the recent cosmetic surgery of [insert random movie star].

The show will go on. It takes more than an A-rating to change it.

The best thing my parents ever did to me was to teach me that there wasn’t such a thing as “good” literature or “bad” literature. There were different kinds of books and it was perfectly fine to mix classics with crime novels and comics. They provided a wealth of literature. I was free to explore it without being judged.

Thanks to their attitude, I’ve always had an open mind towards literature in all its shapes, never ruling out a book as “rubbish” because it’s popular or “unreadable” because the author has received the Nobel Prize in literature. There’s a place and time for every book. Almost.

I came to think about this as I read a recent blog post by Anna Serner, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute. In the post she expressed her frustration over how difficult it is for a movie from Finland to find an audience in Sweden.

”What is it about our Swedes that make us dismiss so many films? We watch so many American movies, but we are impossible to persuade to go to the theatres to watch Nordic films (apart from certain Danish ones).”

When friends of world cinema bring this kind of issues up for discussion, they usually put the blame on the distributors and the theatre owners. It’s their fault that people don’t watch movies from Finland. They’re convinced that if the movie from Finland was screened in as many theatres as the blockbusters, the audience would come.

What makes Anna Serner’s blog post interesting is that she turns the spotlight in a different direction. Rather than demanding of commercial businesses to risk their money on movies that they from all experience know won’t sell, she wonders what’s up with the audience.

“I wish more people were curious about those Finnish movies” she writes, asking for the audience to be more open-minded.

Advertising not the solution
The standard answer would be that the movie from Finland needs more marketing. The idea in the cultural establishment is that if it only had a campaign as big as the one for Skyfall, people would come in droves. However I don’t think it’s that simple. Advertising is just one factor out of many when you decide whether to watch a movie in a theatre or not.

For the vast majority, going to a theatre is a way to relax. You watch movies to laugh, to get scared, to cry a bit, but most of all to be entertained. It’s not as if you’re going to an intellectual gym to exercise your brain, getting new perspectives and insights about the human condition. You’re looking to get away from it all in a two hour pocket of time, protected from reality. If there’s any suspicion that a movie will require some kind of effort, if so only to overcome prejudices or reading subtitles, it will take more than an ad to persuade the broad audience to give it a try.

So what would it take to make people be more open-minded about movies from Finland and other obscure countries? Is it possible at all? Being an optimist at heart, my answer is “yes”. But it requires us to change the way we think about movies. We must stop assuming that movies that are commercially successful are horribly bad for you or that art house and a small audience is a guarantee for high quality.

If the cultural establishment wants the mainstream audience to stop frowning at movies from Finland, a good start would be to stop being so sniffy about blockbusters.

The story of film
This summer I’ve watched Mark Cousin’s TV series The Story of Film. It’s a series that I highly recommend to every film fan. Cousin’s ambition to include world movies and female directors, his passion for the topic and his charming Irish accent makes it worth watching. But sometimes I think he goes a little bit too far in his dismissal of popular movies, like when he said that nothing of interest was made in Hollywood in the 80s. This meant that a movie such as Blade Runner, which has had a huge influence on the science fiction genre, was ignored. Instead he kept going on as usual about movies by unknown directors from far distant countries.

I think that the problem with this approach, despite its good intention to educate, is that builds a wall where there didn’t need to be one. In his world it appears as if almost nothing that comes out the English speaking world is worth watching, while movies from Asia, Africa and South America constantly are spoken of as ground breaking and the best movie ever made. This is rather off-putting. Why should I trust the judgement from someone who doesn’t care about Blade Runner?

Anna Serner dreams of an open minded audience that doesn’t sneer towards Finnish movies. In order to get there we need to spread the idea of a more relaxed approach towards cinema in society. We need to tear down whatever imagined walls that keep audiences appart. We need to stop using our taste for movies as a status marker. We need to teach our children that movies come in all shapes, that a workout in the theatre can be pretty awesome between the action films and that a movie from Finland can be entertaining too.

It’s a big task, so we’d better get started right away.

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Why do people even care about how well movies are doing at the box office? This was up for discussion recently at the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. The hosts of the show seemed to be pretty much at loss. Unless you’re directly involved in the making of the movie, why bother at all?

Since I’m a frequent movie goer who also throws a glance at the box office list from time to time, I thought I’d try to explain what’s going on in my mind.

I know there are people out there who see box office like a game. They make predictions about how well movies will make and then they wait for the turnout. If you nail it you can enjoy your moment of glory, claiming your skill as a box office prophet.

I’m not one of those. I couldn’t care less about who makes the most money, if it’s Sony, Warner, Universal or 21^st Century Fox. I can’t even tell the companies aside, I haven’t put any bets whatsoever and I’m not a shareholder.

Freaking me out
And yet I do care about the numbers, perhaps more than I should. Most of the time they freak me out. I get scared when I think about what impact the current box office will have to future movies. Every time a movie takes the market by surprise, either it’s under- or over-performing, it sends a powerful signal to the industry about what kind of films they should make to become successful.

After a year like 2013 we have every reason to worry about the outcome if I’m to believe what they said at Pop Culture Happy Hour. Every movie with a new idea and concept has made it so-and-so or even bombed at the box office. Meanwhile several sequels from already established franchises went well.

If I was an executive at one of the major film studios, expected by the investors to make as much profit as possible, the obvious conclusion wold be to not to listen to any unknown person who approaches me with new ideas. I’d be better off contracting Iron Man 4,5 and 6, regardless of the cost.

Even if I admittedly love some of the long lasting installations, such as James Bond and Star Trek, I find this utterly depressing. We need film studios who dare to take chance and go for new directors and writers with original concepts. Movies like any other art form needs to get new oxygen, taking leaps of faith from time to time, or it will run the risk to suffocate.

I also care about box office numbers because I hate to see my favourite directors and screenwriters flop. It always makes me worried that no one will dare to hire them again. Actually they don’t even need to be my favourites. As long as they seem to be nice, my heart reaches out for them. I remember when John Carter bombed at the box office. I wasn’t a fan of the movie at all, but after listening to a couple of interviews with the director I felt terrible about being so harsh towards it. He seemed like the nicest guy, and besides I’ve loved other movies he’s made in the past. It was heart breaking to think about the negative effects that John Carter may have on his career. (Yes, I’m soft like that.)

The third reason why I care about the box office is that I want as many people as possible to see the movies that I love, the same way as I try to convince people around me to read a book, watch a play or visit a favourite restaurant.

I want to spread the love and it frustrates me when endlessly when a movie I love fails to find an audience. It seems so unfair to me when an excellent movie ends up getting a total audience of 500 in Sweden over a year, while a movie that I consider rubbish is watched by a half a million. What pains me is that the success seems to have very little to do with the quality of the movie. It’s mostly related to the size of the marketing campaigns and what faith the dominating theatre chain puts into the film.

Reasons not to pay attenion
Finally: of course there are good reasons why we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the box office. One is that it’s not our business. We’re consumers of movies, not producers. It’s not as if I lack movies that I’d love to watch. Regardless of what the box office says, my to-watch list is endless. And if a movie doesn’t get to a theatre nearby because of box office issues, most of the time I’ll eventually get to see it on DVD or in worst case VOD. I just need to be patient and it will come to me.

Another reason to not to bother about this is that the box office only tells a part of the story nowadays. The first reports about how well a movie does the first weekend in US says very little about how the final turnout will be. Movies are released in many markets and not all of them react in the same way. In some cases it takes a long time for the audience to find a film. The word just needs to be spread.

And isn’t that a comforting thought? When you see your favourite movie of the year failing at the box office, you can always mutter to yourself:

“Box office didn’t get it. But the film lovers all over the world will. This could be the Shawshank Redemption of our time. Just give it a few years and we’ll show you.”

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Film criticism – who’s it for? This was the somewhat vague title of a panel discussion I attended last week.

In the audience you would find people from all areas of the film business – critics, distributors, filmmakers, representatives for various organisations. The setup on the stage was dominated by film critics from the established traditional morning papers with one exception: a young man from a web publication who I figure was there to represent the future.

It looked like a good idea to bring him on. He if anyone, with a large and growing audience of 15-35 year old readers, should be able to give a picture of where things are heading. What do  people want from film criticism? How is it challenged by the growth of social media? What would it take to make people willing to pay for film criticism in a tie when so much is available for free on internet?

But sadly it didn’t turn out that way. It was clear from the beginning that the film critics were utterly uninterested in anything related to social media or online publications like the one the guy in the panel represented.

“What ordinary people write about a movie is of very little importance” said one.

Another one told us that the morning paper he worked for had shut down the possibility for readers to comment on reviews, since there would be too much discussion. He didn’t seem to mind.

Lack of audience
And the critics representing traditional media went on to discuss what they thought was the most important change in film criticism during the last five years, namely the fact that they had been “forced” to rate movies. Apparently the pressure from the marketing department became too large. If you don’t have star ratings, you won’t get quotes in the ads and posters for the movie, missing an opportunity for your publication to get visible. So they rated the movies and if I got them right it had turned out that it wasn’t as bad as they had thought it would be. It could even be helpful, forcing them to be clearer in their reviews, giving reasons for why a movie got a certain grade.

But then there was this little thing that kept bothering them. The audience. Or rather: the lack of it. They had 1 realised that the reading habits of the upcoming generations are a subject to change. It doesn’t occur to 20-25 year olds who are about to movie away from their parents to start subscribing for a newspaper. They know that they can get their news – including film reviews – quicker and cheaper online.

“We don’t have any readers that are born after 1965”, said one of the film critics, the one who ten minutes earlier had dismissed film discussions over blogs and twitter as having no relevance.

And I thought to myself: that it didn’t surprise me the slightest. With an attitude like that, how could you possibly attract a younger audience?

The “critic” label
I don’t claim that movie blogging, tweeting and podcasting necessarily replace what the traditional film critics do. I even think very few of us who engage in this would label ourselves “critics”. We’re just people who watch a lot of movies who enjoy talking about it with other people who do the same. We write reviews, we write columns, rants, raves and comments. Some of us are aspiring writers –  pretty knowledgeable and insightful such. Others write just “for fun”, far from the academic level you may expect from “film criticism”. Nevertheless I think it’s rather stupid to just dismiss the whole thing about blogging altogether, either it’s out of fear (“they’re stealing our jobs”) or out of ignorance, which I honestly think is the more probably cause here.

I think there’s a place for paid film critics in the future. But they need to start paying a bit of attention to the expectations of the audience of today. If they stopped being so sniffy about social media they might actually learn a few things. For instance it isn’t a bad thing to interact with your readers. The days are gone when the readers happily listened to what the “expert” had to say without questioning anything. Today we want to form our own opinions and be vocal about them. Those arguments we’re having online is a part of the movie experience: the post watching processing. The critics can have a place in this as a take-off point for discussions, provided that they’re open for it and encourage it. If you manage to work up a good discussion climate with your audience it adds something to your own material – a sense of participation, of sharing, of a being a part of something.

Evolving community
A shining example of this is Mark Kermode who, apart from encouraging listeners to share their views using twitter, facebook and by other means, also runs his own video blog on the side. Apart from this he’s a frequent Twitter user and, while not advocating every blog there is out there, he has given out recommendations for various film websites once in a while. He doesn’t fear social media and online communication. He embraces it, knowing his own value and that very few out there can compete with him in knowledge and skill with the words. With this strategy he will survive in the new media situation that film critics all over the world are facing.

Sadly I can’t think of any Swedish film critic who has reached the same level of insight. The panel discussion about film criticism indicates that many of them still are in a state of denial.

Meanwhile the online film community keeps evolving. What I’ve seen over the last year is that more and more individual blogs merge together into movie sites, with a more professional look and approach. There also appears to be more movie podcasts around but we don’t know how many of those that will find an audience and survive in the long run.  Quotes from movie blogs have become more common in the marketing of movies.

If the film critics want to find a future for themselves I think they’d do wise to stop dismissing social media, asking what they can learn from them and what they can do to become a part of it and still earn a living.

They had the chance to learn something. There was a whole bunch of movie bloggers in the audience who they indirectly dismissed. They didn’t ask us anything. And you know what? The loss is theirs.

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How many movies can you watch in a day before it all starts to mix up until it’s a blurry mess in your memory? Two? Three? And for how many days can you be doing this without losing your mind?

I think the answer will vary depending on who you ask. I imagine that professional film critics have developed a high amount of stamina and won’t break down in the first place. If you’ve been a regular to Cannes, Berlin and Venice for years, you must have some tricks in your sleeve, similar to how a wine expert can try out fifteen wines in one afternoon, giving each one a proper and fair evaluation. For a hobby critic like me, who hasn’t got a long track record of film festival experiences, it’s more of a challenge.

I had reason to think about those things as I attended Malmö filmdagar earlier this week. This is a three day event that is held every year, where the upcoming movies of the autumn are presented to people in the film business and to media representatives. Thanks to the Swedish Film Institute a whole lot of movie bloggers had received press accreditation this year.

Judging from the looks on the faces of the people I met, we were among the most enthusiastic participants those days, as we tried to squeeze as many movies as we possibly could into our watching schedule.

Hunger, exhaustion and dizziness couldn’t keep us from knocking off film after film, even when the breaks between them sometimes were down to five minutes, making it impossible to head for the queue to the ladies restrooms. Once a movie finished, you had to wipe it from your mind as quickly as you possibly could as you were moving to the room where the next screening would take place.

Coping strategies
I couldn’t help wondering about what strategies the professional film critics had to cope with it. Most of the movies were utterly depressing, like movies tend to be these days, and they left me with a lingering taste of death, heartache and despair. What was their trick to remove it?

Wine tasters spit out the wine, using white bread and water to cleanse their palates. But what’s the equivalence for a film buff? How can you rid yourself of pain and grief, approaching every movie the same way, with an empty, reset mind? Was there an empty room with white walls and a soft carpet where speed meditation sessions were offered to reviewers in distress? Did they listen to one of those apps that claim they can make your brain relax with the help of alpha waves? Or perhaps they had a quick watch of something completely different? Could a looney tunes short film cleanse your film taste buds the same way as a piece of white bread makes your tongue ready for more wine?

Being unfair
I don’t know how you folks make it. But after my twelve movies-in-three-days experience you have my respect. I don’t think I’ll be able to give each one of the twelve movies the same chance, sadly. Some of them were screened late in the evening after we had had a glass of wine if not two. Or actually three, if I’m thinking closely about it. And to be completely honest, if you’re not trusted to drive a car, can you truthfully claim that you’re fit to review a movie?

Some films were unlucky to get a bad slot, right after one of the best movies. How could I possibly be touched by Lovelace when I just had cried my heart out to Broken Circle Breakdown? How could Diana be anything but superficial and bland compared to Before Midnight?

I’m now in the process of sorting out my memories from those days the best I can, attributing the bursts of tears to the correct movies and working out if the reason why a certain film made me sleepy was that it didn’t engage me or if there were other factors at play, like the time of the day or what I had had for dinner before watching it.

I’m not a professional critic, just a film fan, not used to this kind of intense film watching. So bear with me if my judgement seems to be somewhat clouded in the reviews to come. I haven’t learned the tricks yet. I don’t know how I’ll manage to write all those posts.

There’s only one thing I know: I won’t be fair.

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I’m sorry for posting being terribly erratic at the moment, but it’s time for part two of my summer vacation this year. This time I’m heading for my beloved mountains on the border between Sweden and Norway. I’ll walk and camp in trailless land, drinking water straight from the creeks, fighting the mosquitoes, ignoring my blisters and breathing truly fresh air, finishing with a three day riding tour when I’m too tired to use my own legs.

Most of the time I’ll be away from the e-world, but I might get access to it at some of the places where I’m going to stay. So there may or may not be posts coming up here. You’ll juat have to wait and see.

In any case, I’ll be back in the beginning August and things will get back to normal.

Cheers!

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Deep into a Swedish forest, in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometres from anything of significance to mankind, there’s a restaurant with an business model that is, if not unique, at least unusual.

They don’t have any fixed price on the food they serve. You pay as much as you want to pay, what the food was worth to you. If you thought the meal was awful and gave you nothing, you can leave the restaurant without paying a dime and no one will make a fuss about it.

From everything I’ve heard, it’s rare that people try to take advantage. On the contrary, the restaurant is doing well. I don’t know if it’s because the cooking is that good. It could also be that it’s the only place where you can eat for a long stretch of road and long distance travellers who pass regularly might want to make sure they can stay in business.

I’ve been playing with the idea if you could do use the same model in a theatre. Imagine that you paid after watching a movie instead of before and that the price correlated to your experience. If you hated the film you wouldn’t pay anything. If it was your number one of the year you’d pay a lot, maybe even more than you would pay with the current system.

I imagine that this will remain a thought experiment. Perhaps you can find an example of someone who has tried it if you looked around. Somewhere in the world there might be a theatre equivalence to the restaurant in the woods, but I can’t see it becoming the new industry standard.  Making a movie is a huge risk enterprise with many people involved in different parts of the production and distribution. Each one wants their share of the sales and it might seem too unreliable to trust the honesty and generosity of the movie-goers. In the crowd at a theatre, you’re more anonymous than you are at a restaurant. No one will notice your decision not to pay. There’s no social pressure. And in times like this, when piracy is socially accepted, even the norm, could you expect anyone to pay unless they have to?

Opera vs cinema
But even if it the idea never will leave the drawing board, I can’t get it out of my head. It tickles my mind.

For instance: how much would I be ready to pay for a movie that I genuinely loved?

My instincts tell me that I probably wouldn’t give it a great deal more than what I currently pay. Maybe I’d be ready to pay a few dollars more, but I probably wouldn’t go further than 30 dollars for a movie ticket, no matter what. Meanwhile I will happily pay 100 dollars for a good ticket to see an opera live, provided it’s a good seat. The more I think about this, the more arbitrary does it seem. What is the big difference? Sure, I know that there’s an impressive amount of people involved in an opera, but is that’s the case with movies too. Did you see the text credits for Iron Man 3? They went on and on, for at least ten minutes. Hundreds of names passed across the screen. Making a movie is no less an effort than putting up an opera.

An argument for why you should pay more at the opera is that it’s got a special quality that movies lack. They only happen once. Each performance will be a little bit different depending on the audience. This quality of experiencing something unique justifies the higher ticket price.

But again: is a movie theatre all that different in this regard? While the film that is screened night after night is the same (or should be, provided that the projectionist does his job properly), the reactions from the audience may vary. Watching a movie is a group experience and the way you perceive the film will be affected by the atmosphere in the room. A comedy can become funnier, a horror movie scarier, depending on who you watch it with. A night at the cinema can be as special as a night at the opera.

So in the end, why are we so unwilling to pay for it? Why do I rule it out that I could pay 100 dollar for watching a movie in a theatre? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a habit. We’ve become used to that cinema is a comparatively cheap if you break it down to cost per minute of entertainment.

Winners and losers
I also wonder how a pay-what-you-want system would affect the box office. If they were free to choose, where would people put their money?

I’m no expert in box office numbers, but as far as I’ve understood it, there’s often a correlation between the size of the budget, the marketing of the film and how well it goes. Of course there are exceptions, movies that do better or worse than expected. But on the whole, movies with mega sized budgets also generate mega sized incomes.

However, it doesn’t say a whole lot about the sentiments of the audience. For all you know they may have hated the latest box office success. Perhaps it was just the marketing campaign that was well made, luring people to buy tickets, which they regretted on watching the movie.

So if you let the pricing free, who would be the winner? Would blockbuster movies featuring well known names, loud special effects and a lot of CGI keep doing well? Or could it be a chance for independent movies with small budgets but high artistic ambitions to shine?

I want to think that the audience is smarter than they usually get credit for and if they could use their consumer power to get better movies, they would.

Imagine that you after watching Before Midnight could give a sum that truly reflected your feelings about it, also knowing that it would increase the chances for a fourth movie to be made.

And equally, after watching After Earth, you wouldn’t have to regret that you have helped boosting their numbers at the box office, that you’re a part of their “success”. You could just shut your wallet, holding it tightly, letting it speak for you. “Sorry, but this movie was unacceptably bad. You won’t get anything from me. Make a better one next time”.

It’s just a dream, but wouldn’t it be great if you could?

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