21st Century Breakdown: Reading J. Hoberman’s Film After Film

Welcome to a new infrequent feature here at The Matinee, one that serves two purposes. I’ll be starting to stock my shelves with various books pertaining to all sorts of aspects of filmmaking. The first purpose is to nourish the critical part of my brain – to see what others smarter than I have said about the art form I so dearly love, with the hopes that I can start saying smarter things. The second purpose is to push anyone who might be interested towards the good reading material, and pull them back from the weaker material.

Today we begin with a look back at this young century we find ourselves in…

Film After Film by J. Hoberman
Hardcover: Verso, 2012 – No eBook Currently Available

Sometimes it seems hard to believe how much we have been through over the last dozen years. Inside the theatre, some effects have changed and some stars have come and gone, but the stories we tell feel familiar. Outside of the theatre, the whole world order feels like it has been shuffled before our very eyes. One superpower is on the ropes, a new one is rising faster than anyone could have predicted. The west has been at war for eleven full years of the thirteen so far this decade, and we are still learning what the cost of that will be.

If we want a clue, Film After Film suggests we look on screen.

The book itself is divided into three sections:

Section One, “Post Photographic Cinema”, feels the most short-changed of the three. It begins before the century and points to THE MATRIX as the true dawning of a new cinematic age. It was the film that raised the bar for effects, it was a film that tapped into the mindset of a pre-millennial society. Heck, it was the film that would make the relaunch of STAR WARS look quaint by comparison mere months later.

In this section, Hoberman goes on to talk about what filmgoing means in the information age. He is less concerned with how film is being made (sidestepping the film-versus-digital debate entirely), and more concerned by what it takes to truly make a film stand out. He eventually wraps by pointing to THE SOCIAL NETWORK as a watershed film for the way it echoed what our new reality had become, and so quickly after Facebook caught on.

This section feels the most rushed: Likely no co-incidence since it’s also the shortest of the three. I do wish Hoberman had gone into deeper detail, and perhaps lingered at a few more moments the last thirteen years have brought. At the beginning of this era, we were fixated on what doomsday scenario would come at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1999. Since the we have gone on to become more connected, more distracted, more horrified by the world around us, and more economically strained. What effect has this had on our psyche? What effect has it had on our filmgoing?

Section Two, “A Chronicle of The Bush Years”, is the real crux of the whole book. It starts the clock at September 11th, 2001, and reminds us about how so very much of what we would see brought to life on movie screens would be tied back to that day. Hoberman goes year by year, and presents reviews from the era on all manner of film. He underlines just how much of what we saw called back to that moment – and believe me, there’s a lot more than you might think.

The chronology of events is split between what was happening on screen, and what was happening in America. This is key, because I dare say that many will have forgotten how muddy the waters were in the months that followed that day – and how muddy they remained for years to follow. It was all reflected in the films we were given. There were obvious parallels as evidenced in FAHRENHEIT 9/11, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, UNITED 93, and BLACK HAWK DOWN. Then there were the less obvious connections, such as with films like BORAT!, THE TERMINAL, and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.

To re-read these pieces with the benefit of hindsight would have been interesting enough, but the small moments of connective tissue Hoberman has created make even more fascinating.

There are only two drawbacks I can see in this, the best part of Film After Film. The first is that it ends too soon. To truly understand “The Bush Years”, I believe one has to discuss what came afterwards. Bush’s presidency was defined by a cataclysmic terrorist strike, and the two wars it spawned…but it was also defined by the economic ruin he left his country in. On the screen, these events are still being played out, and to stop the tape (and the cinematic discussion) on the night Barack Obama was elected feels like a short-shrift.

The other drawback is the scope of the era. I fully understand that the book is targeted at Americans and that most of the biggest films we see in a given year come from America. However, in an age when the world feels so much smaller than ever before, it feels odd not to widen the gaze. Where are the 7/7 London bombings in this? (a cursory tangent in the V FOR VENDETTA discussion that’s where) Where is the Tsunami in Thailand? Where is the protests of the Iranian elections? Where is the retirement of Castro? Where is the death of a longstanding Pope?

Even within America’s borders – there is no mention of Hurricane Katrina, nor the economic downturn.

My only guess is that to mirror world cinema and world events would have made for a much more sprawling read. Hoberman was likely smart to keep on-message; perhaps all those moments will be covered in another volume.

The final section, “Notes Towards a Syllabus”, is both handy and confounding.

The section leaves us off with a reading list of 21 titles – technically twenty plus one live event. The titles are meant to represent the state of cinema in a post 9/11 world. They reflect both where we were, and where we’re headed. Perhaps most interestingly os that unlike the previous two sections that were primarily Hollywood-centric, this syllabus spans a wide array of styles, genres, and countries of origin.

However, there lays the rub.

Because most of these films are underexposed, the average reader won’t have seen all that many of them (I have seen only three).

To end a book that chronicles recent history with a montage of films that best sum up the era is a great idea. However to sum it up using reviews that work better after one has seen said film, pretty much dares the reader to skim your last ninety pages of text. Perhaps this section would have been better served by focusing less on what was happening on screen, and more on how those images echoed what was happening in our world off screen.

As I return the book to the shelf, I find myself happy that I read it, and somewhat dumbstruck by how much we’ve all been through in this century. For so long we were able to go to a movie to escape real life, and then suddenly real life began to feel like a movie…a bad movie at that.

I believe in the importance of remembering where we’ve been, and understanding our past. Furthermore, I believe our recent past holds just as much value as our distant past. Film After Film does an admirable job of summing things up, hopefully in ways that don’t let us forget.

And if we do, the book has gone to great lengths to list the films we can watch if ever we need reminders.