Typical US cinematic naivety

Rating: Null/10 (3 March 2003)

When I watch films like the Green Mile I feel absolutely furious. Mainstream US cinema industry has unfortunately bombarded us with products (I cannot treat them as artworks) of very low quality, to be consumed immediately and provide some instant but short-lived gratification of the senses. Such films trigger shallow reactions of fear, sadness, sympathy etc., but never stick to mind and will never become points to which one would return at leisure to ponder or draw meaning for one's own purposes. Extraordinary and unrealistic situations, special effects, obsession with violence and cruelty, cheap morality and ostensible moral struggle and (on other occasions) sex are the ingredients of 95 per cent of such products. I am deeply sorry that these so-called artists seek to maximise profits at the expense of their art and I hope that they sometime wake up, if they ever can, to complex social realities and relations and to the multiplicity of the human condition, which they so obviously ignore and downgrade.