Peter Bart: Prestige Filmmakers Get Personal This Awards Season, But Are Audiences Responding?
deadline.comAvatar: The Way of Water‘s mega-publicized opening has brought movies back into the conversation, but movie-makers seem to have been lost in the mist.
James Cameron’s persona is ablaze across the media but, by contrast, the very personal work of Sam Mendes, James Gray and even Steven Spielberg has done a fade-out in recent weeks. “Cinema is a language that’s about to get lost,” Wim Wenders once predicted at a Cannes Film Festival, but filmmakers keep trying.
Witness the likes of Empire of Light (Mendes), Armageddon Time (Gray) or even The Fabelmans (Spielberg), all exploring the efforts of young filmmakers trying to discover that language.
None so far has discovered an audience. Then there is Damien Chazelle, who calls Babylon, his new film, both a “hate letter or a love letter to movies.” Having both won and lost an Oscar with La La Land, Chazelle has a claim on mixed messages, and critics, too, seem to be taking two sides.
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