The modern movie Martin Scorsese calls “a real high-wire act”
Often, when discussing the greatest movies of all time, cinephiles refer to the classics of old, whether it’s the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick or Billy Wilder. Yet, modern movies have just the same amount of artistic quality to be considered timeless classics in their own right; just look at Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, or the Martin Scorsese film The Irishman.
Whereas modern filmmakers still need to earn their stripes, however, Scorsese has been making movies ever since the 1970s, creating such timeless masterpieces as 1976’s Taxi Driver, 1980’s Raging Bull and 1985’s After Hours. All whilst inspiring today’s filmmakers with 20th-century classics, Scorsese also adds to the landscape of the modern art form with a range of innovative movies.
Remaining a prominent voice in the industry, Scorsese has shared his dismay about the state of the modern industry. “For so long now, so many of us see films that pretty much let us know where they’re going. I mean, they take us by the hand, and even if it’s disturbing at times, sort of comfort us along the way that it will be all okay by the end,” Scorsese said about the state of the modern industry in an interview in January 2023.
Continuing, he added, “Now, this is insidious, as one can get lulled into this, and ultimately get used to it. Leading those of us who’ve experienced cinema in the past — as much more than that— to become despairing of the future of the art form, especially for younger generations”.
That’s when Scorsese ended his thoughts by turning to a six-time Oscar-nominated movie that enchanted critics at the time.
“But that’s on dark days. The clouds lifted when I experienced Todd’s film, TÁR,” he exclaimed, making reference to the 2022 film that tells the story of a disgraced classical music conductor. Continuing, he beams, “What you’ve done, Todd, is that the very fabric of the movie you created doesn’t allow this. All the aspects of cinema and the film that you’ve used, attest to this. The shift in locations, for example, the shift in locations alone do what cinema does best, which is to reduce space and time to what they are, which is nothing”.
Starring Cate Blanchett, who leads the film with powerful vigour, Haynes’ film was criminally denied an Academy Award, despite being one of the most complex movies of modern cinema.
Speaking further about his love of the movie, Scorsese added: “You make it so that we exist in her head. We experience only through her perception. The world is her. Time, chronology and space become the music that she lives by. And we don’t know where the film’s going. We just follow the character on her strange, upsetting road to her even stranger final destination”.
He concluded: “Now, what you’ve done, Todd, it’s a real high-wire act, as all of this is conveyed through a masterful mise-en-scène, as controlled, precise, dangerous, precipitous angles, and edges geometrically kind of chiselled into a wonderful 2:3:5 aspect ratio of frame compositions”.
Take a look at the trailer for the 2022 drama below.
