Will film­mak­ers’ visions have author­i­ty in an online future?

These are strange times for auteurs. Direc­tors, raised in cin­e­mas, mak­ing films with a pre­cise vision of how audi­ences will receive them are hav­ing to con­tend with the norms of new medi­ums. On 4 Jan­u­ary 2016, Xavier Dolan called out Net­flix UK for stream­ing Mom­my, his 2015 film about a fiery moth­er-son rela­tion­ship, in the wrong aspect ratio.

As Dolan explained in a Twit­ter note, this under­mines a piv­otal moment in the film in which the frame opens up in sync with a lead character’s fleet­ing sense of lib­er­a­tion. It is thrilling to watch the size of the frame mim­ic this character’s emo­tion­al scope in an auda­cious, beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed deci­sion by Dolan. His sense of vio­la­tion at this cli­max being erased was expressed in blunt style: ​“You did not direct this movie. You did not write this movie. You did not pro­duce this movie. So can any­one or any­thing except me war­rant the lib­er­ty you took with my work? No.”

This com­plaint is expressed in the impe­ri­ous tone of a man who believe that ideals will out. He may be right. An ensu­ing Twit­ter exchange sug­gests that he is now pos­si­bly work­ing out a deal with Net­flix. A tri­umph here in the form of Net­flix chang­ing their stream of Mom­my to the cor­rect aspect ratio will be an encour­ag­ing prece­dent. How­ev­er, this inci­dent throws up a swathe of broad­er ques­tions about watch­ing films in the dig­i­tal age:

Can direc­tors expect their films to be screened in the same way online as in cin­e­mas? Do audi­ences watch­ing on small screens have the same needs as those watch­ing cin­e­ma screens in which every detail is mag­ni­fied? What log­ic informed Net­flix UK’s orig­i­nal deci­sion to change Mommy’s for­mat and is that orig­i­nal log­ic worth inves­ti­gat­ing? Do Net­flix UK and oth­er stream­ing ser­vice have the same approach to films as cin­e­mas? How much author­i­ty do film­mak­ers have over the way their films are shown online?

The way these ques­tions are answered is a mat­ter of per­son­al ide­ol­o­gy. Those of us that are as pas­sion­ate about watch­ing films in the con­di­tions intend­ed by the film­mak­er will argue for the repli­ca­tion of cin­e­mat­ic ideals. We do not want any aspect of the filmmaker’s vision to be dis­tilled by home view­ing. We would take such a thing as an insult to our capac­i­ty to appre­ci­ate a film, as well as a source of despair regard­ing how the author­i­ties of dis­tri­b­u­tion treat cre­ators. We would advo­cate for pas­sion­ate cinephiles to take charge of online movie por­tals so as to pre­serve the val­ues of our beloved mediums.

But online as in cin­e­mas, there are an abun­dance of view­ers who are ambiva­lent about refined details. Peo­ple watch movies as back­ground, they watch movies while tex­ting, they half-watch movies while work­ing and per­haps don’t feel invest­ed enough to care about tech­ni­cal details. Any organ­i­sa­tion serv­ing a broad main­stream audi­ence must be tempt­ed to aggre­gate their prod­uct to suit the aver­age punter.

Films as mer­chan­dise to be flogged to pun­ters will be pre­sent­ed dif­fer­ent­ly to films as art aimed to touch the souls of those that seek. Con­sid­er­ing the range of what Net­flix UK offers, it’s clear that it is a broad church. Whether it will serve a plu­ral­i­ty of parish­ioners or just the mid­dle-ground will be deter­mined by the num­ber of pas­sion­ate cinephiles will­ing to fight for this new ground.

What do you think? Have your say @LWLies