128. Unimaginable ruthlessness
I.
Fear of change is timeless. In the early 1980s, the film industry was concerned about the arrival of VHS, the video cassette. Would people still go to the cinema if they could watch films at home? Director Wim Wenders decided to ask his colleagues this question at the Cannes Film Festival. He invited them one by one to his hotel room, left them there with a running camera and asked: “Is cinema a language that is being lost, that is dying?”
This resulted in the documentary Room 6661. Wenders sat his fellow directors on a chair in front of a TV, on which all sorts of things were shown. Sport, cartoons, talk shows. The telly made it very easy to invite the world into the home. Only Werner Herzog switches it off before he begins his answer. Herzog is an optimist, he says. “TV is a kind of jukebox. As a viewer, you have a mobile position. You can switch it off. You can’t switch off a cinema.”
He believes people will always continue to go to the cinema. “Where life touches us most directly, there you’ll find cinema. And that is what will survive.”
The directors interpret the question in their own way. Steven Spielberg is an American; he starts thinking out loud and immediately turns to money. “The dollar isn’t worth as much as it used to,” he says. His rant turns to studio bosses. “The danger comes from the people who pull the strings and say: I want my money back, multiplied by ten.”
Susan Seidelman says that film will endure as long as filmmakers remain passionate. “If that passion disappears from film, then it begins to die, just like any other art form that becomes lifeless.” And Jean-Luc Godard, with whom the film opens, delivers a philosophical argument about the importance of the medium. “Films come into being when nobody is watching,” he says. “They are invisible. What you cannot see is the incredible. It is the task of cinema to show what you cannot see.”
Michelangelo Antonioni saw an inevitable change in the advent of digital and HD video. The director predicted that the film world would actually benefit from it. It simply requires some adaptability from the filmmakers, just as everything in life demands that we go with the flow. “We must adapt to new technologies, to new levels of air pollution that we will have to breathe in the future. Our own organism will evolve. Who knows what lies ahead? The future will reveal itself with unimaginable ruthlessness.”
II.
Weapons is the horror sensation of recent weeks. It is the new film by director Zach Cregger, who previously made Barbarian (also highly recommended). I’d call it more of a mystery/thriller with comic elements, as there are some genuinely nasty scenes and jump scares, but certainly also some dark humour. All of this is woven into a plot about a group of primary school children who get up at 2.17 am and run out into the night with their arms outstretched. Only one child from the class remains; the rest disappear.
It’s a Stephen King-esque narrative structure that is very reminiscent of the writer’s best work. Not only because of the atmosphere in the film, but also because of the way it’s told. Namely, from the perspective of various colourful characters, each of whom gets their own chapter. Through these narratives, you gradually piece together what has happened, without Cregger over-explaining all the mysterious plotlines.
Believe me when I say it makes for a very refreshing film with a perfect ending. It’s the sort of film you want to watch again straight away once it’s finished. Also because there’s more to discover than you might think. Online, I’ve read all sorts of theories, such as that this film offers a sharp critique of American school shootings. And in the (Dutch-language) podcast Movie Insiders, I heard a lovely interpretation of how the film could also be about conspiracy theories and how people deal with them based on their different backgrounds and experiences.
So off to the cinema. Because this is the sort of film that works even better in a theatre full of people who occasionally get a good scare (or a laugh – don’t forget to laugh).
- - -PS.
There’s a World Yo-Yo Championship. Eight-time world champion Hajime Miura won again this year in Prague, and I’m fascinated by his performance.
- - -In my blog for NU.nl, I wrote about people who posted funny reviews on Google Maps about the Zuidwalvulkaan in the Wadden Sea. I then ruined the joke, because Google took most of the reviews offline. (A day later, 280 new fake reviews appeared, which were also removed.)
So far, I’m thoroughly enjoying Alien: Earth on Disney+. It’s the first TV series set in the Alien universe. It’s conceptually very interesting, because the — well, what exactly — souls? of terminally ill children are transferred into synthetic robotic bodies of what appear to be adults. They then come face to face with the Xenomorph aboard a spaceship that crashes on Earth.
- - -If you want to feel time slipping through your fingers, spend plenty of time on social media. I read this article on Substack: How social media shortens your life. “You are now the youngest you will ever be. Your future self would love to be able to return to this moment. Don’t waste it scrolling through posts you won’t even remember tomorrow.”
Eight years after Daniel Day-Lewis retired from film (following the brilliant Phantom Thread), he returns in a new film. Anemone is the directorial debut of his son Ronan Day-Lewis. The two Day-Lewises co-wrote the script about “the complex and deep bonds between brothers, fathers and sons”. The film also stars Sean Bean.
- - -“We’re creating more than ever, but it has no weight,” writes Anu Atluru. Why do we value heavy things in the physical world (“wow, this medal is heavy!”), but not online? It’s good not to just produce fleeting work. “If you only make light things, you feel like a fraud.”
A YouTuber spends four months of his life building a metro station (complete with a moving train) for his cats. The result is phenomenal in itself — and the cats are delighted with it.
- - -You’ve just read blog no. 128, written during the week of 18–24 August 2025. Subscribe to my free newsletter to receive this blog in your inbox every Sunday.