Cinema vs TV

Cinema vs TV.

A series of backgrounds and painless breakups

I am looking, for some good, consistent story that will stay with me for longer. After an unsuccessful approach to "Orphan Black" (horrible series, why do people watch this?), "Lucifer" (cute nonsense, but still nonsense - if I want more cute nonsense, I will return to "Supernatural", there is at least genuinely funny). I am still looking for a series of very specific genres. Namely: something light, with fast-paced action, preferably procedurala (space opera would be perfect), which will work as something striking in the background, when I do different things that don’t require my creativity. Some listen in such moments music, for me the music is reserved for other moments. I treat the TV series a bit like my mother's radio - when she cooked and she had two hands occupied, she liked to listen to something. I iron my laundry in front of the TV or with a tablet on the counter of the kitchen table, watching "Death Note”.

When I think about it now, many series I have never finished - I haven’t seen the last seasons of "Pure Blood", "House of Cards", "Boardwalk Empire”, "Hannibal", and "Hell on Wheels”. I abandoned some series after the first season and I don’t plan to come back to it. After a long time it is difficult to enter history and take it over again, especially if the entire production betrayed a rather declining tendency. I think that in the case of "House of Cards" it would be best to start again, because I loved this series and I don’t doubt that I will admire it now. On the list of "to watch" I still have a lot of high and high rated titles - I still try on "The Handmaid’s Tale", "Legion " (second season), “Better Call Saul”. It is many hours. And where are the movies, books, music, all other forms of contact with culture?

Can the show be better than a movie?

I’m far from assessing the series collectively, stating that they are a lower or higher form of communing with culture than, for example, cinema. This boundary has long since faded away - looking for the "background series" for everyday work, I’ also happy to launch stupid american horror movies that don’t require a brain start up at all. All those who defend the series are right because of their high quality and performance comparable to decent movies.
On the other hand, the cinema still provides artistic impressions of inaccessible television and this will not change. Let us not kid ourselves - who would like to watch a dozen-episode series in the style of "A Dogtooth" by Lanthimos, since the same film is a big challenge for the viewer? Would there be an audience for serials reminiscent of Carax's "Holy Motors" or even a familiar, and yet difficult to read, "Sanatorium under an hourglass" by Has? "The Baby of Macon" Greenaway? It isn’t difficult to imagine - especially after the "Young Pope" - a series on the level of "The Great Beauty" Sorrentino or even "Black Swan" Aronofsky, but in the case of production, let's call it television, the story seems to be almost immanent. Does cinema need a story? Arthouse proves that not necessarily: it is difficult to talk about the system of events when there are no events.

Film expert would tell you about it more and more wisely, but the more often I get with the cinematic niche, the stronger the borderline in my mind that separates the series and the movie. Can it be exceeded? Probably yes, although I cannot imagine it. TV series like von Trier's "Kingdom", "Twin Peaks", Japanese "Mononoke" remain exceptions to the rule and curiosities, and this is still not the level of detachment from the narrative standard that I am concerned about. If I had this impression in words, I would say that the show requires a story much more than cinema, which it can tell and most often talks about it in an accessible and more or less, but almost always linear way. There is some timeline, events take place in a specific order, and even if the creators experiment with the construction, it all makes sense. The director of the series doesn’t leave the viewer with a great WTF written on his face and a shoddy interpretation of possible interpretations for which high cultural competences are necessary. "Twin Peaks" (the mentioned exception) provides many doubts, but - like "Riget" - it is the work of an experienced, recognized and award-winning director who just made a formal experiment, reaching for a piece of construction.

Chasing rabbit

So if cinema can boldly compete with the level represented by "American independent" and in single cases also with the European cinema, at the same time the film also explores new territories. Film festivals, recently extending a hand to television and allocating a place in the program for the best serial novelties, surprise every year with productions crossing the boundaries of the cinema.
although renowned directors reach for the form of the series, artists from other fields of art have been using decades to cinema as a new means of expression.So if I would give the chance of the serial version of "The Godfather", then I would be very skeptical towards the analogous version of "The Wall". I still don’t know if a purely formal series can be made, which is one big metaphor.

However, I am still enjoying an upward trend. More and more often I decide on a series when I really feel like a good movie. Recently, I chose the ten-part production of "American Crime Story: Case O.J. Simpson " and sacrificed equally 7 hours for a story that would be stuck in a movie in a maximum of two. Do I regret? Not at all. When I want Greenaway, however, I watch Greenaway and nobody will convince me that there are series that can compete with it.

Story telling vs. time constraints and their lack

As a result, I know people who don’t watch serials at all. When your favorite director is Bela Tarr, and in cinema you like the most, when nothing happens completely and when the protagonist is kicking down for 1.5 hours, the series will hardly provide you with too many incentives, at least those currently produced. I don’t doubt that in the end, however, and such will arise, just as I am convinced that we will wait for serial marathons in multiplexes, series in 3D and 4D and many other miracles. At the same time, the cinema will go one step further and the TV will continue to chase the bunny. But in the end, this isn’t the point, so that the series and movies offer the viewer exactly the same. Who knows, maybe one day it will turn out that storytelling will become the exclusive domain of high-quality television (again called so conventionally, because you can’t skip Netflix's in silence), and cinema will become an ambitious pastime for the few?

Although it sounds funny, wasn’t it so bad with the theater? Once understandable for all mediums and affordable entertainment for the masses, he eventually passed into the niche and cannot compete with the cinema in terms of audience and publicity numbers. Although there are still light comedies and simple stories in the repertoire of theaters, they aren’t the ones that warm up critics and audiences. However art would be friendly to the viewer, it will still be more demanding than the light American comedy in the multiplex. Perhaps - this is just a free imagination - one day there will be no multiplexes, because what do we need multiplexes for, if we have in our house projectors or VR. Perhaps cinema will become an exclusive place to present bold artistic projects in the form of a film, in conditions impossible to reproduce at home? Perhaps making movies will no longer be interested in the next generation of directors who will choose the series as offering a larger space of time to present the whole story? Imagine what the "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" would look like if every movie became a ten-episode season, taking into account every detail contained in the book. It isn’t difficult to assume that the effect could be on your knees. Think about how many exciting races Dominic Toretto would win, how much more complicated could be the plot of the films that someone ruined the excessive simplification of the plot.

Maybe one day it will be such that TV will win with the cinema on points; maybe (that's what I think), we'll see awards for the best TV series of the year at the Oscars. Perhaps. Maybe not. Time will tell.