The Oscars is the one time each year here at Tablet when we allow ourselves to forget about hotels for a minute and focus on another place where magic happens: the cinema.
By Mark Fedeli
Marketing and Editorial Director, Tablet Hotels
In A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic and Oscar contender, the musical sequences were performed totally live to camera, like a filmed concert, with the actors singing and playing every note. The resulting songs feel immediate and authentic in ways missing from other recent biopics. Compare that with the controversy surrounding The Brutalist, another Oscar favorite, where AI was used in a handful of voiceovers to improve the actors’ Hungarian dialect. That probably shouldn’t harm the film’s chances at awards, but it does raise questions about what’s to come.
Indulge me while I unwind a take so Gen X you’d think it was sponsored by Fugazi.
One of the joys of cinema is learning how a famous scene was put together. Movies aren’t alone in this. With any work of art the drama behind the scenes is fascinating. That’s why we read biographies about our favorite painters, actors, bands. Art has never been only about aesthetics. Process has always mattered. When we learn why and how a piece was created, we better understand its significance. We become connoisseurs.
In older films, it’s all the more impressive knowing that major acts of hands-on, human ingenuity were required to achieve every monumental shot. Whether it’s Welles figuring out deep focus in Citizen Kane, Herzog pulling a steamship over a mountain in Fitzcarraldo, or the mattes and miniatures in everything from Casablanca to Star Wars — the stories of how those sequences were accomplished are legendary. When everything can be done on a computer, it’s harder to know how impressed to be, and it’s definitely not as fun to discuss. And for a certain type of movie watcher, that stinks. For a certain type of movie watcher, films aren’t as interesting without their creation stories.
Welles famously said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Anyone who’s created anything knows how true that is. And they know how important mistakes are. The history of happy accidents — like how the malfunctioning shark in Jaws led to a far better film — is long and worth celebrating. Limits are helpful because they remind us that art doesn’t need to be perfect. Movies don’t need to recreate reality down to the pixel. An actor’s accent doesn’t need to be flawless.
Great CGI takes a ton of work and huge teams of talented people, and films I adore have been seamlessly aided by computers. That I don’t know when the aid is given is what disheartens me. The result can still be incredible, but the backstory is less compelling, and soon, do audiences care less about learning it? Do late-night conversations at film schools end a lot earlier? We’re supposed to be in awe of the art other humans create. We’re supposed to wonder “how’d they do that??” If we assume “it’s probably just CGI,” the wonder is diminished.
We should be able to trust our eyes and ears, and know that our adoration is well-placed. That’s going to get a lot harder to do with AI, which brings with it a whole new future of concerns. Next time, it’ll be used on actors a bit more, and then more, and then more. And then we’ll regularly question the reality of creative acts we once assumed humans would always do. Maybe you don’t care about canon and the purity of the process. That’s fine. But if you do, that stinks. ▪
Mark Fedeli is the hotel marketing and editorial director for Tablet and Michelin Guide. He’s been with Tablet since 2006, and he thinks you should subscribe to our newsletter.