Formalist though I may be, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate any given film from its association with Netflix. This is especially the case during awards season, as Netflix is throwing away obscene amounts of money on tacky gift boxes for critics and Academy members. The lavishly illustrated catalogues that depict every aspect of a given production might make good doorstops, but affording films like The Hand of God the sort of coffee-table treatment usually reserved for Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh seems a little cocky. Few viewers have laid eyes on these films, yet Netflix provides all the trappings of classic-film monumentality.
But ironically, the company may have stumbled upon a kind of formalist reality with respect to the films themselves. In the marketing department’s focus on eye-catching…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 89 - Winter 2022