Feature - Big Screen versus Small Screen Part 2

Cinema is about giving you an emotional experience, about transporting you to another place or time and making you feel something special. Dave Thomas

I wrote a near-paean to modern TV drama in my initial Big Screen versus Small Screen article (click right here). How then can I explain why, in this age of Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies, I still look forward to my cinema visits so much? Why does cinema still matter? You see in spite of all the box-set delights on offer, the immersive multi-season shows with all their character development and expanding dramatic worlds, cinema is still my first and overriding love. I continue to crave those one-off film experiences and look at the start of each calendar year for what intriguing stories might be told.

Because it is about stories. It took my pal Dave Thomas to remind me of this. (See, I've even quoted him above.) And what he also pointed out was that television drama and cinema offer very different experiences. Long-running shows like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Orange is the New Black focus on long-term character development and so often do so with aplomb, even if it's sometimes at the expense of plot. 

What film majors in, however, is a very pure form of storytelling - single-evening experiences that bring to bear all the industry talents to tell a tale with imagination and power. With the exception of trilogies and the current fad for shared film universes, it doesn't leave you wanting more. Rather it satisfies (hopefully) in its own right - a self-contained piece of entertainment, or art, or preferably both. At its best you want to watch it again, to explore its detail and revel in how artfully it captures a moment in space and time. How it distills its themes and its characters into two cunningly crafted hours. It's a form of artistry, which can potentially satisfy more fully than the week-to-week dramas that feed us cliffhangers to keep us hooked. 

Put it like this. In the same way that Breaking Bad's 'bland-white-collar-worker-turns-evil-drug-baron' conceit would never have fitted into the confines of a two-hour film, so the best movies could never transfer to a serialised TV format. Take the first film that ever filled me with wonder - ET the Extra-Terrestrial. Stephen Spielberg toyed with the idea of taking this creation further; ultimately though he abandoned the idea because to do so would, in his own words, 'do nothing but rob the original of its virginity'. One hundred and twenty minutes of storytelling genius - to be returned to and enjoyed, but not sullied by stretching it out into something it was never meant to be.

That holds true of so many of my favourite films (and explains why sequels are so often a terribly bad idea). These motion pictures stand alone and draw you back, like you'd return to a gallery to review your favourite painting. Casablanca. Once Upon a Time in the West. Witness. Groundhog Day. Magnolia. Great stories, sublimely told, leaving nothing unsaid. I mean could you imagine if they ever tried to extend the basic concept of Jaws? (Oh dear God, they did. It's a memory I've tried so hard to suppress.) Take Christopher Nolan's Memento - a revenge tale with a plot as intricate and fine-tuned as Swiss clockwork, and a brilliant exploration of the theme of memory. Pure craftsmanship. Wonderful cinema. And you can return to it again and again (in fact you kind of have to, to try and work the whole thing out).

Even a family drama like Little Miss Sunshine works best as a one-off. Yes, the characters could conceivably work in a TV show. But there's something so beautiful and charming in how their dynamics are sketched, something so perfect in how the film's outrageous conclusion draws the Hoover family all together never mind their flaws, that you want them left alone. Don't spoil it. Let it be.

Every time I visit the cinema and the curtains draw a little bit wider just before the feature to accommodate the wide-screen format (you know that gorgeous moment), I'm wondering if I'm going to be wowed by what I see. If it'll stay with me long after I leave and I'll feel compelled to buy a hard-copy when it comes out on DVD, so I can possess the thing. Will this one be a gem? Maybe that's the difference between modern TV and film - one is about building a juggernaut, the other is about painstakingly crafting a gem. It's why in spite of sequels and remakes and rehashed ideas I'll always keep going back - to find a jewel amid the sludge, the multi-faceted precious stone that shines like a TV show never could. 

At its best (and there's been quite a bit of best in 2017) cinema does bring us those sublime stories. And it makes us feel - thank you Dave - that 'something special'. I rest my case.