The fireball fades

More patriots, fewer explosions -- everyone has an idea of how movies will change. What if they got better?

By Stephanie Zacharek

Oct. 4, 2001 | No one knows for sure how the events of Sept. 11 will change the world of movies, but plenty of people seem to think they know. A few things are certain: No one wants big explosions -- at least just not yet. And no one, but no one, wants to see on-screen destruction of government buildings or skyscrapers at the hands of terrorists.

But beyond that, the future isn't as easy to read as you might think. A recent special issue of Entertainment Weekly titled "What Lies Ahead: The Challenge to Our Culture" speculated that oldtime patriotism would make a comeback (admitting, rightly, that for years the air has been redolent with it anyway); lightweight diversions, like romantic comedies, the kinds of things that took Americans' minds off the Depression, would also draw big. The suggestion is that we'll basically be seeing the same movies we've been subjected to for the past 20 years -- only they'll be more unbearable than ever.

If that's the case, we'll be retreating into a movie world that's even more simplistic than the one we've got now, one where movies will reflect how we want to feel and who we want to be. Tom Hanks (once, and occasionally still, a marvelous actor) will be our ubiquitous and insufferable king.

If every country eventually gets the culture it deserves, maybe that will be our fate. We've gotten so used to the mediocrity of most mainstream movies, we were probably braced for them to get worse anyway, even if the world we live in hadn't changed so drastically in just one day.

Then again, maybe a time of crisis is what it takes to make us question the shape, texture and direction of movie culture. In the aftermath of the attack, executives in Hollywood, seemingly as shaken up as the rest of the nation, were acknowledging that quite a few things would have to change. Isn't right now the best possible time to throw down a challenge to Hollywood?

Nobody wants to ask the most dangerously optimistic question, the one with the most thrilling possibilities: Could movies actually get better?

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Maybe it's a good idea to define, briefly, what's meant by "better." Explosions in movies aren't bad things in and of themselves; they can be exhilarating and sometimes cathartic -- and the value of catharsis shouldn't be underestimated in a country that, for the first time in its history, is having to face up to the reality that it's not invincible.

But who needs movies that are just excuses for bigger and better explosions? Before Sept. 11, there were certainly plenty of people ready to line up for loud, flashy movies -- but there were plenty of people looking to escape them, too. Now, almost every American moviegoer has a good excuse to seek out pictures that might take their minds off their concerns without blasting them out of their seats. The Michael Douglas thriller "Don't Say a Word" -- which features a man being buried alive -- was the top box office draw on its opening weekend, that of Sept. 28. (There's no way to explain it other than to say that old habits die hard, especially with movie audiences.) But Alejandro Amenabár's small, beautifully made, quietly creepy thriller "The Others" -- a picture most mainstream audiences might normally consider an art film, despite the fact that it stars Nicole Kidman -- took the No. 5 slot.

Maybe "The Others" is one of those flukes, a small film (with almost no initial advertising push to speak of) that just happened to cross over because of good word of mouth. But even though the movie opened on Aug. 10 on a relatively small number of screens, it gained, not lost, momentum at the box office the two weekends after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it continues to hold steady.

"The Others" is scary, but not in an obvious way: Its biggest frights are insinuated, not spelled out. To say that American moviegoers have simply stumbled onto it may be accurate -- or it may be underestimating them: Perhaps they know just what they want in a movie right now, and, consciously or unconsciously, they're reaching out for it. In any event, "The Others" triumphs on the intricacies of its plot -- it's as unflashy as a movie can get. And it's the kind of diversion that American moviegoers might learn to demand once they've developed a taste for it.

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