The healing power of cinema

Abstract

As the world continues to reel from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, as borders are sealed, and quarantines are imposed on travellers, it remains hard to envisage a time when the multiple fractures might heal. Let alone how they might be healed. There is much talk of a ‘new normal’, and what that might look like, especially when so many activities we have perhaps always taken for granted might not be possible for some time yet, if ever again in quite the same way. And so, with that in mind, what does the future hold for cinema, in terms both of the production of films and the possibility of watching films on a big screen again? As The Guardian’s Steve Rose reported in December 2020, a number of large blockbusters produced by Warners and planned for 2021 release are likely to be released primarily on streaming services, all of which have benefited significantly from the pandemic. No matter that the concept of the home movie has been with us for some time now, it feels as if that concept has been redefined by COVID, with trips to the cinema no longer possible. What if there are no cinemas left for us to visit in the future? Will the big studios even worry any longer about box office returns if large numbers of people now have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and so on? As for the traditional low-budget arthouse fare so beloved of the film festival circuit, it too may need time to recover. The reimagining of festivals online can only partially mitigate the loss of opportunities to gather in person and celebrate, and propose, the type of art cinema one might not otherwise encounter or be aware of. Is this truly, as Rose pessimistically ponders, ‘the end of cinema as we know it’ (Rose 2020)? Rose places responsibility on us, the audience, to make sure that this does not happen. Nevertheless, one wonders too how much unease many people might feel about returning to cinema venues and gathering in large numbers, should large numbers of cinemas survive. Even extensive vaccination programmes might not remove the need for social distancing or mask-wearing, at least not in the short-term, as the virus becomes an endemic disease, which could lead to local outbreaks for a decade or more as some UK public health experts have warned. As much as we have missed the chance to go to the cinema, to the theatre and concerts, or to attend sporting events – all of which will become possible again in time – might we have to learn how to come together in larger groups safely first, before such mass gatherings become something normal, and desirable, once again, so engrained has the need to take care around others become? Perhaps. Culture in these forms will draw us back, however, because we have missed them so. But perhaps Rose is right to worry a little too, inasmuch as the cinemas may be the most at risk of closure of all cultural venues, precisely because the aura of watching a film in a traditional cinema is very different from watching live music, theatre or sport. And besides, we have indeed had to learn to consume films in other ways now. That has become the norm for so many of us. STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA 2021, VOL. 18, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2021.1894811