I love movies. Movies are great. I love getting lost in a movie, spending two or so hours steeping in one story, submitting to the work of the actors, the writer, the editor, the musicians, the designers, and, of course, the director. It’s an adventure of sorts, regardless of the genre; it’s a letting go.
I love movies. But when I sit down to watch one on my TV set, my resistance quickly surfaces. Somehow, saying I’ll commit to watching a story that’s going to last two hours, or even 90 minutes, feels like just a little too much. Nope, sorry, can’t guarantee that I’ll stay put for that long. A sustained amount of running time is one of the virtues of film, as it unfolds and draws you in — and out of yourself. Shorts have a charm of their own, for sure, but a good full-length movie? It gets a hold of you.
And yet I most often choose TV. I will proceed to watch four or five episodes of one show, or of different shows, and spend all of that time glued in place. Four or five hours will sail by enjoyably, with, say, three episodes of “Dickinson” as a spirited lead-in to two chunky episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “Billions” or vice versa. A movie might well have taken up less time — yup, even “The Irishman” — but no, I wouldn’t make the commitment. I wouldn’t promise to watch for two hours, even though, ultimately, I wound up watching twice that amount.
Do you have that same issue? What’s it about? I know a few people who also dodge movies at home at night, and generate toward a playlist of TV episodes, and we can only laugh about the lack of reasoning. In the old days, before prestige TV and all the high-quality series triggered by “The Sopranos” in 1999, the choice between watching a TV show or a movie might have had more to do with how hard you wanted to concentrate. There was a clearer quality divide. Now, though, watching TV can be as challenging as watching a good, non-comic-book movie. The weight and quality quotients depend on the specific movie or show you’re choosing, and not on the medium. Two hours of “Breaking Bad” can be as formidable, challenging, and blackly comic as, arguably, a Coen brothers movie.
Still I go for the shows.
Here’s where I note that this quirk is not entirely related to my job as a TV critic. Sure, I have plenty of work to do — i.e. shows to watch. There is never really a time when I don’t have a long list of upcoming series to preview, or current series I need to catch up on. But I do find time to watch whatever I’m in the mood for at a given moment. I am able to break off chunks of my professional viewing schedule for myself. I also, occasionally, have vacation time to fill with what I please. Furthermore, as a student and lover of culture, I like to stay up on the art of movie storytelling; some of my most profound viewing experiences of the past two years have been watching the likes of “Sound of Metal” and “Nomadland.”
And yet, and yet.
On the surface, this phenomenon seems like the result of one of the least appealing shifts of the past few decades: The need for speed. Everything moves faster, not least of all in the arts, and on big and small screens alike. Our visual lives are generally being edited with the objective of keeping us engaged to the point of hypnosis. Have I been ruined by all this pacing, to the point where impatience is driving my viewing choices? Am I unable to make a commitment to a continuous couple of hours?
Nah. I am intensely committed to any number of TV shows, and I have sustained those commitments for years, and I will stay riveted to sometimes three or four episodes in a row. I’m there for all the season-long plot arcs, and for series-long mysteries whose solutions emerge slowly, sometimes across years. That usually involves plenty of focus, in order to pick up all the clues that get dropped throughout. I am able to stay attentive. So no, I don’t believe I’ve lost my desire or skill to commit.
I suspect it has something to do with the old-fashioned notion that TV can be interrupted while movies require a kind of reverent, unbroken viewing mode. That sense that somehow watching a movie must be a ritual cloaked in devotion while watching good TV is somehow less deserving of deference. Committing to a movie may have meant entering a more sacramental state of mind than committing to a few episodes of TV, but that’s no longer true. And yet “Dune” will be sitting on my to-watch list for a few more weeks, I’m afraid.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.
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October 29, 2021 at 04:49AM
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When it comes to watching movies on TV, I’m a commitment-phobe - The Boston Globe
"TV" - Google News
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