Let The Old Men Cook!

I am a very fast and fired-up driver. Most people have called my aggressive bent behind the wheel "reckless," which I think is unfair. It maybe chaotic, but it's a controlled chaos. Sure, I may operate a moving vehicle as if I'm on the run from the authorities, but it is how I unwind, destress, and take a hold of my life. Often, that feeling of security I have when I drive is severely thwarted by others on the road who don't share a similar mindset. There's a level of discontent that settles within me whenever a car in the left lane isn't superseding the speed limit. Usually, my rage will dissipate once I pass whoever is in the way of me and the open road ahead. My opinion will completely shift, however, if the person behind the wheel of the car is elderly. Elderly people, to put it bluntly, have no regard for anyone not in their orbit. They're in their own universes, completely comfortable and willing to stay in them for as long as it takes. Our society has a nasty habit of always rushing around, as if every second should be accounted for. For the elder generation however, time moves differently. Things come to them. They have no desire to skirt from one activity and event to the next at lightspeed, as it should be. They are locked into their area of life and vision of the world, regardless of what people around them think. 

In a Film Criticism class several weeks back, my professor questioned the legitimacy of Killers of the Flower Moon because of Scorsese's age, which I thought was crazy. Scorsese may not be predisposed to convey his artistic vision more effectively than someone younger than himself, but that doesn't illegitimatize the film he put out. Sure, the rigors of the filmmaking process probably aren't suitable to an elderly figure, but if the product is of sound quality, why make age a factor? Killers of the Flower Moon may not be Scorsese's magnum opus, but it isn't as far off as some people think. 

For whatever reason, several elder, more-distinguished gentlemen of film have come out of the woodwork of retirement and dropped bangers. Unsurprisingly, all of them are microcosms of their visions of the world; either reflections of themselves or how they view things around them. Our initial responses to this specific demographic of creators are probably "why," but they shouldn't be. Why would someone leave a comfortable retirement and throw themselves into a project, especially when it's most likely harder for them to do so now than earlier? Why add another voice to the discussion after years of absence from it? Why drive slower than normal when you could exceed the limit? When someone makes an intentional decision to go against the grain, we shouldn't meet it with accusation and aversion. What if, instead of questioning it, we slowed down, moved at a similar pace, and listened.

The film year of 2023 may be defined by Barbie dolls and large-scale explosions, but the beating heart of it are the works of artists like Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, and Hayao Miyazaki; the "old heads" of cinema who left their houses, got in the left lane, and proceeded at an alarmingly slow rate.