I’m in Sicily at the moment, and the other night a few of us were sitting around drinking wine when someone suggested we watch The Godfather.
A wonderful suggestion. We’re only an hour from Corleone, and hardly anyone had seen it. My friend’s response was essentially: “Ehh, It’s three hours long.”
It pained me to hear that, but I understood where he was coming from, and I don’t blame him. I’ve said that myself many times, and that’s the problem.
There was a time when three hours was a long time to watch a film. Now it feels like an impossible undertaking… We spend three hours on TikTok without noticing. We spend an afternoon watching YouTube. We sit on Instagram opening one reel after another and all of a sudden we’ve forgotten why we picked up the phone in the first place.
But three hours watching one film? That’s too much, and I think that’s insulting to cinema.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Not everyone needs to like The Godfather. That movie doesn’t need defending. It has been sufficiently sucked off since its inception, and there is a reason it sits where it does in the history of cinema.
You watch the opening wedding scene, and quickly realise you’re watching something special. That film has an enormous amount of patience. People talk a bit and look at each other. The camera doesn’t waver. Things happen slowly. And you’re captivated as fuck.
Older films often feel different. They leave space between the noise. They don’t always tell you exactly what somebody is feeling. A character can look at someone for three seconds, and you’re left to work out what that means.
It’s more like real life. Real people don’t come with emotional subtitles. We don’t walk into a room and announce: “I am currently experiencing jealousy because of the complicated relationship I have with my father.” We just look at someone differently. We pause. We leave. Sometimes, someone notices. That ambiguity is part of being human, and I think it’s part of what makes great cinema an art form.
Now, this isn’t about old movies vs. new movies. Modern cinema can obviously be brilliant. Some of the most technically and conceptually ambitious films ever made are being made now. But there’s a distinction between complexity and nuance.
You can have an extraordinarily complicated plot while making someone’s emotional state completely obvious. A great example is Nolan. A character looks sad. Hans Zimmer’s score swells. We know they’re sad. Look at their sad face. Look, Look! They’re really sad.
The plot can involve time travel, multiple dimensions and nuclear physics, but emotionally we follow a very simple set of instructions.
That’s not necessarily bad; the plots are complicated, and I think if Nolan employed really complicated characters, those films wouldn’t work in the same way. So I want to stress that I’m not shitting on Nolan in that regard; I think he’s an excellent storyteller. It’s just different.
Some older films seem to trust the audience’s EQ a little more. They let you figure it out. I fear that we’re becoming less capable of doing that because we’ve built an entire media environment around the opposite idea. TikTok. Instagram Reels. YouTube Shorts.
Every platform has become a machine for removing the gaps between things. I open Youtube and type in ‘Godfather best scenes’ SWIPE. Who’s the best Spider-Man? NEXT. Cute Kittens. SWIPE. Seth Rogen hates James Franco. NEXT. Brad Pitt Troy soooooo hot SWIPE. Wow, Japan is cool. NEXT. Oh, they were brothers the whole time. SWIPE. Fight Club: where is my NEXT!
It’s the cultural equivalent of walking into an ice cream shop and asking for a tiny spoonful of every flavour. Chocolate. Vanilla. Pistachio. Salted caramel. Mango. Next. Next. Next. Then walking outside and saying: “I don’t really like ice cream.”
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. You never ate the ice cream. You sampled it.
The algorithm doesn’t really want you to experience things. It wants you to sample them. It takes a tiny piece of something and presents it as though you’ve experienced the whole thing.
Here’s the best bit of the movie. Here’s the funniest part of the interview. Here’s the most interesting thing this person said. Here’s the chorus. Here’s the plot twist. Here are the ten things you didn’t know about… fucking fuck you!!!
Everything is condensed into its most immediately stimulating form. We’ve become very good at consuming it.
The problem is that art doesn’t always work like that. Art can be slow. It can be boring. It can be confusing. It can take time.
Sometimes you have to sit with something before you understand why you like or dislike it. Sometimes you have to see it twice. Sometimes you have to see it ten times.
Recently I watched One Battle After Another. I thought the car chase scene was incredible. A co-worker of mine, an ultimate Gen Z and a wonderful conversationalist, thought it too long and boring. I thought that was fascinating, and we had a good debate about it.
To me, the scene was masterful suspense.I’d genuinely never seen before that before. A car chase without the usual fucking zoom-zoom, noisy explosions racing at 150 kilometres an hour. It was stillness, and I was on the edge of my seat.
Nothing about it was designed to give me an instant dopamine hit. It trusted the tension. It let the scene breathe. It made me wait. And that waiting made the payoff better. My co-worker didn’t feel that.
I’m not saying that because I’m older and therefore wiser. I’m not. If anything, I’m worried the same thing could happen to me. My attention span is worse than it used to be. I notice it. I do not like it.
I actively practise paying attention. I read. I try to watch films properly. I try not to have my phone next to me. I still struggle. I’m always checking my phone; I don’t even know why.
So this isn’t an attack on Gen Z. It’s not even really an attack on TikTok. It’s an attack on something all of us allow. Not that we have a choice.
The algorithm has become incredibly good at understanding what keeps us interested. Unfortunately, what keeps us interested isn’t necessarily what is good for us.
The algorithm has learned that the moment we’re bored, we leave. So it removes boredom. The moment something becomes difficult, we leave. So it removes difficulty. The moment something requires patience, we leave. So it removes patience.
Eventually we begin to expect everything to behave this way.
There is a cool quote, by Warren Buffett of all people, that describes what I’m talking about. “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken.”
This isn’t an overnight phenomenon. This dopamine addiction is a slow process. This is habit-forming manifest, and the chains weigh heavy.
Unfortunately, this is where I think cinema gets a bit fucked. Cinema is an art form built on attention. A filmmaker might spend millions of dollars and years of their life constructing a two-hour experience. Perhaps even a three-hour experience. A cinematographer can spend an entire day getting one shot right. An actor spends months preparing for a role. A director may deliberately hold a shot for ten seconds longer than feels comfortable.
And the audience says: “When does it get good?”
In short: We’ve started judging art by the same metrics we judge content.
How long is it? When does it get interesting? Can you explain it to me? Give me the good bit.
That’s not really how art works. The best art asks something of you. It asks for your attention, and once you give it, something happens.
Your brain slows down. You start noticing things. You become immersed. You stop thinking about your phone. You stop thinking about what’s next. You’re transported somewhere else.
That’s what cinema can do. And it’s fucking cool.
Maybe that’s why some films get better the second time you watch them. The first time, you’re asking: What happens? The second time: Why? And eventually: How did they do that?
That’s the difference between content and art. Content is often exhausted once you’ve consumed the information. Art can become richer with familiarity.
I think the algorithm has made us increasingly uncomfortable with anything that doesn’t immediately reveal its value.
If you can’t perfectly capture your natural, effortless, vulnerable and fiercely authentic self in the first 3 seconds, it’s undesirable.
We want the sample. We want the highlight. We want the trailer. We want the explanation. We want the big explosion. We want to know whether something is worth our time before we’re willing to give it any, and even then…
But that’s not how we experience art. Imagine standing in front of a Rothko painting and asking: “Where’s the best bit?” Or listening to a symphony and saying: “Can you just give me the chorus?” Or reading a novel and skipping it to the resolution.
The ridiculousness of those questions tells us something.
Art requires participation. Historically, the audience had to meet the artist halfway. Now we’re increasingly expecting the artist to chase us.
The algorithm is very good at teaching us that this is reasonable. If you’re bored, swipe. If you’re confused, next. If you don’t like it, skip. If it’s too long, watch the summary. If you don’t understand it, someone will explain it to you in under 60 seconds. But you’re only going to watch the first 20 seconds anyway. So like, who cares, whatever!
I fear that, slowly, without noticing, we’ve started treating our own attention as something that must never be inconvenienced. That worries me.
Boredom isn’t the enemy of attention. Sometimes boredom is the doorway into it. Sometimes the first twenty minutes of a film aren’t supposed to blow your fucking head off. Sometimes they’re supposed to get you there. To settle you down. To make you forget that you were scrolling during the production logos. To put you somewhere else. Then, eventually, hopefully, you realise you’re watching something beautiful.
That’s what I’m annoyed about with my mate refusing to watch The Godfather because it’s too long. It’s not that he doesn’t want to watch it. He’s not against the film itself. He’s allowed to hate it. Maybe he watches the first twenty minutes and thinks it’s shit.
Fine. Whatever. You don’t need to like the same things as me. But the idea that three hours is too much time to give to a piece of art feels wrong to me.
Because what else is the time for? We have no problem giving hours to the algorithm. The algorithm gets our attention for free.
Cinema has to earn it.
Maybe that’s the real insult. Not that the algorithm is killing cinema. But that the algorithm is killing the kind of audience who can enjoy cinema.
If you made it this far, thank you for having the capacity to concentrate. Hold onto that capacity, for it is an increasingly rare commodity.