The Problem With The Auteur.

*A rant written in 20 minutes about an idea conceived over 3 years and 4 months of studying Film.

(Feb 2022)

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An Introductory Questioning

Every director will have a distinct style, but why isn’t every director an auteur?

Why are some regarded higher than others? Is it because an film is arty? Is it inert industry classism? Is it that these auteuristic directors are happy to stay confined into the accepted boxes of politics and images as according to the by-laws of ‘The Academy’?

An auteur can become tedious- their signature or distinctive style becomes overused and over saturated. Surely every film may become to look or feel the same.

The idea of an auteur is odd and obsolete. I understand some directors truly are or can be better than others and can inspire future directors and ideas and their work can live on… But what right does this mean to be greater than?

My mom does things to inspire me but without being callous does that make her greater than any other moms?

The Issue of Blind Acceptance

What about the things these so-called auteurs get wrong! Why do we overlook them?

The higher you fly, the greater you fall? NONSENSE!

The issue with an auteur is that they can fuck up and get away with it. They can be tedious and mundane and uninspired or uncreative, perhaps lazy but not really- that’s an unfair statement, they can offer us the same things over and over again in pretty packages without it truly being new or different or meaningful!

Really, the auteurs are the sellouts, the wash-ups, the copycats, the boring and uninspired.

Ken Loach offers similar ideas of social justice in his social realism films but is he a critically acclaimed AUTEUR? NO!

But Tarantino or Anderson can show the same story about a troubled male protagonist or antagonist and the cult of white male or female film ‘scholars’ who purchase merchandise from HMV and watch the most popular and obvious films in the filmography or recite the most tediously popular (and perhaps ONLY) quotes from these texts, LIVE FOR THEM. Boring.

Scorsese with the gangster, Italian, corrupted men, male driven stories?! Wes Anderson with the white, picture-perfect screenplays… It’s all the same, all the time!

It lacks imaginative awareness and flavour. It is superficial worldbuilding, can we change the meaning of ‘auteur’ to this?

Tarantino is not an auteur! He really isn’t that good!!! He takes most of his ideas from his beloved films and film techniques, he’s only an auteur in the foot porn and white men saying the n-word sense!

Why can’t a marvel director be an auteur if all these films look the same? (an obsolete question, of course, as they have different directors but still, it’s right to question the industry!)

Why does auteur have to be associated with high art? Or cinema as opposed to simply a film or movie released to the everyman audience?

It is elitism and gatekeeping, a secret ‘skull and bones society’ that likes to keep certain directors on a pedestal to bring down those who enjoy making films to have fun or perhaps to show distain for directors who send out the same shit (which is fair enough to the Academy then) but why give these directors awards if you don’t regard them highly enough to be a celebrated auteur!

Art and Traditional Voices

Art is obsolete, a necessary evil if you will, it is good to be loved as well as to be criticised.

An auteur or the idea of it, creates untouchable creatives, an idea that become problematic to film and art and political criticisms.

It’s a ridiculous concept, conjured up by men who favoured other men and believe their opinions rank highly above anyone else.

Music can help highlight this. Is everything Kanye West puts out REALLY that good or do his fans just absorb every word he emits due to their clan-like following of his misadventures, picking up any cohesive and slightly poetic phrase or idea he may accidentally, or not, release within his mixtapes?

This goes without saying, I don’t believe there is any one director I truly believe is an auteur because an auteur either doesn’t exist or all creatives are auteurs in their own right.

I don’t watch a film for the director.

I don’t particularly enjoy any particular director moreso than anyone else, so perhaps I don’t have the satisfaction of being a follower of a filmic cult and the understanding that goes along with it.

But as an outsider, auteurs and auteur theory pisses me off because like most artistic theory or divine understandings of what is objective in art- its fucking nonsense, nonsensical and derived from a time where only one voice mattered and that’s how art will always prevail if we don’t change the patterns or traditions of the past.

An (short) Attempt to Comply

The idea of the auteur is boring, they do the same things over and over again and even if they do something new it can still feel tired or stagnant.

I will argue against myself, for sake of impartiality and fair debate, and say some directors can trial new techniques or themes or styles and still have their essence within the film but I just feel like that’s a good and bad thing! I understand that’s the bare bones of auteur theory and it IS a beautiful thing and its impressive and should be celebrated…

But, the Wayan brothers have an essence within their films but are they auteurs? NO!

You can tell a Clint Eastwood film a mile away, a Sofia Coppola film too!

But these creatives aren’t auteurs because the idea only exists in the space for a few, which can be good but realistically, it’s an Overton window of acceptability of power and pizazz in Hollywood and beyond.

Essence or distinction or that je ne sais quoi is what beholds a director to auteur status but what and who is defining this?!

Why does it only refer to certain genres, styles, politics, emotions, people, audiences!?!

It’s wrong! or is it! Probably not.

But it’s annoying, for lack of better term, to people enjoying cinema outside the scope of snobbish and ‘mainstream’ (in terms of what’s popular or set as standard for ‘good’) perspective.

A Conclusion and a Plea

Regardless, this idea of critically thinking is lost on the popularisation of fanaticism and fanatical defence of these grown (male) adults who produce films for a living. It’s just tiring and boring.

Ironically, these directors who try new things still find themselves in a box! I don’t know if that’s ironic or just sad.

Please, just be creative, do not become stagnant. If you want to believe in the auteur because you still have this adorably puppy-dog eyed, rosy tinted fucking view of cinema then carry on, but if you want to be jaded and cynical and hateful of the elitism and ridiculousness of the gatekeeping of moving images, like I do!, then please question the very thing you may love and don’t force yourself to oblige to these critically tiresome traditions.