Well, as long as I'm already behind on emails and comments, why the hell not.
Okay, in the past few weeks, like....eight or nine people have at some point said to me "it's not about the plot" when discussing movies that I walked away from because said movies didn't have enough of one. Twice yesterday alone. You two -- and you know who you are -- don't take this personally. Really. Be happy I'm ranting to my LJ and not taking all this frustration out on you, who are undeserving. Your beliefs are perfectly valid and you have a right to your likes and dislikes.
But see, I'm a writer. I'm a writer with a source base in classical history and modern realism. I'm an old fashioned writer. People can be as avant-garde as they like and I won't mind; it's not an invalid mode of expression. But with me, I'm afraid, it's always about the plot. As they say at Pixar, the story is king. If it has no plot, it is not a movie within the situational definition (viz, a dramatic fictional or semifictional work). It's a motion-enhanced work of art, possibly a documentary. There's nothing wrong with that. Certainly it has an intrinsic value as a work of art. And I love documentaries -- I wrote my undergraduate thesis about documentary technique.
But I'm not interested in something that calls itself a fictional work, which to me implies a story, and then isn't. If I wanted to see ballet, I'd go to the ballet (and sometimes do, though not often). If I wanted to see muppets being plotless, I'd watch Sesame Street (ditto). If I go to a film that bills itself as a fictional story, explicitly or implicitly, I expect a story and I expect it to be a decent story. Put whatever else you like into it, even ballet and muppets, but support the story.
People wonder why I never go to the movies; one simple reason is because so few films give me even five dollars' worth of story inbetween the pyrotechnics and the sex. Even indy films are so consumed with their own indyness that they often lose track of the story in the process of being indy, though they get it right a lot more than most do, let me tell you.
Perhaps it's our fault; maybe people don't want stories anymore and I'm just a freak. It's entirely possible. I just wish that the narrative power of the human race didn't slowly ebb down the drain every time we find ourselves with a movie camera in our hands. Where is my generation's Hitchcock? Our Capra? Our Wells? Why do I have to turn to animated films about fish for a decent story?
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