Are people starting to enjoy old movies more?

It was the sort of sunny afternoon when girls put on floral skirts and pin their hair up. As I floppily moved my mouse to click on a link someone had just shared, my eyes widened. It was a list called “Upcoming Movies 2015”, and there were many names that made my heart leap in familiarity. I saw SpongeBob, Cinderella, Peanutws, Star Wars, and loads of other old friends who suddenly look back at me from the foreseeable future. My first thought: 2015 is going to be a fun year. Second thought: are people starting to appreciate old movies more and more?

According to my observation, the answer is yes. From the current Halloween hit movie, Annabelle, to last year’s Hitchcockian production Two Faces of January, a retro wind is obviously blowing strong. Besides the cinematic retro trend, people are trying to watch old movies by themselves, though these are less handy than the new ones in cinemas. Imperial’s Filmsoc is also dedicated to showing some “Oldies but Goodies”. I myself could not believe it when I watched 12 Angry Men, a black-and-white movie, the whole way through without looking at my watch, but I did it. And I still remember bumping into a stranger who suddenly started talking, all excited, about an ancient Chinese action movie in which people still yell “yoooohoooo” before making any move.

Why do modern people start paying attention to movies of the past, or of distant cultures? An escape from reality fueled by availability of resources, I first thought. The word retro, as explained in Wikipedia, means not just nostalgia, but nostalgia with a hint of cynicism. People are trying to get away from the reality of films, The satisfaction from all the fancy special effects has reached its peak, and more often effects just bore the audience out of their mind. Also, there are claims that developing film technology is rendering actors lazy and incompetent. People have come to a dead end; they have nowhere to go. It’s hard to technologically bring the cinematic experience to a new level.

That was all I thought, until a recent conversation changed my mind. The growing retro taste in film does not only reflect disappointment towards modern filmmaking. It is a good thing too. It is an indication of how people think of films. People are refusing to just accept what the cinema has to offer and becoming the selectors of what they watch. They are striving to make different films, to uproot themselves and plunge themselves into another generation or culture, because they expect more than fun from the movies they watch. People are asking the popcorn entertainment to bite back at them, and leave a mark. This is another way of showing what matters most in films is always the story. A good story wins and the victory lasts. Bearing this in mind, the next time I see a retro movie in cinema, instead of yearning and mocking, “gahh they’ve run out of ideas”, I would give a thumbs up to everyone. We are still seeking good stories, and the filmmakers, are trying hard to give us what we seek.