Why don’t good movies play in London?

by Brian on 01-26-2009

Sorry… “films.”

There was a bunch of chatter on Twitter about Slumdog Millionaire finally coming here (same week it was released in India? a developing nation, with wildly different taste, and concerns about audience backlash?) and The Wrestler isn’t here yet…

This used to irk me, a few years ago, when I was a little younger – a little more ambitiously hip.

The movie that really bugged me was Apocalypse Now Redux. That thing was hyped, had major mainstream coverage leading up to its wide release, giant ads in the national newspapers… Apocalypse Now was my favourite movie then and I was all primed to see the new one on the big screen… And it didn’t play in London — or at least not for a couple months. Come to think of it, I still haven’t seen it.

I know it has a lot to do with low demand for these things in this area. Compared to the filmgoing audiences in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, the people in this city don’t go out for the artier fare.

But how much is pure demand, and how much is it about failing to recognize demand — or failing to generate demand — or failing to cultivate that kind of audience — or failing to connect with the potential audience that’s already here?

I think a big part of it is that Londoners have never really had the opportunity to get into this stuff.

Never given an opportunity by whom?

I don’t know. Maybe each other — maybe ourselves. I’ll leave it there for now…

[Due diligence]: The Hyland Cinema brings first-rate films to the city, and Rainbow Cinemas has too. Western Film puts some in their mix as well. By the way, good blog of theirs: this post gave me a lot more insight into what goes into bringing or not bringing a movie to London.

What’s frustrating is that Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler aren’t even exactly esoteric art films; they’re pretty mainstream. I watched this great conversation on Charlie Rose last week with David Denby from the New Yorker and A.O. Scott from the New York Times. By their standards, those movies are pandering crowd-pleasers (along with virtually all of the other Oscar nominees this year… check out Denby’s wicked rant about Benjamin Button). Both critics loved Rachel Getting Married, which is currently playing at The Hyland…

(Aside: same night Charlie Rose had an interesting chat with Scout Tufankjian, an independant journalist who followed Barack Obama from before his campaign right up to the inauguration.)