🌎 Why We Need More Cinema—Not Just “Content”
Everywhere you turn, people talk about creating content—YouTube videos, TikToks, quick-hit streaming shows.
But true cinema is something else entirely.
I was reminded of this the night I saw Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder at the Academy’s theater in New York City.
It was a powerful film—about love, isolation, and “that love that loves us.”
But more than anything, it reminded me why I fell in love with filmmaking in the first place.
🎥 The Afternoon I Rediscovered the Power of Cinema
A few years earlier, I had the rare privilege of seeing an extended cut of Malick’s The Tree of Life—struck from the original negative—in a private screening room at Deluxe in Hollywood.
📌 I was alone. Just me and the film.
As the images unfolded, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time:
✨ I wasn’t watching a movie—I was experiencing pure cinema.
It was a reminder of what film can be when it doesn’t just tell a story, but immerses us in emotion, movement, and poetry.
🎭 Cinema as Poetry, Not Just Storytelling
Modern audiences have been trained to expect a strict narrative formula.
📌 This happens on page 2… That happens on page 10… The first act ends here.
And yes, that’s a valid form of filmmaking.
But Malick is doing something different—something that demands a different kind of attention.
🎬 Cinema as movement.🎬 Cinema as dance.🎬 Cinema as poetry.
Much like reading T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings, these films don’t hold your hand.
Instead, they ask you to bring yourself.
🎞 How Malick’s Films Speak a Different Language
In To The Wonder, an image of a wasp trapped against a window isn’t about a wasp.
📌 In a lesser film, it might be literal—“Call an exterminator.”
📌 But here, it’s a feeling—the sense of being trapped in a relationship that no longer works.
Likewise, in Malick’s films:
✔ A close-up on hands touching conveys the electricity of falling in love.
✔ A plane in the sky isn’t just travel—it’s leaving, isolation, longing.
His images don’t explain—they evoke.
🎬 The Difference Between Cinema & “Content”
📌 Watching a film like To The Wonder or The Tree of Life is a different experience every time.
📌 The film doesn’t change—but you do.
📌 What you take away depends on who you are that day.
This is what cinema at its best can do.
But today, in an era where the industry pushes more content, more quickly, for more platforms, films like these are rare.
🎥 True cinema isn’t about creating "content"—it’s about creating experience.
🔗 Inside Hollywood Film Coach, we explore how filmmakers can elevate their work beyond “content” to something truly cinematic.
🎯 Final Takeaways: Why This Matters for Filmmakers
✅ Cinema is more than just storytelling—it’s emotion, movement, and poetry.
✅ Not all films follow the same structure, and that’s okay.
✅ The best films don’t just tell you something—they make you feel something.
💡 What’s the last film that made you feel something real?
Drop a comment below, or better yet—join the conversation inside Hollywood Film Coach, where we explore what makes a film truly great.
Comentários