I sometimes think that professing a love for arthouse cinema is the evolutionary equivalent of the burden that peacock’s carry around with them to impress their mate’s. These films are so unpleasurable and so cripplingly boring that it takes an act of brute will to tell the world that you enjoy them.
Yesterday, I eschewed channel Five’s screening of The Goonies for the questionable pleasures of Last Year in Marienbad, Alain Resnais’s classic moody mystery. Did I enjoy it? Alas, no. I really dislike the soundtrack with its jarring, grating organ music. I find the characters obtuse and annoying. The splendour of the cinematography I can leave to those people who enjoy trudging around country houses. It’s boring and lacks wit.
Yet, for all these valid reasons to dislike a film, I still feel as if it were me who has the problem. Imagine a peacock that decided to get its feathers clipped in favour of being able to fly and fight. Would he be more successful or less? Has there ever been a case of evolutionary fitness reverting away from impressive oddness towards robust vigour? Or do creatures who have been burdened by their differences tend to be quickly extinguished like the Dodo?
Of course, it is arguable that not liking all arthouse cinema is a much better evolutionary tactic than liking them all . . . just not in the circles I move in. I don’t think my girlfriend thinks any less of me for my penchant for Die Hard-style high-concept action films, but I don’t think it helps.
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