They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To -or- Kids These Days

So, I was watching a bit of this movie, Born Free, with my mom while I was eating dinner and we were at this part where they are trying to introduce a captive lion back into the wilderness. The wild male lion roars. The captive female lion roars. The male lion roars again. The lioness roars back. The male lion roars some more. The female lion- well, you get the point.

Now, this is where my mother and I disagree. I said that they have learned a lot about making movies since 1958. My mother says that it's just because we kids have no attention span. I think it has nothing to do with attention spans, but rather the conduction of information. If you want to convey that the lions roar at each other for quite some time, you have a shot of each of the lions roaring followed by a wide shot of both lions roaring with the sun in the background. Dissolve to later where the sun is lower on the horizon. Cut back to the couple in the jeep and start the dialogue of them giving up. Seriously, a 5 minute scene from 1958 consisting of at least a dozen straight back-and-forth cuts would today be replaced with 30 seconds, 3 cuts and a dissolve.

And it's not that I'm uninterested in what is happening, but rather that the marvel of on-location cinema is no longer wonderous on its own. It is much the same way a portrait is neat, but no longer compelling in this day and age. Art has progressed past the marvel of simple replication.

Though I wonder if perhaps one day children will scoff at the backwardness of the films of my day. They almost certainly will, and I will almost certainly defend my time.