The intensity of audience reception to The Irishman and Marriage Story has knocked the film industry sideways. Suddenly the future has arrived – but is anyone besides
Netflix happy?
The year and the decade are ending and the battle appears to have been lost. On your television, laptop, tablet or
smartphone, the evidence is there, cold as a body on the slab: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, two of the most impressively scaled films of the year, are now available to watch at a time of your choosing, or to play in the background while you chat, eat, scroll through social media or ignore them entirely.
These movies have entered our homes without undergoing the traditional cinematic lifecycle: a few months on the big screen, then a further three or four months in limbo before arriving on DVD, television and the repertory circuit, where they will see out the rest of their days. Most people are not willing to wait that long, and Netflix has been instrumental in predicting, shaping and indulging our impatience. It has not merely closed the theatrical release window, but lobbed a brick through it. Tied to that brick is a note that reads: “Welcome to the future.”