Martin Scorsese defends movie marathons

This year, Oppenheimer cut the fuse with its three-hour running time for most viewers (well, for IMAX projectors, which were only capable of playing a 17.7-kilometre-long film reel), and another important film of the year, Scorsese’s latest work, Martin , is also quite long, taking a total of 3 hours and 26 minutes. However, the director has now defended the marathon films.

The professionals run a marathon and then have lunch while one of them sits in a dark room and watches Martin Scorsese’s latest historical epic, Drowned Flowers. But this wasn’t the first time the director had kept audiences glued to their seats for several hours: he first tested people’s powers of concentration with The Irishman.

But even among the greats of cinema history, we can find a fair number of works with a running time of more than three hours:

The Godfather 2., Lawrence of Arabia, Once Upon a Time in America, Titanic, and then we haven’t even mentioned Béla Tarr’s seven-and-a-half-hour Devil Tango or the nine-hour Holocaust. This year, Babel and Oppenheimer crossed the three-hour mark, and now Drown Flowers has joined the queue, Scorsese vigorously defending his directorial sovereignty to make such feature-length films.

Academy Award-winning writer and director A.J To Hindustan Times He said that the film’s duration of 206 minutes should not frighten viewers, especially since they spend long hours at home in front of the screen, watching new and new episodes of their favorite series. “People say it’s three hours, but come on, you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours,” Scorsese said. “Plus, there are many people who watch the theater for 3.5 hours. There are real actors on stage, you can’t just stand and walk around. You give that respect. Respect the cinema.”

According to Scorsese, the Paramount/Apple historical epic should be seen in theaters, though the film will eventually stream on Apple TV+. “In the case of Drowned Flowers, you have to see it on the big screen. Are we going to be a big hit? No, we’re making a movie that has to be seen on the big screen,” Scorsese said. “Other films you’ve done? Maybe not. Sometimes the strength of the image is also interesting, if it works well on a smaller screen. “Drowned Flowers will work on the small screen, but to truly immerse yourself in it, you have to spend some time with it.”

He then spoke about his work as a whole: “I played with each film by finding a new way to tell the story. Sometimes a story without a plot. I love plots, but I often find creating them boring. You have to find the visual and audio way to tell a story through your heart. “The images and sounds reflect what you feel. This means to cut or not to cut.”

The timing of the statement is also interesting because co-director Baz Luhrmann recently re-edited the 2008 Australian historical classic starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman to return as a limited series on Hulu under the title Faraway Downs. Luhrmann said in a press statement that what inspired him to re-engage with the film was the new momentum gained by episodic storytelling in the world of live broadcasting.

“Drowned Flowers” is scheduled to be released in cinemas in Hungary on October 19.