David Kipen has an interesting piece in June’s Atlantic about why Hollywood films are getting more and more anemic. In brief, it’s because they’re marketed to a world audience, and thus forced to be easily translatable, both verbally and culturally. I realized this myself while watching I, Robot, which is set in Chicago of 2035. Aside from shots of the Hancock tower and some futuristic El tracks, it could have taken place in any city with a skyline. Granted, a fecklessly executed science fiction film is a poor example of anything, but think of Vertigo (check out these great comparisons between 1958 and 2003) or The Big Sleep and how intimately connected those films were with the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you realize that Hollywood films of the last decade have no “thereness”. They take place in no particular city, or if they do, the level of engagement can usually be summed up in one extremely obvious sentence (The Rock: San Francisco is hilly). The only notable exception I can think of is Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films, which really feel like they’re set in New York, from the streets to the people you’d find in them.

The amazing thing about America is how much diversity there is within the unity of a single language and political system. For a film to be truly American it has to engage with the character of its people in a particular place and a particular time. Nobody does that any more, except by accident. But then, much of that diversity is being wiped out, so maybe there’s less and less to remark about.

Some friends were in town from up north this weekend. I took them camping up around the Russian River, and then we drove down the coast highway from Bodega Bay to the city. Tomales Bay was especially beautiful sitting calm and still under low clouds, and the Point Reyes peninsula was dark and green. All this distant, piercing beauty lately. Fog rolling into a valley beneath a quarter moon, sunset at the Paragon, Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto, dreams I keep having of a woman whose smile was more beautiful than the green hills of paradise. Strange days.