David Thomson, the prolific film critic and author of dozens of books including "A Sudden Flicker of Light," confronts a question that has haunted cinephiles for decades: whether cinema has ultimately degraded rather than elevated our cultural landscape. His provocative new book takes up this inquiry on IndieWire's "Screen Talk" podcast, where Thomson unpacks his thesis with the rigor that has defined his career as one of contemporary criticism's most intellectually fearless voices.
Thomson's work arrives at a moment when cinema's relationship to culture feels genuinely unsettled. Streaming has fractured theatrical exhibition. The blockbuster machine has consolidated narrative power. Prestige filmmaking has retreated into smaller circles of festival-bound productions. Whether movies have made us worse, Thomson suggests, requires examining not just what we watch but how we watch it, and what that consumption does to our collective consciousness.
The "Screen Talk" episode also addresses a broader anxiety rippling through the film calendar. Venice's lineup this year generated little enthusiasm, signaling potential troubles ahead for Telluride, traditionally one of cinema's most prestigious autumn festivals. When Venice stumbles, the entire festival circuit feels the tremor. These festivals function as gatekeepers for the year's prestige pictures, the films that studios position for awards consideration and critics celebrate as art worthy of serious attention.
Thomson's book arrives in this context with particular weight. His perspective carries authority. He wrote "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," shaped critical discourse around auteur theory, and has spent decades wrestling with cinema's relationship to art, commerce, and meaning. The question he poses in "A Sudden Flicker of Light" refuses easy answers. It demands that readers confront whether the movies we love have actually made us better people, sharper thinkers, more empathetic citizens, or whether they have, in fact, done the opposite.