The one thing you should never call a Paul Mescal movie: “That’s a filthy word”
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(Credit: Press)
When we were all stuck indoors during the pandemic, we sought comfort in a number of ways, such as baking, finally learning a musical instrument, or finding joy in the company of a young Irishman wearing a thin chain.
Thanks to the popularity of Normal People, Paul Mescal became a household name, such that, in the years since his breakout role, he’s managed to build on that success and finds himself one of the most in-demand actors on planet Earth.
One of the most remarkable things about Mescal’s rise to prominence is that he’s become a big star without truly ‘selling out’. Whatever you think of his movies, you can’t deny that most of them have soul. Aftersun is the tortured examination of a father-daughter relationship, while All of us Strangers engages the complicated world of queer romance, and his newest film, Hamnet, sees him playing William Shakespeare. Sure, he’s done the odd Gladiator II every now and then, but come on, he’s only human.
This might explain why the young star gets a bit cross when you try to sell him short. During a conversation with The Times, Mescal revealed that there is one word he absolutely despises when it’s used to describe his output.
“Over the last few years, people have been talking about films as content,” he said, “That’s a filthy word. It’s not ‘content’, it’s fucking work. I’m not being snobby, but there are two concurrent industries. One that works with a lack of care, artistic integrity. Go nuts, make stuff with Instagram followers as a factor, whatever… But the other is what has always been there, the craft of filmmaking, directing, lighting and production design. That keeps artists alive.”
With the rise of streaming over the past decade or so, entertainment has become more accessible than ever, as movies, music, video games, and everything else human beings like to do are now available on a mass scale, leaving each potential consumer with a paralysing degree of choice. To keep up with this relentless demand, each service has engaged in a war with the others to produce as much stuff as quickly as possible, leading to the rise of films as ‘content’, hence Mescal’s words certainly have their place.
The idea that artists exist solely to fill the void on a streaming service is unhelpful and dangerous: look at how little musicians get paid per stream and how badly that’s affected the industry. Treating art as a disposable space-filler is a surefire way to devalue the whole format.
On the other hand, Mescal’s out-and-out dismissal of social media ‘content’ isn’t entirely accurate, as a lot of work goes into making even the shortest video online. It’s an art form in and of itself and doesn’t deserve to be diminished just because it’s a potential threat to an older format; a rising tide raises all ships after all.
The Hamnet star is far from the only big name to speak out on this subject, and as the film industry is undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history right now, we all have a part to play in keeping it afloat.
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