The Secret Evil of the Movie Montage

The 1980’s were the Golden Age of Montages.  It’s that cinematic device that’s used to quickly show the passage of time to bring the characters from one stage to another, mostly because film is expensive.  It’s also necessary because it would be a cheat in the movie not to see the character train, learn, build or accomplish something before bringing them to the next scene. Rocky III and Rocky IV have training for a fight, The Karate Kid learns karate, Rodney Dangerfield studies for an exam in Back To School.

You also have montages for the progression of a family from a couple to parents, a cop learning the job and gaining wisdom about her experiences, or the physical construction of a barn, a boat, a car, or something that will aid the characters in the third act.  Montages were so ubiquitous that they are expected, and some were stylized better than others.  The writing of a movie (and sometimes a TV show) was designed to have a montage in them to fit the story. 

In the internet age, we have videos shown in 10x speed to show the creation of a piece of art from start to finish.  You can see furniture restored or a cake baked from scratch in thirty seconds.  It’s convenient, it’s education and its entertaining.  But I think there is a lingering evil behind it. 

Montages exist to speed through the boring parts.  The reading, the sweaty labor, the day after day of waking up and sticking to a plan and pushing forward.  It all the shit you can’t put in a movie because it’s a story in compressed time and that crap is not entertaining at all.  It also gives the illusion through the camera’s eye that someone is watching these experiences.  Truth is, you’re often alone.  You have to run ten miles or stay up late and hit the books.  You have to clock in and out every day and deal with the same bullshit.  In fact, montages are a window to real life.  They’re the realest shit in a movie.

Movies show the idea and the last moment of desperation before the character reaches the goal.  The bulk of the effort of anything worth doing in life is 98% of all the work in between.  It’s hard and boring, and unrewarding and shitty.  Plus, you have no idea at all if that last scene will ever happen.  Montages are fun in movies because you know there will be a satisfying moment at the end.  A character will understand the journey and it will be worth the effort.  We all know life isn’t like that.  You hope it will be, but uncertainty and doubt hover every decision you make during the process.

It’s the tough stuff. The real work.  The stuff not a lot of people are willing to do.  Or, they are willing, but only because of a fanciful notion in their head planted by a montage.  It’ll be fun.  There will be a neat soundtrack playing behind all of my actions.  I’ll have the support of everyone around me.  It will be worth it.  Nope. No guarantees of any of that.  If they are plagued by montage thinking, they will quit when it stops being fun.

 But some people do it anyway. Movies can’t tell their stories.  It’s an insufficient medium.

Entertainment is so intertwined with our culture that it’s difficult to know what’s real or not, especially if you are young and just starting out in life.  Life isn’t the movies or TV, but you also don’t want it to be.  There are rewards in life that will never be reflected onscreen simply because they’re not cinematic or they take too long to understand.

You might be able to read it in a book, though.