An article in yesterday’s indieWIRE biz section made me feel a twinge of sadness and more than a twinge of concern. The story began with this:

Foreign-language cinema got another vote of no confidence yesterday, with the announcement of Dreamachine, a new film company formed out of the merger of international sales outfit Celluloid Dreams with U.K.-based HanWay Films.

Yikes. Votes of no confidence are harsh. And machines (even of the dream sort) are a bit frightening. OK, I know I’m not business-minded enough to appreciate decisions like this and understand the possible necessity behind them, but I can’t help feeling like this is a sell-out for foreign films. All in the name of profit.

The article goes on to say that Dreamachine will “continue to take on foreign talents and maintain relationships with its proven staple of auteurs,” but fewer films will be made, and most of them in English. I don’t quite get how those are foreign language films at all, any more. (Celluloid Dream’s Hengameh Panahi estimates only one-third of the titles they take will be foreign language.) Apparently, it all comes down to being able to focus on bigger projects. This surely translates to bigger profits, but better films? It’s hard to imagine.

Panahi, who is widely respected for her taste and commitment to movies she loves, does admit the change isn’t easy for her.

“But the only problem for me is I have to give up on my smaller films, which is hard because I love them,” Panahi continued. “At the same time, I realize there is no economy for those movies anymore.” By taking on films with less commercial potential, she said, “We’re helping the market to become more crowded and we’re helping the small distributor to be more fragile.”

“Everybody is drowning in volume,” Panahi continued.

The volume part is no surprise, with the Long Tail almost a household term these days. But drowning? Do we have to drown? Or can we find a nice little boat to navigate around in? It’s hard for me to imagine that the Long Tail is already shrinking. It’s hard to imagine that VOD and other technology advancements aren’t creating more opportunities for smaller films to find audiences. And it’s hard for me to accept the thought that Dreamachine might become just an old-school Hollywood approach to something that will barely resemble what we used to know of as foreign language cinema. Isn’t this the time of possibility and opportunity? The time to move toward something new, rather than toward old models?

At least people seem to have faith that Panahi won’t sell out entirely, in terms of making only films that are increasingly mainstream. We can only hope.

If you don’t listen to Elvis Mitchell’s radio program on KCRW, The Treatment, you should start. A while back he interviewed Todd Field about his new film, Little Children. As Field laments how taxing it is to direct a film involving so many characters, Mitchell compliments Field on how attentive he is that each character act differently around each of the other characters. It’s a subtle nuance in Field’s films, but it’s one of the things making Little Children and his earlier film, In the Bedroom, so distinct. And, unfortunately, it’s a rare thing to see in cinema.

We all act differently around different people. We naturally gauge things, like how intimate we are with somebody, what their education is, if we share things in common, if they scare us, bore us, excite us, and whether or not they’re somebody we want to impress. All these little processes happening beneath the surface influence how we act around a person.

In most movies, though, the protagonist walks through life acting the same way around everyone they see. (Maybe it’s one of the things we admire in a hero, their ability to be unwavering–something we wish we were better at.) But these characters who don’t alter which parts of themselves they present to different people are..well…unbelievable. They’re caricatures.

“We go to the movies to watch people,” Field says. Regardless of how beautiful the cinematography or music may be, most of us are there to watch people. Todd Field provides some of the best people-watching out there. For that, I think he’s one of the most distinct–and hopefully influential–filmmakers of our time.

(I was able to have a very brief conversation with Field at Telluride, where I also wrote a post about Little Children.)