“Boutique” - Film Review
It feels ironic and sad to be writing this review having just returned from my local Target and learning they will no longer be selling DVDs and Blu-Rays. Target isn’t the first major retailer to make this decision, and it seems like they will not be the last. Finding physical media in mainstream, traditional settings is becoming a thing of the past, but, thankfully, boutique film distribution labels are stepping up to fill in the gaps. Directed by Ry Levey, Boutique: To Preserve and Collect chronicles the rise of these indie labels, the obsession of collecting physical media, and the never-ending fight for film preservation.
Before movies were shot digitally, they were captured on film strips made of celluloid. In the early days, film reels would frequently catch fire. It’s staggering to think of the sheer number of works of art that we’ve lost because of fire and deterioration of the film. In Boutique, one of the interviewees mentions that two-thirds of American movies are gone. Film preservation is a newer movement, yet it’s coming at a time when physical media is growing rarer by the minute. In an effort to commit as many films as possible to physical media, indie labels like Vinegar Syndrome, Severin, and more are popping up to preserve the old and the new.
courtesy of Ry Levey
One of the most famous indie labels is Criterion. They’ve been around for decades and became known for preserving films that are seen as “essential” in the larger canon of filmmaking. Of course that mission statement begs the question, what makes one movie more essential than another? Why is D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation still widely regarded as necessary viewing, despite its overtly racist nature? When film schools teach Birth of a Nation, why are Oscar Micheaux’s responses to the film ignored? Boutique argues that as many films as possible should be saved because they’re a part of the larger history of moviemaking. Film, as an artform, is still in its infancy, yet the journey from Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion to something like Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance in 146 years is almost unfathomable. We would not be here if it wasn’t for every single film that was made between then and now. Labels like Vinegar Syndrome and Severin are rescuing the ones that have fallen through the cracks to introduce new audiences to films that never had their chance in the spotlight.
“It was worth the effort,” remarks one of the interviewees toward the end of the film. Filmmaking is, above all else, an immense amount of effort for every aspect of the larger movie. Filmmakers will spend hours on something that might only be seen on screen for five seconds. The same can be said for the people behind the push for preservation. They spend hours finding old movies, restoring them, packaging them, and releasing them, all in the hope that they’ve just saved someone’s new (or old) favorite movie. Even beyond the cinephiles, Boutique reminds us that movies have a unifying quality to them. An ability to make our world wider without ever leaving the plush seats of our favorite multiplex.
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