The Great Paradox: Artificial Intelligence and the Return of True Cinema

What if, instead, artificial intelligence—already used so excessively today—were to push film productions to act… more humanly? 

Let me explain. Since the early 2000s, we’ve witnessed an embarrassing decline in the seventh art and in its way of telling stories. International productions began to move almost in unison, applying the narrative templates churned out by screenwriting “gurus.” Used without restraint, these templates have miserably flattened the last 25 years of cinema. How many masterpieces have you seen in that time? Personally, only three. These frameworks quickly replaced the freedom of dramaturgy, exhausting the incredible and surprising palette of human relationships. Everything was reduced to technical-timing rules: at this exact minute a certain thing had to happen, for such and such a reason… and human beings, at the end of this paradoxical substitution process, were turned into tiring two-dimensional caricatures, shuffling through service scenes.

If you think about it, the greatest films in cinema history almost always come from books, or from writer–directors—in other words, from artistic situations where the author told a story because he HAD to, because there was an urgent, visceral need to narrate.

Once, dramaturgy unfolded organically. But when scholars codified a century of it and produced a myriad of rules—rules that, once synthesized and applied blindly by major international studios, pushed true dramaturgy aside—we ended up with clone after clone after clone of films that, ultimately, no one really cares about.

And now… what is the unexpected paradox? AI is making it possible for anyone to create breathtaking images, dazzling sequences. Soon, countless unsuspecting users will be able to produce with ease what, back in the days of The Matrix, cost astronomical sums. And then what? Then we’ll feel a profound nostalgia for the authenticity of human reactions—those not derived from templates, but from stories someone desperately needs to tell. Twist in the plot… Amid this overwhelming clamor of flawless images, true storytelling will once again take center stage, born of organic dramaturgy.

Mark my words.

It’s Truffaut’s prophecy: the cinema of the future will be an act of love.

Happy cinema, everyone!

Manuel de Teffé