Reinventing Hollywood

Remember the musical "Chicago"? Would you ever have thought that the shocking thriller "Silence of the Lambs" and the period epic "Gladiator" would be named Best Film of the Year? And don't forget the sweet melodrama "Terms of Endearment" or the special effects-loaded "Lord of the Rings." All of these films have raked in the most important Academy Award over the past 20 years.

So how did an experimental film like "Birdman" come out the big winner at the Oscars this year? And how is it that films like "Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Whiplash" managed to collect multiple statues? Even the 12-years-in-the-making, coming-of-age project "Boyhood" won an Oscar.

This year's choice don't seem to fit the pattern.

Hollywood is changing

The answer is clear. Hollywood is witnessing a fundamental shift after suffering a crisis over the past few years. The time when directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman and Peter Bogdanovich were the driving force are long gone. "New Hollywood" is how their heyday in the 1970s and 80s was referred to. At some point other directors came to the fore: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, to name a few.

These directors celebrated huge successes, particularly at the box offices. They established blockbuster cinema, which meant enormous budgets that, in the best cases, led to enormous revenues. It wasn't rare for a film to cost upwards of $200 million, and bring in four times that amount.

The blockbuster

Movies were, more than ever before in the history of Hollywood, made with profit in mind.

Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. It was usually the producers that kept the creative and ambitious directors in check and established the blockbuster genre for the whole world. Star Wars inventor George Lucas stopped directing and concentrated only on producing, though he still managed to make a few respectable films along the way.

But Lucas, Spielberg and Co. paved the way for a purely commercial approach in American cinema. And in the past few years, that approach has fallen flat. The never-ending stream of sequels coming out these days show that Hollywood is out of steam.

Crisis unique to Hollywood

The success of US television series also had something to do with it. "Television is the new cinema" is often quoted, but misguided. In other parts of the world, film is not experiencing a crisis - just in Hollywood. Many intelligent American filmmakers have recently been getting involved in television because they are tired of Hollywood's soulless blockbuster culture.

Most recently, however, things have been improving. A new generation of Hollywood directors and producers are coming onto the scene. They are experimenting with form and making artistically ambitious films. Director Richard Linklater and "Boyhood" are a good example, just as Wes Anderson with his "Grand Budapest Hotel," which claimed one Oscar. And Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Birdman") is also part of the new wave.

The Oscars for "Birdman," "Boyhood" and "Grand Budapest Hotel" are merely the most recent sign of Hollywood's renaissance. It's heartening that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the Oscars each year, has brought attention to this development.