Prestige cinema has a pain problem. Not the kind that invites empathy or understanding but the kind that fetishizes suffering as a shortcut to artistic legitimacy. From Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” to Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave”, the industry’s most lauded films often hinge on the spectacle of agony. Physical degradation, emotional torment and existential despair are not just narrative elements — they’re currency. The more a character suffers, the more “serious” the film is deemed. Awards follow. Applause swells. But what are we really celebrating here?
This isn’t to say stories of trauma shouldn’t be told. But prestige cinema often treats pain not as a means to insight but as an aesthetic. It’s a visual language of bruises, blood and breakdowns where the camera lingers just a little too long. The suffering becomes stylized, even beautiful. And in that beauty, something essential is lost. Audiences are complicit, too. We’ve been conditioned to equate discomfort with depth. A film that devastates us must be profound, right? But this logic flattens the complexity of human experience. Joy, resilience and ambiguity are just as worthy of exploration — but they rarely win Oscars.
There’s also a troubling pattern in whose pain gets prestige. Marginalized bodies — Black, queer, disabled, overweight — are often the ones subjected to the most graphic portrayals of suffering. Their trauma becomes a proving ground for a director’s “vision” or an actor’s “range.” The result is a voyeuristic loop where pain is consumed, not confronted. It’s time to ask: What would prestige cinema look like if it decentered pain? If it valued nuance over nihilism? If it stopped confusing endurance with enlightenment?
There are glimmers of change. Films like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Past Lives” offer emotional depth without reveling in despair. They remind us that storytelling can be tender, strange and even hopeful — yet still be taken seriously. Pain is real. But when it becomes a fetish, it stops being a mirror and starts being a mask. Prestige cinema must learn the difference.
