Well, there are plenty of genres that work for us- the thriller, the romance, the police procedural, science fiction, fantasy, horror...
I'm not saying that the epic is impossible, only that we find it very hard to get it right. There are several epics I consider successful- El Cid, Spartacus, Hero....
But what we find much easier and more natural is the kind of film that looks like an epic but isn't. I'm thinking of Dr Zhivago, with its hapless lovers wandering at large through the chaos of the Russian revolution, or Saving Private Ryan with its schoolmaster hero who fights the good fight in spite of being reduced to a jittery bag of nerves. Films like these- anti-epics if you like- which ask pertinent questions about history, war and the nature of courage, are very much the sort of thing we need....
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I'm not saying that the epic is impossible, only that we find it very hard to get it right. There are several epics I consider successful- El Cid, Spartacus, Hero....
But what we find much easier and more natural is the kind of film that looks like an epic but isn't. I'm thinking of Dr Zhivago, with its hapless lovers wandering at large through the chaos of the Russian revolution, or Saving Private Ryan with its schoolmaster hero who fights the good fight in spite of being reduced to a jittery bag of nerves. Films like these- anti-epics if you like- which ask pertinent questions about history, war and the nature of courage, are very much the sort of thing we need....