'AI cannot make cinema'

Can great art be made without human genius and all its flaws? It's a vital question at a time when artificial intelligence threatens to subsume Hollywood.

Through new movies 'Nouvelle Vague' and 'Blue Moon', director Richard Linklater offers an answer — delving into the lives of two brilliant, volatile men whose films and plays shaped French New Wave cinema and Broadway. His conclusion? "AI is not going to make a film."

The US indie auteur tells AFP that storytelling, narrative, characters are something that connects to humanity. "That's a whole 'nother thing," says the Texan, whose notable films include 'Boyhood', the 'Before' trilogy, 'School of Rock' and 'Hit Man'.

Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague', streaming on Netflix from November 14, charts how young French director Jean-Luc Godard defied all filmmaking convention to create his 1960 classic 'Breathless'. It captures the swagger, charisma and impulsiveness with which Godard convinced financial backers and Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg to make a debut feature that had neither a script nor a workable filming schedule.

"He's a genius. A revolution is going on, but he's the only one who knows it," Linklater says of Godard, an icon of cinema's French New Wave movement in the late 1950s and 60s. By contrast 'Blue Moon', in cinemas now, depicts Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart at the end of his career.

For Linklater, AI is "just one more tool" that artists can use, but it "doesn't have intuitions or consciousness," adding: "I think it's going to be less revolutionary than everybody thinks in the next few years."

The French New Wave's trademark documentary-style realism was made possible in part by technology — the arrival of cheap, light, portable cameras. But Linklater rejects the claim that the cost savings and flexibility offered by AI could unleash another filmmaking revolution.

"You're gonna see some cool stuff," he concedes, in the interview ahead of the Los Angeles premiere of 'Nouvelle Vague' at The American French Film Festival (TAFFF). But "the hardest thing to do is still to tell a compelling story that people want to see and be engaged with," he says.

"That's a lot of points you have to hit — that's acting, that's story structure, that's pace, style. No algorithm is gonna do that. No prompt is gonna do that," he adds. Of course, AI has recently been used to "de-age" actors, like in Tom Hanks' 2024 film 'Here'. But Linklater has little interest.

"It's not a visual trick, you know? I really want an actor of a certain age to be playing a character," he explains. "I want the actors to be that much older and wiser. So, don't expect to see 'Merrily' in theatres any time soon. That's my hanging-on-to-humanity approach!" chuckles Linklater.