The terrible thing about being a filmmaker is that you eventually become hypercritical of any film you watch. Your gaze shifts from that of an audience member, experiencing the story on a human level, to that of a craftsman dissecting the mechanics. Unlearning this affliction takes as long as acquiring it in the first place. In the age of hyper-curated, hyper-aware storytelling, it’s even harder.

Take Past Lives as an example. I saw it earlier this year without watching any trailers or reading reviews, but memes and unsolicited social media opinions found me before I could form my own thoughts. A former film school professor even went on a rant about how it was “too sentimental.” Here’s the thing: I love sentimentality. I’m South Asian, raised on Disney movies and Bollywood, it’s in my DNA. But more than just a cultural or personal bias, I genuinely enjoy sincerity in storytelling. That’s why the box office hits of the 2010s often left me uneasy. I’m not saying they weren’t entertaining—some were innovative and groundbreaking. I even bought tickets to a slew of Marvel films, which Martin Scorsese aptly compared to theme park rides.

I tried to follow the overarching narratives until they receded into the background, leaving behind a sea of self-referential quips and ironic detachment. And while they tried to grapple with the pathos of the hero’s journey, they often fell short. Irony drowned the sincerity, making it difficult to emotionally invest in the characters or their stories.

Now, to be clear, irony, self-reference, and breaking the fourth wall aren’t new. Dostoyevsky explored antiheroes long before Tony Stark quipped his way into our hearts. Woody Allen famously spoke directly to the camera in Annie Hall, while Quentin Tarantino constructed stories within stories to remind audiences of the artificiality of narrative. The rise of the mockumentary genre—This Is Spinal Tap, Borat, The Office, Parks and Recreation—took this further, creating fictional relationships between the storyteller and the characters.

But sincerity, which—to the dismay of many creators, cannot be garnered artificially—reminds us of the weight stories can carry. Consider The Pursuit of Happyness, a film that isn’t afraid of earnestness. Will Smith’s performance, free of irony, makes his way into the hearts of every single viewer with the raw vulnerability of his character. Yeah, your heart hurts a bit, but you don’t mind it. Similarly, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is unapologetically heartfelt—even to a level many Zoomers might find cringe—allowing its characters to stumble through pain and growth without undercutting their emotions with humour.

Still, even in their most self-aware moments, shows like The Sopranos or Glee allowed audiences to connect with their characters’ humanity. The Office (U.S.) ran much longer and was more successful than the U.K. original because it softened Ricky Gervais’ unrelenting cynicism, giving us arcs that felt heartfelt and unencumbered by sarcasm.

Television, as a medium, has struck a better balance between style and substance. Characters like Don Draper (Mad Men), Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty), and Bojack Horseman (Bojack Horseman) became cultural icons by blending emotional complexity with self-awareness. In contrast, films have often sacrificed substance for style.

Take characters like Deadpool or Thor—while entertaining, their attempts at emotional depth often feel misplaced or rushed. The constraints of a two-hour runtime leave little room for the kind of layered storytelling that resonates deeply. This might explain the waning dominance of the blockbuster. Audiences willing to commit 2-3 hours of their attention now demand something more: a meaningful, emotional experience.

Yet, as Barbie proved, quippy dialogue and fast-paced storytelling are far from obsolete. Modern viewers, with endless content at their fingertips, can binge-watch 20 hours of video in a day. But when they go to a theatre or sit down intentionally for long-form content, they want something that lingers, something they can feel in their soul.

Therein lies a challenge for contemporary artists: finding their voice in an overwhelming sea of curated content and useless information. It’s not just about telling a story; it’s about knowing why you’re telling it in the first place. People like Rick Rubin, who preach the most basic truths that any real artist knows, are now hailed as profound simply because they revisit the fundamentals of discovering one’s voice. The advice feels revolutionary only because so many creatives have lost touch with their sense of self.

Identity, after all, is one of the most loaded concepts of our time. Knowing who you are is more difficult than knowing just about anything else because you can’t Google that. We’re bombarded with representations of identity, yet those representations often feel like reflections in a hall of mirrors: distorted, endless, and impossible to pin down. This confusion often bleeds into art, leaving creators unsure of what they’re even trying to say.

There’s a difference between self-awareness and awareness of ‘the self’. The former is easy to fake, like with a character cracking a meta-joke, or a wink at the audience. The latter requires the kind of introspection that makes both creators and audiences uncomfortable. It demands true sincerity.

David Foster Wallace foresaw this tension in his 1993 essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction. He envisioned a literary rebellion against irony: “The next real literary ‘rebels’… might well emerge as some weird bunch of ‘anti-rebels,’ born oglers who dare to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall to actually endorse single-entendre values… The new rebels might be the ones willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs… Accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Credulity. Willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.”

In a world oversaturated with content that confuses cleverness for substance, sincerity and intentionality are the currencies of lasting art. The unfounded purity of expression free of self-consciousness is the hallmark of great art, the kind that artists like me aspire to create. The cult of the sentimental will never die because it speaks to something inherently human. And as humanity loops through its cycles of cynicism and earnestness, it will always find its way back to what matters most.