Elegy for the Netflix DVD

Today is the final day when Netflix ships DVDs by mail.

I’m the last person I know who was still subscribed to the damn thing. Upon telling others this fact (save a handful, one of whom called the decision to cease mailing DVDs “lame”), their immediate reply was “that’s still around?” That reaction is understandable; the DVD service reached an all-time high in the late aughts and early twenty-tens before gradually shrinking to the point where Netflix ceased releasing subscriber numbers since there was no growth, only decline. A service whose subscribers once numbered sixteen million strong had by the end dwindled to a hair under a million, the remaining devotees a small cult of old people, the stubbornly physical media-centric, and serious cinephiles who knew that the Netflix DVD library — while a pale imitation of its size and scope at its peak — was still richer than any streaming service. 

I recall watching Netflix’s streaming service when it was still new, binging The Twilight Zone, Nickelodeon’s forgotten Rugrats sequel series All Grown Up, and whatever random documentaries and cartoons were available. At the time, the streaming portion of the site was a ramshackle selection of whatever Netflix could get its hands on. There were no original series at this point, no Orange is the New Black or House of Cards or the thoroughly mediocre Arrested Development revival or anything like that. It was a motley collection of movies of varying quality (with few dating from prior to 1980), oddball documentaries, and whatever shows they could get their hands on. Besides The Twilight Zone and All Grown Up, I also recall The West Wing being prominently featured, because it was the Obama years and people wanted to rewatch the Jimmy Smits seasons and marvel that Sorkin the Mage’s predictions came true. 

Of course, the big breakout hit there was Breaking Bad. It’s forgotten now, but Breaking Bad was far from a flagship AMC series then; if anything, it was the weird stepchild which rode Mad Men’s perfectly-tailored mid century coattails to critical acclaim and a strong cult following but sluggish ratings and poor public penetration otherwise. It was only once it was added to Netflix streaming that it truly took off: suddenly, the show’s fast-paced, streamlined style could be enjoyed in mammoth chunks, which in hindsight benefited the show. Whereas Mad Men was slow and as much about marinating in the Camelot-era vibes as anything, Breaking Bad was quick and violent and lost some of its impact when chopped up into weekly installments in a way that the statelier Mad Men just didn’t. Same thing went for Arrested Development: the show’s layered in-jokes and recurring gags baffled Fox viewers because you couldn’t just dip in at any moment like most sitcoms. It didn’t matter in which order you watched Seinfeld or Friends because most episodes were self-contained and the overarching plot threads (Kramer’s coffee table book or the Ross/Rachel dynamic, for instance) were flimsy enough that not knowing them didn’t detract from one’s enjoyment. Only once the full seasons were assembled on Netflix in order did the show make sense and break out of its cult. 

Yet while Netflix’s streaming TV library bloomed, its movie library was small and atrophied. There were precious few older movies; if you wanted to watch anything by Charlie Chaplin or Frank Capra or seventies New Hollywood classics like The Godfather or Taxi Driver, no dice. Similarly, the foreign language selection was beyond poor: forget Béla Tarr or Abbas Kiarostami, there wasn’t even anything by “entry-level” international filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa or Ingmar Bergman. In fact, until the coming of (HBO) Max, there really weren’t any foreign-language classics on streaming services at all. HBO’s conscious “premium” image meant that of course it’d raid the Criterion/Janus Films library for Bicycle Thieves, Solaris, and In the Mood for Love, if only to show up the likely AI-generated original movies and faux-deep “prestige” shows which litter streaming services today. 

Through all of this, though, Netflix’s DVD library remained strong. If you wanted to watch literally anything else besides what was hot and current, you turned there. It’s not that most people raided the Netflix DVD library for sixties and seventies Bollywood classics or slow cinema experiments by Gus van Sant; indeed, the most-rented Netflix DVD of all time was The Blind Side, the ultimate white savior Oscar-bait flick whose story turned out to be lies. But that parallel universe of the weird, wonderful, and vintage was there, and plenty of people managed to see films which were otherwise impossible to find without scrounging the seedier corners of the web for dubious torrents, hoping your local library had a copy, or shelling out sixty dollars for a DVD of a movie you’d never seen. 

If it wasn’t for Netflix, I would’ve never seen Todd Solondz’s cringe-inducing yet horrifically compelling dramedy Happiness, nor Peter Jackson’s New Zealand era, pre-Lord of the Rings films like the Oedipal, ultra-gory zombie comedy Brain Dead and Heavenly Creatures, a darkly imaginative teen murder period piece (and Kate Winslet’s first starring role). Happiness — despite its current status as a cool kid cult object — hasn’t been re-released on DVD for about twenty years, let alone put on Blu-ray (Netflix also allowed me to rent Blu-rays, whose picture and sound quality are superior to streaming, let alone DVDs); otherwise, you’re paying eighty bucks for a janky old disc. Brain Dead and Heavenly Creatures, meanwhile, are hard to find in the United States due to their Kiwi origins; DVDs of them may set you back fifty dollars, and Blu-rays are even more expensive. Without Netflix, I probably would’ve never seen these three cult classics.

It’s not even obscurities that aren’t available on streaming; so are plenty of mainstream movies and famous classics. Citizen Kane — yes, that Citizen Kane — isn’t available for streaming. And outside of various add-ons, the Criterion Channel, or services clogged with ads — and even then, not in all cases — neither are Duck Soup, Bringing Up Baby, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Third Man, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, High Noon, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Searchers, La Dolce Vita, West Side Story, Dr. Strangelove, Blow-Up, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, American Graffiti, Enter the Dragon, The Wicker Man, The Conversation, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Network, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dawn of the Dead, Blade Runner, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, The Thing, Once Upon a Time in America, Repo Man, After Hours, Brazil, Born on the Fourth of July, Do the Right Thing, sex, lies, and videotape, Barton Fink, My Own Private Idaho, Jurassic Park, The Thin Red Line, Being John Malkovich, Boys Don’t Cry, Fight Club, Magnolia, Sideways, Brokeback Mountain, Django Unchained, and Lord knows how many others. That might be the most depressing list I’ve ever written out, by the way. They may be added on in the future, but who can guarantee that?

Worse still, the fragmentation of streaming services means one must subscribe to up to ten increasingly niche services to watch anything. Sure, plenty of us will subscribe to Netflix streaming, Hulu, Max, Prime, and Disney+ — but AMC+? MGM+? Paramount+? Criterion Channel? Really? At the very least, I got the middle two via Prime add-ons. But when everyone has their own streaming service, it becomes frustrating tracking down movies as they drift from service to service depending on who owns the licensing rights. If a movie is taken off a streaming service — oftentimes permanently or semi-permanently — I must then rush to watch it before the end of the month even if I want to watch other things instead. One of my friends was in the middle of watching Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies on Max when they were taken off the service with no warning. With physical media I can take my time, especially because Netflix DVD had no late fees and pre-paid shipping. I shouldn’t need to have Starz to watch Independence Day or MGM+ to watch Pretty Woman, respecitvely, and it’s obscene that people have to pay just that much extra for well-known movies. It’s already a tragedy when acknowledged pinnacles of the medium are nowhere to be seen; it’s somehow even worse when you’ve deprived everyone — from the most pretentious art hoes to the normiest of the normies — from some of the best, most streamlined examples of pure Hollywood product.

I’ll really come to miss the cherry red envelopes in my mailbox. They were my companions through thick and thin, and they turned me on to entire worlds of cinema I’d never known. I can take solace, though, in the immortal words of Ray Davis:

…Celluloid heroes never feel any pain

And celluloid heroes never really die

The discs may leave, but the movies — and memories — will endure forever.