Absolute Cinema meme template

What it means

Absolute Cinema is a black-and-white photograph of director Martin Scorsese seated with both hands raised, palms open, as if framing a masterpiece that only he can see. The image descends from his famous critical commentary on modern blockbuster filmmaking, and it became a meme around 2023 and 2024 as the internet's highest honorific: the caption names a piece of media, and the raised hands certify it as absolute cinema, often sincerely for genuinely great moments and ironically for things that are absolutely not, like a perfect paragraph of text in a group chat or a forty-second clip of a man falling off a chair. Scorsese's solemn auteur energy applied to any content, high or low, is the whole joke.

When to use it

• Certifying any media as a masterpiece, sincere or ironic
• Mock-serious praise for mundane or ridiculous content
• Anointing a moment with auteur-level gravitas