I’ve always been a sucker for good stories. Having been an avid reader since the age of six, I’ve always looked for good stories not just in books, but in movies as well. This is probably why I immensely enjoyed the movie Serendipity: the twists in the plot were enough to keep me guessing up until the end that I was able to ignore the movie’s clichés. I liked the unpredictability of the movie, and a movie that keeps me guessing is a good one for me.
However, watching the movie Moulin Rouge made me rethink my standards. I found I enjoyed the movie despite its flimsy storyline. More than the plot, I appreciated the movie for the visual delight that it was. It was an entirely new way to tell an old story. After watching this movie, I began to look not just for novelty in the content of a film, but novelty in its form.
But I realized that the search for novelty of content in a film could be a futile search. After all, films are made according to certain formulas: boy meets girl, girl likes someone else, but boy gets girl in the end. When you get to the very core of films, they actually tell the same stories and are just like each other. What makes them different from one another is the way they tell their stories: the different perspectives, the different timelines, and many other variables that can be altered to make one film distinct from another. This is probably why I enjoyed Moulin Rouge: it was just like every other romantic movie I had watched, only different.
So I began to realize that more than looking for novelty in content, I should also look for novelty in a film’s form, or new ways films use to tell their stories. These new ways are largely brought on by new technology developed throughout film history. But ironically, the silent film is a novelty for me, after having taken for granted the synchronicity of image and sound. Watching the film At 3:25 was a new experience, and with it came the realization that a sense of newness can still be felt over something obviously archaic. Aside from the new experience of watching a silent film, its plot was also entirely new, suggesting the implications of having the whole world fall asleep for one day. Thus, with this movie, I found novelty in both form and content.
However, I was able to relate more to the movie Matinee. This is probably because it’s more realistic to have the voices match the movements of the mouth and their respective facial expressions, rather than read the dialogue and narration flashed on the screen. This is also why I don’t particularly enjoy watching Mexican telenovelas on television: I get distracted when the dubbing doesn’t match the movement of the mouth, and this prevents me from getting into the story. The reality element is thus an important element of a film for most viewers: it allows the viewer to lose himself in watching the film, thinking that he is a part of it.
This is the theme the film tackles. Lawrence Woolsey literally brings his viewers into the movie by using a device like the Rumble Rama and having a costumed Mant invade the audience. Tactics like these bridge the gap between the viewer and the movie, as the viewer is able to relate more to the events onscreen since it is happening to him as well. It also supports the reality that most of the technology developed today seeks to enhance the movie viewing experience.
Film as an Industrial Art
The movie Matinee also debunks the notion that audiences are passive, highlighting instead that audiences have the power to choose the movies they want to watch. In fact, movies exist because of scopophilia, or the people’s desire to see. Because of the audiences’ demand for movies to watch, filmmakers see the profit-making potential of films and thus produce more movies and develop technology that can further enhance their movie-making capabilities, and consequently the movie-viewing experience. This shows the paradoxical reality that film is an industrial art: it is not just about art for art’s sake –that a film is not made solely for the artist’s self-expression—but is also about the technology and the economics behind the artistic process.
La Jetee - Filmmaking: Past, Present, and Future
Despite the advancement of technology, one should always realize that all this novelty stems from development made in the past. The film La Jetee banks on this thesis statement: both the past and the future can be used to aid the present. In the context of the technology that allowed movies to emerge, talking pictures would not have been possible if people didn’t first find a way to project these pictures on the big screen, a development which traces its roots to the photography, and –going further back in time—to painting. Without the development of paintings then, motion pictures would have been an incomprehensible alien concept.
However, motion pictures were also made possible because of foresight. People at that time may have decided to focus on developing the image, but Edison had already played with the possibility of synchronizing image and sound. He saw that there was room for improvement, an improvement which, sure enough, came a few decades later. People should then dare to dream of the future and its possibilities because it is through this that innovation is possible. This is what La Jetee proposes, that perhaps if one is able to envision another time and place, maybe it is possible to eventually live there. Thus, it is important to recognize both the contributions of the past to the present rise of technology, and the infinite possibilities that the future holds for its development
Movies: the Recreation of Reality
However, some people do not seem willing to consider the endless possibilities film holds. Most moviegoers watch movies to lose themselves in the world film creates, a world which they ironically expect to be just like reality. Reality gives one a sense of security: movies like Armageddon and Independence Day shake that sense of security and are thus branded “unrealistic”. And as reality is determined by one’s familiarity with certain objects, images, and situations, a movie like Men in Black becomes “unrealistic” simply because it is literally about an alien concept. This does not make these movies less enjoyable or less artistic, but realism becomes a discriminatory standard in determining these movies’ worth.
What makes people accept these movies is the fact that everything goes back to normal after everything. In the movie At 3:25, the concept of the whole world asleep is incomprehensible and unfamiliar to the general viewer, but he is not bothered by it because everyone wakes up in the end and life goes on. The movie Matinee shows us precisely this: a movie is allowed to transport its viewers to another world and another time –where perhaps a phenomenon like the Mant is possible-- as long as it brings him back to the real world. Otherwise, a film like La Jetee --which plays with one’s notions of time, space, and memories-- leaves the viewer confused and ultimately dissatisfied. This is unfortunate because the film is truly an intelligent one that poses many questions and possibilities about the past and its permanence.
Reality as a Social Construct: Seeing is Not Believing
But going beyond film’s capability to transcend reality with its endless possibilities, reality is an unfair criterion because of its nature as a social construct. As Kolker says, “reality is a complex image of the world which many of us choose to agree to.” When people stick to what is familiar and what is “real” --and consequently, to the belief that seeing is believing-- the film viewing experience becomes very limited. How can one see and therefore believe in things and concepts that are not familiar? This disbelief translates to a detachment from the film, which goes against the very goal of movies to have the viewers immerse themselves in the viewing experience. Seeing, therefore, is not and should not translate to believing.
Conclusion
Movies provide us with an interesting paradox: the filmmaking process of a movie is in itself a process of objectifying reality, manipulating it from a certain perspective, revealing certain parts of it to viewers. However, this objective process involves people whose aim is to humanize reality and make it more subjective so that they can relate to it. Movies exist because people want to connect more to the real world which, despite the fact that it is a social construct, is still too complicated for anyone to really understand. It’s funny then why people didn’t just agree to make the real world as simple as they could.
It’s because they couldn’t. People may have the power to agree on what they consider real, but their power is not absolute. Matinee shows that movies can create a world people can escape to for an hour or so, but the reality of impending war will still exist afterwards. At 3:25 shows that one man may have the power to put the world to sleep, but he doesn’t have the last say. La Jetee proposes that people actually don’t have control over their lives and that everything is predestined. Thus, people may have power over certain things, but this power is not absolute. People will never have the power to depict the real world as it really is because there just isn’t a way to do it without bias, without manipulation, without intervention.
So despite the fact that movies are all about seeing, I have come to realize that there is always something hidden behind the big screen. Whether it is the economics of the filmmaking process, the technology involved both in making the film and in allowing it to tell its story in new ways, the filmmaker’s bias in choosing to portray and manipulate a certain part of reality, something is always not disclosed to me as a viewer. And these are things that should always be taken into consideration when judging a film.
Thus, before I say anything about the next film I’ll be seeing, it looks like I have one catchphrase to remember: seeing is not believing.
There is always something beyond the silver screen.