Every now and again I am faced with questions of pseudo-philosophical origins: Why do I choose to spend so much time on movies? Why does this form move me so and stir such a passion in me? Why do I write? Why about movies?
These questions are difficult enough to formulate, mostly composed of lurking thoughts in the back of my head that slip away as soon as I reach to formulate them. Answering them, then, would seem nearly impossible, but as I’m currently in an introspective and borderline masochistic mood I will do my best to put into words my love of movies, of art, and of writing itself.
Perhaps, in pursuit of my goal, it is best to start with summing up the things that I don’t love movies for: their historical relevance and how they factor into some overarching theory or another. I’m no film theorist; I’ve taken enough film theory classes to learn that about myself. I am not interested in arguing auteur theory, extolling the virtues of the French New Wave, or talking about how Freudian voyeurism and fetishism connect a viewer to the on-screen image. At one point I did feel interested in these things, but I’ll leave those studies to the academics in their incestuous proliferation of ‘knowledge.’
Likewise, the specifics of a movies plots and characters – who it was directed by, who wrote it and who stared in it – are of only a passing interest. In the long run my memory is too poor for these trite details, which never stick well in my head. If I watched five movies last week, today I probably would not be able to tell you their names and would also be thoroughly mixed up about plot details. Sure, I have certain directors, actors and writers that I like, but I make a constant effort to keep up out of vanity, as it’s what’s expected of one who’s interested in movies like I am. It’s a fun hobby, an interesting world to invest my thoughts into, but in the end it’s just that – a hobby – and not the root of my real interest.
Lastly, I do not feel myself to be a film critic. I am not, in the end, very critical of movies; one has to go to extreme length in order for me not to like it. Sure there are movies that I prefer to others. There are movies I would watch again and those I wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy most movies I do watch. In my reviews I don’t spend much time being critical or trying to steer people away from movies, but I just try to share with other people the way a certain movie affected me, to make my tastes known. Grudges I hold against movies are often simply to be contrarian, another effort at vanity. As if by disliking that which others like and extolling the virtues of some arbitrary indie movie that touched me did anything except make me unpopular in the eyes of others. I do sometimes narcissistically believe that my taste exceeds others’, but I never go as far as to judge another on a movie they love, much as I love to play Devil’s advocate. (And, by making my tastes known, I am at some level searching for others who share them. Looking for a connection on the topic that I sometimes feel most defines me.)
Now that I have eliminated what I know I don’t like, it is time to dig a little deeper, to journey inward towards where those pockets of truth lie dormant and hidden. Because, if nothing else, my connection with movies is personal, sometimes painful to admit. At the most rudimentary level I can phrase my love of movies thusly: I watch for those brief moments of time where I can be transported away from the world around me, to where I can feel something fresh; movies, the good ones, provide a lens inward, tickling some emotion that lay dormant, at the back of my mind. To be caught up in the fiction of the moment and to have that fiction relate back to me – that is what I desire from a movie I love. Not that movies often transport me to greener pastures, they are certainly capable of being escapist fares, but the movies that stick with me are the ones that in some way prick me.
This effect that I’m trying to describe in many ways defies explanation. It is what Roland Barthes’ called punctum in his book Roland Barthes. Punctum – that which pierces. A good movie speaks to me like a poem, one crafted out of images, which are each in turn capable of conveying layers of meaning. A look, a gaze, the beauties of a mise-en-scene. All of these can pierce and strike an emotional chord. They can make me laugh, bring me to the verge of tears, or send shivers of fear down my spine.
Last night I watched American Splendor and Lost in Translation, both movies affected me. The former made me ponder the place of art in the melancholy of life; the latter nearly brought me to tears with its poignant treatise on the freshness of love and its quick decay. Both movies were different in script and execution; they were of different styles and different genres. However, both succeeded in touching me and making me feel something at a level that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. No other art form touches me in that same way, eliciting such powerful introspection and emotion through such different methods in such a condensed period of time. And it is for this reason that I love movies and try to translate that love to others.
The powers of the image and my relation to them cannot be reduced to words. It would be narcissistic of me to assume that others feel the same way about movies as I do. They touch something personal in me, some deep-seeded need to look at the world through a lens and stand apart, and that makes my feelings about film untranslatable to many others. It is not something I can intellectualize, and I have a fear of any such pursuit, as if the beauty is a thin veil that could be pulled aside at any time to reveal the puniness of the wizard beyond. Let it remain one of those intangibles, the God in the system that leaks through into art and raises it to a level that is both public and deeply personal. But despite (or because of) this transcendence of understanding, I will continue to write and to write about movies. I will not vainly ask others to share in my views, but I will make those views known, as a lasting testament to my experience. And, who knows, along the way I may meet others who feel the same.
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