"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."
- Ingrid Bergman
Throughout my life I have started reading numerous books, only to put them down days later without even getting halfway through. This is mostly due to the fact that books are a time investment that I'm not really committed to make. Whether it's 300 or 1,000 pages, a book always seems tedious to me. Of course, I certainly see the benefits for reading as a means for entertainment and the expression of one's own imagination. Yet, for as open ended reading can be, it's a long and drawn out medium for me. Sometimes with books it takes pages to accurately depict a tone, establish a character or to even adequately set up a given situation. In the case of film, it's the opposite as they can do all of the above within one scene as they can attack the viewer with a plethora of tools ranging from score, acting, mise-en-scene, and the dialogue (text). If anything, I'd say film does something that reading a book can't do, it attacks the senses.
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| Salvatore Cascio as Toto in "Cinema Paradiso" |
Without a doubt, one can immerse themselves in a book, but with a film, you can truly feel it, and this isn't in the sense of 3-D. With a mixture of special effects and sound, you can be found within a hurricane or a world other than our own. Through a handheld camera and gritty acting we can be placed in a place as real, and as authentic as our own backyard, or our own city. No matter how it's done, film can seemingly drop a viewer into any life, any world, and any situation, and convince you that you're there as an active voyeur experiencing what the characters are enduring. You can feel the sweat dripping down the back of a soldier in a desolate land; you can feel the blast of a rocket ship as it moves at the speed of light. It's a magical perception that I can relate back to the film "Cinema Paradiso" which is more or less a love letter to the art of film. The film follows the life of Toto, a young Italian boy who becomes infatuated with movies via a theater that plays edited Hollywood and Italian films in his small town. Toto seemingly loves every aspect of film, especially the hypnotizing effect films can have on a viewer, but more specifically he loves the way film makes him feel. It can make him laugh, cry, fearful, etc. The most pertinent thing is it makes him grasp a range of emotions that, for lack of a better phrase, enriches his life.
It was with this film that, for the first time in my life, I took in all of the ingredients that make up a film (score, cinematography, etc.) and realized the potential and profound effect they can have when wrapped into one cohesive bundle. This effect was further exacerbated by films like "Amelie", "Lost in Translation", and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", as they showed me the infinite bounds a film can possess.
Certainly, I liked movies prior to that point, but not to the extent I do now. Films were merely a distraction then, now they're a form of entertainment as well as an extension of life and a hymn to the very breaths we take. Now I actively seek out films from the past, from Fellini to Hitchcock, as well as those due in the near future from film's latest auteurs. This notion is evident of how I no longer view my interest in film to be just a hobby. Initially I did, but now it's a passion that pumps blood through my veins just as much as my heart. And it is this passion that I hope bleeds through each one of my film reviews and any other film musings I may post. For film is my religion and the likes of Tarantino, Truffaut, and P.T. Anderson deliver sermons to me daily. And much like the case of Toto, the Cinema will be an integral part of my life until I can no longer breathe. But, until then, it will be one of the biggest proponents for breathing another second longer.
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