entry 3: the magic of (the) cinema

 

to me, motion picture is the single greatest visual art form that has ever existed and it’s not even close. greatest, as i define it here, meaning the most effective for our species. i throughly believe it bests painting, sculpting/ceramics, still photography, performance art, drawing, and dare i say it, the theater as well. could this be seen as a bold statement? perhaps. i mean cinema as an art form has only existed for a little over 100 years now, and right under 100 years if we’re including the integration of sound starting with the jazz singer (1927), which would mark the beginning of what we expect today within the content that we choose to see. the reason why i believe motion picture is the greatest form of visual art there is is due to one primary reason: the existence of the specific type of surrender one gives into, whether conscious of it or not, when taking in motion picture content. and the vessel for such, the cinema, i believe to hold an inherent magic between its four walls, the screen, and its audience to exclusively experience such.

 

now, i’m not going to be ignorant and say that no other forms of visual media can induce a trance-like surrender when experiencing it. of course this surrender can occur when visiting a museum and seeing a painting, sculpture, still photograph, etc. that you resonate with. this surrender is a specific feeling; closely resembling that of alignment with a subjectively true purpose, and/or a feeling that provides a tremendous amount of furthered understanding to your own unique life experiences and worldview. but cinema is slightly different in how it conveys this. with motion picture, twenty-four still frames are sped up consecutively to be shown in one second intervals to tell stories and craft narratives. it is an art form that quite literally mimics real-life down to the very second. it is not still, just like real-life. here’s an exercise to paint what i’m saying: try looking at one end of a wall right now, now with just your eyes, look over to the other side of the wall without blinking. while doing that, your eye had to pinpoint every bit of the wall it wanted to get to the other side of it. those were stills. these pinpoints are like photographs. when those pinpoints were sped up (in this case in the physical act of moving your eyes to the other side of the wall) that was a movie. a series of photographs sped up to tell a story to a certain capacity. so with a video camera, the tool used to produce movies, i believe it is unmatched in its innate ability to capture fantastic ideas as a tangible substitute to a literal eye. furthermore, when we introduce the concept such as ‘the cut’ in the editing process, a process that is exclusive to the art of motion picture, this is where the actual magic resides. the cut is to the director as “the trick” is to the magician. let’s do the same exercise, but now i’m going to introduce a new concept to it. look at one end of the same wall once more, but this time instead of panning your eyes over, blink and open your eyes to the halfway point of the wall, and then blink one more time, this time opening your eyes to the other side of the wall. what happened? you told the same story, one end of the wall to the other. but through blinking, you had the power to dictate when, where specially, and maybe even why you blinked at certain spots to convey the same story. it is a willful manipulation of what we see in real-life, to produce a story that flows as if it is still in real-life, to deliver us an illusion that can better  contextualize our unique perceptions and lived experiences in real-life. no other artistic medium can achieve this.

 

here i go again bringing in lynch into a topic related to art (i promise this will be the last time… maybe…), but speaking on this power that the medium holds in its ability to mimic real-life to create this sense of surrender, lynch has defined this state and made bodies of work relating to this concept that i strongly resonate with as well. he defined this state as the ‘intercourse between two worlds.’ as in, there exists a metaphysical plane carried out through the electricity emitted through a television or projector perhaps that transports an audience member when watching a piece of cinema into this world of potential surrender. truly powerful stuff. it is what has routinely drove me to practically living at my theater of choice for the past six years, and when you have a strong suspension of disbelief as i believe i do, it becomes a whole other world made just for you. in a way, i see the theater operating as a similar role to that of an airport but for your consciousness. to allow yourself the suspension of disbelief for two to three hours or so to fall into the trust and work of a auteur’s manipulation of the world you currently live in. and if done so correctly, that you may experience the emotional fullness and understanding about yourself that life has to offer through another human’s creative (love, laughter, fear, sadness, joy, purpose, etc.). this is why i have always preferred to go see movies first alone. i have found that for me, when you limit those that you personally bring around you, you’re able to better connect with the medium as you co-exist within the collective theater audience that you are with for that time. it is truly magical and a great joy in my life that i recommend everyone to try and do more often. there are not a lot of experiences on this planet like it and we’re blessed to be alive in a time where it does exist today.

​

 

​