My own emotional and subjective involvement is integral to my film viewing experience, I prefer to live the film and get to know the protagonist personally through that experience: this is what I have always understood as the ‘experience’ that is required for any film.
The reason behind my disconnection with the films studied recently is, I think, due to the fact that they have no plot or narrative. They were not personalised stories about humans or human experiences, they had other purposes. From one of the readings we had early on it was mentioned that we are extremely visual beings for we live in a visual world of fragmented sequences of images. There are elements of the visual no matter where we go (even the back of bathroom doors!). Although our world is filled with fragmented images, I feel that our perceptions of them are not. I tend to narrate in my own head all the images that I see, I thread them into a linear narrative, a narrative of my day and the contextual elements of those sequential images. Films that contain narratives (not necessarily linear, but ‘explained’ plots) paint for themselves a world of their own. As the viewer I am able to live in that world because of it.
One film that I am particularly immersed in every time I watch it is Amelie. There’s something about French films, or foreign films in general. They require more concentration and engagement because you are an outside trying desperately to see and grasp every meaning. Amelie is a whole world of its own: it’s dark sepia tones, its almost surrealist surroundings and occasional scenes of inanimate objects coming to life, all these constitute the world of Amelie. It’s all very Amelie-ish to me. I feel that I can connect with the protagonist; her desires, her trivial pursuits in life and her results. I see how things happen, why things happen and the consequences. This is probably one of my favourite films because it has such a unique and relatable world of its own. (Creepy American voice over in the trailer, that’s so creepy!)
Maybe I’m just a biased conformist, or have not seen enough avant-gardist films, but this is why I prefer films with an understandable narrative.
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ReplyDeleteSophia I can completely understand where you're coming from, I don't feel the same way as you, but I do understand. Maybe it's the Brechtian in me, but I do love it when conventions are broken down, our perceptions are reshaped and our role as the viewer to returned to exactly that, instead of becoming emotionally involved, attached and ultimately bound. If you feel like this about film, how do you feel about it in a theatrical setting? Can you stand post-modern (if we can call it that) theatre? Or just simply Brecht? I love hearing people's opinions regarding conventions; it's a love hate relationship some of the time, and I love hearing the latter's tales.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that your criterion for a good film is "did it make me forget who I am and where I was at the time of viewing?" I am an avid fan of escapism through immersion in film, however I find that sometimes, the criterion has to change to "did it make me question who I am and where I was at the time of viewing" in order for the film to truly make an impact and allow me to draw significant meaning. I agree that there is something enchanting about foreign films that makes them more interesting than other films, perhaps a desire to look beyond the verbal in order to fashion our own understanding. Amelie is definitely a standout foreign film for me, but I also love Pan's Labrynth and A Very Long Engagement. It's a shame that these films are lost to audiences specifically because there is a certain laziness associated with subtitles. Besides, foreign films do feel a great deal more romantic (without even trying) than your generic Hollywood type love affair.
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