Arriving in the coffee-house, customers were expected to take the next available seat, placing themselves next to whoever else has come before them. No seat could be reserved, no man might refuse your company. This seating policy impresses on all customers that in the coffee-house all are equal. Though the matter of seating may appear inconsequential, the principle of equality this policy introduced had remarkable ramifications for the decades to come. From the arrangement of its chairs, the coffee-house allowed men who did not know each other to sit together amicably and expected them to converse.

The Coffee-House: A Cultural History by Markman Ellis, 2005

I have been reading Markman Ellis’ fabulous history of the coffee-houses, and it got me thinking about the cinemas. I only ever watch films in the cinemas, because I’m particular about watching films on a big screen. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t see much of a reason to go to the cinemas. My local cinema in Sydney has two hundred or so seats. Often, I am only one of a handful of people in attendance; a sad state of affairs.

Perhaps cinemas should look to the Coffee-House of 17th Century London for some inspiration…

On that note, David Lynch is planning some exciting things in Paris

One such idea is that a film must side with one particular character, in the singular; that the story should be told from the point of view from of one protagonist. Whose story is it? Robert Mckee argues that:

The more time spent with a character, the more opportunity to witness his choices. The result is more empathy and emotional involvement between audience and character.

Robert McKee ‘Story’, 1999

McKee’s premise is that film only has a limited amount of time to work with. The more characters, the more diluted our involvement with each character. But isn’t this merely a technical challenge? Isn’t it possible for a writer to use time more economically in the same way a poet uses words sparingly?  Think of the ambitious buildings throughout history, unprecedented structures which challenged the elemental and unchanging forces of nature. The engineer devises new methods to enable the construction.

William Goldman suggests that a script with too many characters frustrates the demand of movie stars to play a lead role:

You simply cannot have that many characters in a movie today. It’s confusing, it’s a turnoff, and in terms of movie storytelling, it’s just wrong… Even worse than the number of characters was this: there was no star part.

William Goldman on his adaptation of Absolute Power in ‘Which Lie Did I Tell?’, 2000

Perhaps this is the only legitimate reason for writing fewer characters: to make a script more appealing to movie stars on whose participation the financing for the film may rely. It’s a short-sighted reason, but a practical one. I don’t think audiences are easily confused or turned off by stories with dozens of characters. A number of acclaimed TV series have featured a large casts and complex interweaving narratives. If anything, I find the runtime of those acclaimed TV series a turn-off. I wish they would distill those stories further, into a single two-hour movie.

Great cinema can have a cast of dozens, maybe even hundreds. Think about a film like ‘City of God‘ or ‘Mullholand Drive’ (conceived as a TV series) or Robert Altman’s masterpiece ‘Nashville’;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvqsWgtzIVw

How do we know what cinema is capable of?

How will we ever know if we let assumption constrain its ambition?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ZxQ-5vZLE

Here is Harry Dean Stanton performing José López Alavéz’s song Cancion Mixteca. An instrumental version of the song, played by Ry Cooder, was used in Wim Wender’s ‘Paris, Texas‘ - to heartbreaking effect.

Cinema can completely disarm an audience, leaving them defenceless against the full power of great music.

Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognise and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.

Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time pp43

How can you remind people of what very decent individuals they are? If you can do that, and they walk out of the cinema feeling good about themselves, better about the world, you’ve done a service. If you don’t, there are much, much easier ways of earning a living.

Lord David Puttnam in an interview with Leigh Sales on Lateline

Thanks to Scott Henderson’s #Ozfilmblogathon for the impetus to put some of the following thoughts into words.

What is the reason for cinema?

There have been many discussions about the direction of cinema produced locally here, in Australia, but these discussions rarely engage with the question of purpose.  It could be said that each film is an attempt to answer this question, each film is a statement on the purpose of the medium. Commentators prefer to talk about box office figures and business matters yet often those discussions are confused, failing to take into account the budget, P&A spend or the revenue structure particular to a production. They say cinema is for Art or Entertainment (many films have proven this to be a false division) and yet few can give an adequate account of either. Without a clear sense of purpose, and filmmakers knowing that purpose, cinema will flounder. The main question to begin any debate about our national cinema should be; ‘What is the reason for cinema?’

If cinema doesn’t have a reason to exist then many lives will have been wasted. Great efforts will have amounted to nothing. What sort of films do we make if films mean nothing to us? What is cinema without the dignity of a purpose? I couldn’t go on living in such a meaningless void if cinema did not have a reason to exist, a purpose worth striving for. But cinema is here for a reason.  I’ve been thinking about this question for seven years; What Is The Reason for Cinema? Now, exclusive to you my dear readers, I will attempt to answer:

Cinema exists to serve audiences; to serve needs specific to their time and place in history and to serve needs that are universal and timeless. As audiences, we have base needs that are immediate and material. We also have needs of the spirit that are eternal and transcendent. Great cinema can, and should, serve both.

Cinema as Entertainment – Base needs

To create anticipation and excitement

Through the expectation of an emotional experience with well crafted scenarios, dialogue, character and action.

To stimulate the imagination

By creating worlds, dreaming dreams, making manifest ideas narrowly outside the grasp of our reality and following curiosity wherever it takes us.

To provide a rich and satisfying emotional experience

With stories (told through the craft of filmmaking) that are surprising, immersive and engaging.

Cinema as Art – Spiritual needs

To frame moral questions

Through dramatic scenarios that embody the conflict of opposing ideals and values,  allowing the audience to give serious consideration to underlying moral questions. Great Cinema stimulates the conscience of the audience and of society.

To show people the best parts of themselves

Through the transformative final act of the story, that final moment in which the main character discovers their better self.

Or by exposing (through character) our capacity for inhumanity, we yearn to discover our better selves.

To unite audiences

Through the communion of cinema going, the lingua franca of film, the binding force of shared experience and shared understanding.

To foster empathy

Through power of close-ups, the intimacy of sharing a character’s struggles, joys and passions.

To show the truth

By shining a light into darkness, highlighting injustices and the plight of the oppressed.

In my humble opinion, cinema that fulfills these responsibilities is Great Cinema. Films like ‘La Strada’, ‘Pickpocket’, ‘High and Low’, ‘Ivan’s Childhood’, ‘Bicycle Thieves’, ‘Sunrise’, ‘Do the Right Thing’, ‘Cool Hand Luke’, ‘L’Enfant’, ‘Dancer in the Dark’ and many, many more. Each of these films should be celebrated in their own right. I intuitively know that these films are Great Cinema by their extraordinary, immediate power and because they have stuck with me. I remember them vividly because I need to remember them. Great Cinema is important and necessary.

1. Directing is incredibly demanding. On the shoot, you need to be focused and calm. If you’re exhausted, over-tired, under-slept, haven’t eaten, distracted – you’re immediately at a disadvantage.

2. Short shoot days. 8 hours maximum. Long days are unsustainable.

3. There’s no need for more than twelve people in a crew. This clip we had a crew of three. That was too few.

4. Pickups. Although it’s more efficient to shoot in one block, the creative advantage of shooting in multiple blocks is great.

5. Actors are amazing.

6. If a scene is not revealing character or advancing the story, it’s pointless and will be boring to watch.

7. You can’t control the timing of a music video, you must conform your timing to the song.

8. Sound shapes the emotion and mood more than any other element.

9. It’s probably not the editor’s fault.

10. Rehearse and test wherever possible.

I’m indebted to an amazing cast and crew who made the clip possible.

Thanks guys!

Dear Readers,

There are moral repercussions to all acts of violence. Art that depicts realistic violence and deliberately omits the moral dimension of the act, is dehumanising and wrong.

Two recent examples come to mind. The first is ‘Underbelly’ – a TV series based on real-life criminals who wrought violence and misery on the Australian East-coast. The events of the story are based on fact but the true horror of the facts are glossed over and given a treatment that glamourises the perpetrators. The show aspires for titillation and nothing greater.

A much more interesting and honest take on the story would have portrayed the true horror of the acts and the true nature of the criminals. It would make for a richer, more complex and maybe also a much darker story. Instead they’ve taken serial-murderers and distorted their character to such a degree that you might expect to find them on the set of Neighbours.

The second example is Kick-Ass, a film that Roger Ebert, among other critics, found morally reprehensible. The film never appealed to me anyway, but I made an effort to read the script (an early draft) to see what the fuss was about. Here’s a line out of page one, just after an aspiring superhero plummets to his death from a tall building;

We needn’t look closer to be sure that he’s dead. But what the hell. We track in.

The violence in Kick-Ass is highly-realistic, brutal and gratuitous. There is nothing wrong with depicting highly-realistic, brutal and gratuitous violence*. But it is cynical and dehumanising to omit the moral dimension of the acts. If the violence is realistic, the moral dimension should be realistic. And I don’t mean that the villains must be punished.

Ebert observes that;

This isn’t comic violence. These men, and many others in the film, are really stone-cold dead.

There is no mistake in this, the script is calculated to shock and provoke. But to what end? And what comes next, when films like Kick-Ass no longer shock or provoke?

The corrupting influence of the media is often exaggerated and audiences are usually more discerning than credited. That doesn’t mean we should bow down and be unquestioning of the media. Indeed, I find it sad and even terrifying that ‘moralistic’ has become a term of derision in some critical circles.

Artists should strive to be righteous, this doesn’t mean that Art should preach. But Art should frame the questions, allowing the audience – by their own reason, feelings and conscience - to arrive at the Truth.

1. If the media is appropriately classified.

I must re-emphasise, if just for my own benefit, that the films that I’ve been most impressed with and most engrossed in, pay attention to detail.

‘A Prophet’ is another great film that is rich in seemingly* authentic detail**. This creates the illusion that you are watching real events, real people, in a real world – so you really care about them.

1. I can’t verify that the detail is authentic. But if it’s convincing, does it matter?
2. I would like to point out some examples, but I don’t wish to spoil. Go see it!

There is a nice quote from Leonardo Da Vinci which goes something like this: “Think about the surface of the work. Above all think about the surface”

– Bresson in ‘Excerpts from an Interview with Robert Bresson’ (James Blue, 1965)

The following may seem obvious to you, my esteemed reader, but for myself I’ve enjoyed having these concepts laid out – articulated. For this reason I highly recommend The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott, which I’m paraphrasing:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

A happens, then B happens. So A must cause B, right?

No, not if you’re a scientist (unless you’ve eliminated all the other variables). But Barthes calls this fallacy “the mainspring of narrative… the confusion of consecution and consequence, what comes after being read in narrative as what is caused by“. Ordering events in a sequence gives the impression of cause and effect.

Sometimes this sleight-of-hand isn’t the malicious sort often practised by advertisers, lawyers and politicians. Our mind seeks order. We tend to assume a causal link unless we’re told not to. Take the sentence;

“The King died and then the Queen died.”

Do you think it was it grief that killed her? The plague? An assassination? Just a co-incidence? Maybe we’ll never know…

(Image from Tarkovsky’s magnificent film ‘The Mirror’)

…literature does not recognise Reality as such, but only levels.

I’ve also enjoyed Italo Calvino’s ‘The Uses of Literature’, in particular his essay ‘Levels of Reality in Literature’. It’s fools errand to try distill Calvino’s lucid argument into a blog post, but this is a scrapbook after all - so here is the vibe of it;

Different levels of reality also exist in literature; in fact literature rests precisely on the distinction among various levels, and would be unthinkable without an awareness of this distinction. A work of literature might be defined as an operation carried out in the written language and involving several levels of reality at the same time.

He goes on to demonstrate his thesis through analysis of the classics. How, for instance, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the aristocratic, supernatural and comic characters occur on three different levels of reality that intersect. Think about what it means for suspension of disbelief;

…the credibility of what is written can be understood in very different ways, each one corresponding to more than one level of reality. There is nothing to prevent anyone from believing in the encounter of Ulysses with the Sirens as a historical fact, in the same way as one believes in the landing of Christopher Columbus… Or else we may believe it by feeling ourselves struck by the revelation  of a truth beyond perception that is contained in the myth.

Calvino proposes the following sentence as the most complete and compact model for connecting links between levels of reality in works of literature;

I write that Homer tells that Ulysses says: I have listened to the song of the Sirens.

Now, chew on THAT next time you’re raking your sand garden OR you can read the 20-page essay yourself…