Does the title of this entry sound stupid? Kind of. It might seem obvious that movies are nice, but my rediscovered taste for movies has made me rethink my approach when it comes to watching a movie.

Let me explain.

How do you watch a movie? No, i’m not even kidding, how do you watch a movie? Do you put it on the background while doing something? Do you sit back and carefully appreciate even the slightest details of the moving pixels lying before you? There are many ways in which you can watch a movie, and neither of them are ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’. However, they do have different effects on you and the movie you’re watching. Last year i watched a total of four movies at the cinema:

  • Miss Marvel
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home
  • The Secret Life of Pets 2
  • Jojo Rabbit

I don’t remember how many i watched in 2018, but you get the idea. The first three i watched with no afterthoughts: the story they told was pretty straightforward, and there was not much to talk about after watching the movie other than ‘Hey, i liked the part where…’, or ‘Hey i liked how that person acted’, and i found no problem with that at all (i mean it’s a movie, isn’t that the way they are meant to be?). But during Jojo Rabbit i felt joy, then tenderness, then empathy, then sadness, then i cried, then excitement, then a series of feels i’m not sure how to describe, then, at last, joy, not only because of how the movie brilliantly uses Heroes by David Bowie in the end, but also because i had just reconnected with the love i had for movies a couple of years ago.

Since then i have watched a lot of movies, mostly because i wanted to dive deeper in that pit of emotions Jojo Rabbit submerged me into, but also because i enjoyed the experience. In my journey i have discovered a whole lot of movies that have made made traverse different layers of that pit of emotions. Just to quote a few:

  • Parasite (2019) is a well constructed commentary on social inequality. I liked it a lot because it doesn’t have a binary approach as to how it depicts the rich and the poor, as in “the poor are so vulnerable and good, and the rich are so greedy and bad!”. It takes the time to show its characters in their best, but also in their worst. And the photography and production is beautiful (the scene where Ki Jung narrates the plan to infiltrate her mother into the Park family in a quasi-balletic manner is pure magic).

  • Good Time (2017) is a brilliant character study of Connie, the protagonist. The plot is really simple: a man tries to bail his brother out of jail. All in one very sinister, ever-worsening night. These are some of the fastest 2h(ish) i’ve experienced: the movie moves crazy fast without losing focus on crafting its characters’ identities, and the fast-paced style of the directors, Josh and Benny Safdie, contribute generously to this effect.

  • Frances Ha (2012) is really fun! It’s the story of an at-times unemployed ballet dancer living in New York. I know that description can sound very generic and overused (why is New York always the setting of independent movies from the US?), but Frances’ (the protagonist, very clearly) construction as a character is so light-hearted and natural that it takes the viewer by the hand as she wanders around her life’s ups and downs. The whole movie was recorded in black and white, which cleverly contrasts with the movie’s tone and overall Noah Baumbach’s (the director) style.

 

Something i also found appreciation for is directors! Some have a pretty standard approach to film-making: translate the script into a motion picture. For instance, did you know each Mission: Impossible movie has been directed by a different person? If it were up to me to tell each director apart, i wouldn’t be able to, because their styles are very similar. And i don’t think that makes them better or worse directors: just like we can have many ways of watching a movie, a filmmaker can have different purposes when making a film. However, i do appreciate what are called films d’ateur or ateur cinema. This term refers to directors that sign their movie through the framing, the photography, the motifs scattered throughout, and many, many more resources. To give an idea of what i mean i’ll give a couple examples:

  • Denis Villeneuve is a French-Canadian director who has been consistently making great dramas. He has directed Enemy (2013), Sicario (2015), Blade Runner (2017), and many more. These movies, albeit different in nature and purpose, have similar and shared elements: the importance of the first frames as tone-setters, monochromatic settings for character presentations and dichromatic ones for the presentation of conflict or duality, cryptic, heavy use of ambiguous and symbolic imagery (specially in Enemy), and a long list of etceteras (this video has give a thorough analysis of his approach to film-making).

  • Edgar Wright employs creative techniques to convey humour. He has directed Hot Fuzz (2007), The World’s End (2013), Baby Driver (2017), among others. His movies, as mostcomedies, use dialog to make the viewer laugh. But he goes further: how can you create the buildup for a punchline (asides from dialog)? There are many ways: using a playful frame composition, messing around with the soundtrack, and his characteristic dense use of cuts are all very creative ways in which he uses cinematographic language in his favour.

What i think is curious is that had i not discovered these movies, i might not have found nothing particularly conspicuous in the art of cinema: yeah it had some classics and all, but what was it that made some people fall for movies? There’s no unique answer to this question, clearly, but my answer is that it is a tool to portray an idea, a concept. Trying to find the theme of a movie is not a “pretentious” thing to do, but, i think, is the very point of a movie! Of course, some movies are more explicit than others on their conveyance of their theme (is it equally as demanding to find the theme on Toy Story and in Under the Skin?), and this diversity of purposes is perhaps one of the alluring things cinema has to offer.

Cinema is great! :-)