 The White Screen
If we think of the cinema screen as a window, the world we see outside tends to be more interesting than our lives inside. Often, we look and yearn for the lives of other people who are more beautiful or more successful than we are. While watching them, we try to identify with the experiences, emotions and ideas that the characters on the screen feel which seem on the surface to be much more interesting. This can help make us think that we are important, beautiful or successful, like they are.
Given that, it is somewhat ironic that, while looking out of the window into another world, we may actually be seeing ourselves. What we are hoping to escape from is exactly what we may be watching. While in a cinema we are in total darkness, isolated from our own identities, or so it would appear. We may intend to escape from our own lives by becoming interested in the lives of others. We may think that other people have better (or worse) lives than ours. If the person on the screen is an unsuccessful and aesthetically challenged person, we may even feel a certain sense of smug happiness, since we do not identify with THOSE characters. They aren't the same as WE are. So, in many ways, the viewer looks inwards, at the same time as looking out. We want to escape, but is there really an escape from being who we are? After all, whereever you go, you are always there.
The world we see through the movie screen window is a very well orchestrated and choreographed place. Every shot, every line of dialogue, everything about it has been chosen on purpose to create a nice flow, a tight story and a visually interesting film. But, this means that a film presents a world where events and time are distorted and shaped. Real life doesn't work this way, of course. Real life goes along at the speed of…life. The characters in our reality based existence are most often ordinary people doing very ordinary things: mowing their lawns, walking their dogs, taking out their garbage. They aren't wearing capes and saving the planet. In this sense, life as it actually is seems rather boring compared to the events that can take place in a film!
But, basically, it seems that people just like to watch other people, plain and simple. The cinema provides a place to do this very comfortably, since the characters act as if they are not aware of the audience or camera. In real life, it's not so easy being a voyeur. People tend to get a bit angry when they feel they are being watched.
In Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rear Window," the director pulls an interesting little trick on the viewer. The main character watches other people from his window, particularly paying close attention to a suspected murderer, and we watch these people through his eyes. But then, the killer turns his gaze towards the man who is watching him…which is us. What? This is not right. This isn't how a film is supposed to work. It can be a very odd feeling. Suddenly, the watcher is being watched! This can be rather distressing. Mr. Hitchcock did an excellent job of exploiting people's love of watching, and fear of being watched.
In the end the viewer is just as important to a film as the plot, the characters or the editing. It is a two way interaction, whether it actually feels like that or not. It is this connection, and, oddly enough, attempt at a disconnection that brings viewers to the theatre. Without this interaction, it might be just as exciting to stay home and stare out the front window at what everyday life has to offer.
As this is my last column for the term, I fare you well until we meet again.
Alev Deđim (COMD/III)
contactinspector@yahoo.com
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