What Are Cinema's Unique Attributes?
And why should we define & defend them?
You went to film school. Or maybe you didn’t, but you’ve worked on many films. Okay, you’ve never worked in production, but you’ve been in the film biz for sometime now. Maybe none of that is true and you just see a lot of films and are curious about the industry. Or you’ve done it all and have some serious opinions on how to build a better mousetrap. Whatever it is, have you ever really interrogated what cinema is that no other art form or business is?
I think you should. I think you should because until you can look and see all the power and distinction in the form, you won’t fully be able to see how best to use it for your own goals or those you share with others, and if that is so, you (and we by extension) are liable to go and do some things that take us past the path of no return. “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” If you don’t want to really fuck something up, examine what it really is. My grandpa didn’t say that to me, but I wish someone had.
When I speak now of “cinema” I am really speaking just of the feature film form. I am not speaking of where it is screened. I am being platform agnostic. I think it is equally useful to try to do the same thing for theatrical exhibition as well as streaming, and I will try to do each in future posts, the former probably sooner than the latter, as it is seemingly edging to the exit door instead of multiplying like cute little bunny rabbits like I think it should.
I guess I don’t really mean “unique”. It would probably be better to call this “distinct” attributes. But this is a draft and I started with unique so I leave it to you to suggest what to name it for the next edition.
I’d like to be comprehensive with this list. In fact, I’d like to be comprehensive with all my lists, and I expect I will be sharing quite of those with you here, but this is just the start of a process. Ideally this, like all lists, can be a communal endeavor. Can you add on to it. That’s what the reply button is for. We can keep this conversation going. We can build it better together. So here goes.
CINEMA’S UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES (regardless of platform or exhibition manner)
Comprehensive— Beginning, middle, & end (if not necessarily in that order!) in a single sitting.
Capable of either containing an entire life or just a glimpse.
Complete & stand alone, thus capable of delivering a fully designed aesthetic experience w symmetry, balance, echos, and a language all its own.
Immersive — pulls you in.
Directs you, even if it can leave room to imagine things too...
Conscious of being directed — they can choose what an audience is likely to focus in amongst many different layers
Transportive— takes you to a different world
Delivers a great deal of narrative information shortly. Puts you in the center of action. Collage & montage.
Closely resembles real life.
“Can say one thing while showing another” — Arthur Penn
Movies can fall into serendipity of expression as there are so many elements at play, sometimes things get expressed without full intent, but in a book or music, nothing is there without intention.
Movies have a unique ability to depict dreams & dream logic.
The frame determines the story. “Cinéma is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out” — Martin Scorsese
“Unlike the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time , to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I’d say that film is the sculpting of time.” — Andrei Tarkovsky
Movies’ Length is conducive to playing with time.
Length is conducive to playing with multiple aesthetics.
Length is both impactful & still consumable.
Movies don’t have a set length and you don’t know where it will end unless you’ve looked it up. Series historically have set lengths and books you know how many pages are left.
Where art meets commerce. For the most part they aren’t cheap to make, so they are generally looked at as a financial investment with the expectation of a profit.
As they are hard to produce without a band of collaborators, they most often are a work of collaboration as well as individual authorship.
Capable of delivering deep emotional response (at a distance) — like a novel does — in a single semi-passive experience.
Capable of compelling us to talk about difficult subjects.
The audience not just identifies with the actors but they become the characters and enter the film.
Movies have a bit more social responsibility by their scale, cost, & presentation. They will reach wide audiences and require an investment of significant time and inconvenience to their viewers.
There are no further obligations; when you are done, you are finished.
What did I miss?
Dario pointed out 25 further distinct attributes in a truly beautiful list. It is a #MustRead:
Liam’s is also a pleasure of insight:
I hope this keeps on going! Perhaps one can add to the comments below, be it a link or a list? Thanks!
Given the great descriptions already in this list perhaps this is tautology -- but I have a mantra that I use when thinking about cinema -- “film is the crystallization of ideas” -- I suppose a distillation.
I then picture light traveling through various crystals in a kind of fortress of solitude, but I have no idea what that means... then I stop staring into space and get on with what I’m supposed to be doing.
With the exception of #24, all these things are true of comic books at their very best. (*18 is sketchy. if you can see how many pages are left in your book, you also know when there's only a few minutes left of your 2-hour movie.)
I'd add the SENSORY experience of film. It taps the viewers' dominant senses of sight and sound; in a good theater with augmented audio you can even FEEL it. (And if you're watching "Polyester" you can even smell it.)