Cinema and reality

Lying fully dressed on top of my red-and-black-patched bedsheets, mulling on the status of my relationship and listening to The Queen is Dead by The Smiths on my nightstand radio, I am suddenly pulled up into the point of view of a camera that is looking down at me from my ceiling. As the camera and my view slowly climb to a height so great it blurs my bedsheet patches into a brownish blob, I begin to feel as if I am part of a coming-of-age teen-angst movie starring Elliot Page and Michael Cera. A few seconds later comes the realization that I watched Juno yesterday, and that I am confusing my reality with the reality of that film, and that I should probably engage in conversation with my relationship instead of mulling by myself.

My bedroom epiphany exemplifies the transformative nature of the relation between cinema and reality; cinema transforms reality, and vice versa. To illustrate this statement, I will rely upon the concepts of reality posed by André Bazin and Maya Deren. Bazin views reality as an objective external state, sovereign from human relation. His ontological realist view is that cinema’s potential lies in authentically recording and preserving this reality, close to human perception, unlike other art forms that can merely abstract it. Cinema, in the eyes of Bazin, ‘embalms time’ (Bazin, p. 8). Contrary to this belief, Deren poses a more subjective conception of reality: a projection of one’s consciousness, a construction reliant on perception and emotion. For Deren, the production and viewing of cinema is like dreaming; cinema serves as an instrument to reveal one’s internal state of being. Reality, in my view, is an offspring of these opposing notions: our subjective experiences produce relative realities but are all based on a single external reality.  

            Where Deren and Bazin would agree is on the following statement: cinema is the most apt art form for dealing with questions of reality. The mere construction of the device that captures the projected images we call ‘cinema’ itself already raises the question of authenticity; a lens is always a frame that reveals little and obscures most, but at the same time shows something that is truly recorded or constructed. So then, what is authenticity? This question can be asked for any type of film and will always reveal the tension between subjectivity and objectivity; while transformative, even the most eclectic edits or visual effects are still portrayals of some reality.

As I descend from the sky back onto my bed, I feel enlightened. I have become aware of cinema’s power to transform my reality, its power to relate my reality to a fictional one that I engaged with in the past and its power to help make sense of my future experiences; each time I watch a film a new reality emerges. At the same time, I understand how my personal experiences are mirrored in each film I watch, how filmmakers and I, the spectator, relate through sharing the same space, and how our relative journeys in attempting to navigate and find meaning within that space align. Overcome with a feeling of togetherness and shared experience I turn off The Smiths and fall into a deep sleep, in which a new reality might emerge. The setting for my future film perhaps?