Life lessons can be learned through a lens, real or otherwise
Movies can change lives, as can all art
Out of more than a dozen movies that have completely changed my outlook on the world, here are four: Super 8, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Zombieland, and Cast Away.
No matter how much time passes between each time I watch these movies (and the others), they still have the same magnetic effect on me.
I’d like to think that like music, movies — as well as other art — cause you to think differently after watching. You cannot reference a movie (or music) in present time, but instead talk about the memory of watching the movie, and the impact it had.
The first time you watch a movie you don’t realize is going to change your life, you have a set of thoughts that run through your brain afterwards that make you feel different things. This could be anything from deep melancholy, to elevated optimism. Whatever the emotion, each time you watch the movie again and again after the initial viewing, your thoughts are going to continue to expand into deeper developments — not only of how you look at the world, but how you look at yourself and your place in it.
The magic that happens with good movies is that it allows you to become more in-tune and aware of the presented themes, and enable you to start recognizing them in real people, not just characters. Unlikely heroes in brain-shaking plots who turn out all right.
If they pay careful enough attention, real people have the ability to take on the personas of famous characters, and shift them into their own person. This is a bit frightening in some contexts, but from a philanthropic standpoint, is very beneficial to real world welfare.
From a personal stance, I never worry that I’m filming (or photographing) too much, because I know that it is all an art form. I’m no John Hughes, or Hans Zimmer (film score composer), but I do love to create.
I’d like to believe that the amateur lens focusing on more complex things is what allows human essence to flourish; there are things so much greater than us that we cannot understand, and yet we’re still willing to try every day. Whether it’s for the sake of our own learning, trying to (unconvincingly) impress others, or to make someone proud, we try. We try so hard to be like characters we know more about than we realize in films.
Take me, right now. I’m fantasizing I’m the author stereotype in indie flicks, writing in time to the cinematic orchestra, my typing getting faster and faster as the crescendo builds, pushing for genius. Even if it does not come, the act of writing this way — creating my own art parallel to someone else’s — is enough to make me see the beauty and significance in film associated with music.
You don’t have to be an artist to appreciate the people who used to bathe photographs in chemicals; you don’t even have to know what a darkroom is. You just need to recognize that however art is created, in whatever form, it is art, and it is crucial for consumption.
The film canister is soul-deep because the people who take their time with developing moving images to tell stories we come to repeat are authentic and compelling.
Such effort is put into art by artists because they know what they create is multidimensional and timeless; the true gift artists give is allowing you to view their piece time after time, and never tire of finding new expressions they are trying to communicate to you.