🎬 #189 Film As Therapy.
Remembering that when we sit down to watch a film means essentially living someone else's perspective on life is kind of awe inspiring. Film takes us out of ourselves, it illuminates things we have been thinking about or gives us a fresh perspective on the same world we’ve been living in all along. It’s really powerful medicine.
Please enjoy
Bry
Ps at the bottom you’ll find a link to a fun Star Wars themed project I just finished.
There’s a calming feeling, sitting in a cinema, as the lights go down and we’re instructed not to use our phones. It’s really one of the last sacred, modern spaces. A place where we’re not distracted by devices. A place that has a shared understanding of what it means to sit and watch something together - where everyone [generally] respects the social etiquette. We put everything on pause while we’re taken somewhere else for the duration. Just the physical experience is different to watching something at home and because of that it has those aforementioned therapeutic benefits.
Sitting in one place, focused, for multiple hours - when was the last time you did that outside a cinema? No distractions. The darkness hones our senses towards the screen blocking, any little niggling thoughts. We are subsumed into the action that’s happening on screen. We allow ourselves to feel things we maybe wouldn’t normally feel, we empathise, we vent, we let ourselves go. Maybe we’re surprised by the emotions we’re feeling. But they were there all along, film just gave us permission to release them. Because they’re not about us, they’re about the hardships and heartaches of the characters on screen. We’re one step removed, we’re not upset -we’re just caught up in the story we’re enjoying.
I wrote before of the idea of film as an empathy machine but on a simpler level it takes us out of day-to-day normality. A trip to the cinema still feels special - we have permission to leave thoughts and woes at the door by the poster telling you what’s on. It also reminds us that our feelings are universal, even the most idiosyncratic thing you can think of about yourself is probably shared by a huge portion of the population - and film reminds us of that. That we’re not alone and in some reassuring way - we’re not special. Most things we’ve felt or been concerned about have already been written about, acted about and captured on film.
Film is also therapy for those who make them, Ridley Scott famously made Blade Runner after the death of his brother Frank Scott. He wanted to throw himself into something so consuming he would be distracted - distanced a bit from that pain. And you can feel that longing, melancholy in every frame of Blade Runner. You can sense a person wrestling with what it all means, what it means to be human. What sets us apart.
Even the mental and physical strain of filmmaking is so beneficial to mental health - that and the fact that the cast and crew are a community with a shared cause. All working towards something they each can make a very meaningful and visible contribution to. It’s a battle and in that battle there is deep meaning and satisfaction to be found. This can be sorely missed from the average modern lifestyle.
Film is therapy for the makers and the viewers. Both parties getting something from the experience. In fact the viewers could take some totally different meaning than what was intended and could give the filmmakers new perspectives. And seeing the final piece the filmmakers could also now realise what was going on inside of them. Now it’s clear, like a silver-screen epiphany - like a therapist suggesting an insight that was once buried and now its shining bright, a glimmer in the darkness.
Now for something a bit less heavy: a silly cinematic reading experience.
https://word-wars.com/
:)