Here's the news that colored the piece:
[Festival]Director Marco Mueller has assembled a Hollywood-heavy line up for this year's festival, which opens on Wednesday with "Atonement," the screen adaptation of Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel starring Keira Knightley.Then we get a quote from Mueller:
Two competition films are about Iraq, part of a spate of movies on the topic due to hit theatres over the coming months.
"For me cinema is now the best answer to war," Mueller said in a recent interview with an Italian magazine.Maybe I'm getting a little too cynical in my old age - I'd love to still believe in the transformative power of art - but who in their right mind could look around at the fucked up state of the world today and still suggest that cinema is the best answer to anything?
I get that a movie can open up a pathway to understanding different peoples and different cultures. I've actively sought out films about Islam and the Muslim world the last few years -- I recommend The Clay Bird and Time and Winds -- and I think I have a more complex, nuanced grasp on the issues of Islamic terrorism as a result. Just to pick one example. But it's more than a little naive to think that watching a couple of movies is going to change anything. Viewing without action is meaningless and the cinema, for all it's potent efficacy at conveying a political message or exposing corruption is a medium that encourages passivity in its patrons, is it not?
Just throwing out there to RDs resident cynics: Does anyone here agree that cinema is the best answer to war?
4 comments:
Maybe I'm no longer one of RD's resident cynics, what with my passionate defense of the spiritual themes of Sunshine, but I find Mueller's comment naive in a charming way; it hearkens back to a time when people believed art not only could explore themes of transcendence but be somehow transcendent themselves. It's a quaint thought now but not especially profound.
I too highly doubt anyone will have their minds changed by any of the Iraq-themed films, but that doesn't mean that cinema can't be an answer or antidote to war. The viewer has to want to embrace the film(s) s/he sees as a response to and remedy for the pain in the world. That is to say, cinema is a remedy that only supports the already existing desire to be healed. If cinema could become the means by which people re-learned the world around them, that would be a terrific thing, yes? And if cinema were to somehow become that vital again, that would be amazing as well.
Paul, you've said you can can wax about the metaphysical subtleties of myspace, etc.; why do the metaphysical possibilities of cinema seem to leave you so despairing at the moment? You sound more like me on one of my moodier afternoons....
I think film may be Meuller's best answer, however, I do not agree that it is THE best answer.
But I also don't think that "we the people" are all that willing to take any real kind of action that would be the "best" answer.
Anti-war protests have been tepid at best. Voting in the Democrats effected no real change. We still buy huge SUV's and gas guzzlers galore so that our country remains dependant on foreign oil.
In this light, perhaps film is the best answer in an apathetic society. Or at least one good answer.
I also wanted to comment on Paul's statement that film viewing is passive and that it is naive to think that viewing a few films on a subject can change anything.
Sometimes the results of viewing a film are more dramatic than one might think. Evidently, after Babe came out there were a huge number of people who converted to vegetarianism. (Who knows how many remained so.)
I know there have been several movies which either affected me enough to make a change, or at least left me with a stronger understanding and therefore a stronger opinion, resulting in future action by way of voting or trying to convert others.
For example, Savior while not a great movie in itself, left me emotionally destroyed after I watched it. It gave me an understanding of the ethnic war in Bosnia that I had not gotten from papers, magazines, or from actually having visited the area (albeit before the war). What was accomplished by my new understanding was a support for Clinton in his military campaign in Bosnia and to also support the partitioning of this ethnically diverse region. (Something we might try thinking about with Iraq.)
Recently there was Sicko and Munich that affected me similarly.
Sicko, even though the information was already known to me prior to viewing the film, left me with an emotional response that strengthened my resolve to fight for health care in this country. Others I have talked to want to flee the U.S. and live abroad. The question is: Will these emotional responses last past the viewing and beyond? (And I think this is where Paul has a valid point about the naivete of Mueller's statement.)
The feeling I brought away from Munich was that violence and revenge only beget more violence and revenge. A simple concept yes, but brought home to me on such an emotional level that I am more likely to act on that issue than I was before.
Film may not and should not be the only answer, but I think it can be a good answer.(One caveat: Film can also be dangerous with an uninformed or uneducated population.) If the passive viewing then sparks activity, say dialogue, then it can be an excellent medium for change...so come on RDers, let's dialogue!
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