Tachyons, tactility, drawing and withdrawing: cinema at the speed of darkness

Longitudinal, quantitative analyses of cinema have established how Hollywood is getting ‘quicker, faster, darker’. While in some senses the ‘intensified continuity’ of contemporary Hollywood narration is a given, the increased darkness of contemporary mainstream cinema remains unexplored – especially with regard to how its speed and its darkness might be inter-related. If to darken the majority of the screen during a film helps to draw our attention to the salient aspects of the image that are better illuminated, then of course this also allows for a faster cutting rate: in principle, there is ‘less’ information for the viewer to have to take in during each shot, meaning that the film can then cut to subsequent images more rapidly. However, there are other ways in which we can interpret this ‘darkening’ of contemporary film narration. For example, it perhaps ties in with a widespread sense of disorientation with regard to the increasingly globalized and connected world that digitization has helped to bring about, and which is equally reflected in the rise of the contemporary ‘mind-game’ or ‘puzzle’ film that is a staple of contemporary Hollywood. The darkness in such films thus gives expression to uncertainty and disorientation. More than this, though, we might use physics to understand the darkness of contemporary cinema in a more ‘meta-physical’ fashion. While it is accepted that light is the ‘fastest’ phenomenon in the known universe, there nonetheless remain unilluminated aspects of the physical universe that defy light as the limit of speed – and which convey the interconnected nature of matter in the contemporary universe. For example, polarized particles have been proven simultaneously to respond to stimuli – at a speed faster than it would take light to travel from one particle to the other, a phenomenon that baffled Albert Einstein, who referred to this process as ‘spooky action at a distance’. Not only does this process suggest what Karen Barad might refer to as the entangled nature of all matter, but it also suggests speeds beyond, or at least different, to that of light. In this essay, then, I shall theorise a ‘speed of darkness’ that can help us to understand how the darkening of contemporary cinema ties in with the interconnected, invisible (‘spooky’) and ultra-rapid nature of the digital world. Perhaps it is not in the light but in the darkness that we can identify the key to understanding contemporary mainstream cinema and the globalized, digital world that produces it.

Neurofilmology of the Moving Image

A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void… Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator’s sense of equilibrium. The ‘tensive motifs’ of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift reflect our fears and dreams, and offer imaginary forms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition, along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of ‘Neurofilmology’—an interdisciplinary method that puts filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—, this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.

Fall

A common outcome of acrobatics, and a motif often combined with it, is the fall. The chapter ‘Fall. Descent to equilibrium’ discusses the recurrence of the motif of the falling human body in contemporary cinema, taking as a starting point Oliver Pietsch’s found footage film Maybe Not. Relying on Torben Grodal’s application of the notions of telic and paratelic to the film experience, referring to the use of cinema as metaphor for the mind proposed by Antonio Damasio, and interpreting several experiments on the perception of movement in film sequences whose temporality is manipulated, this chapter describes the modality through which cinema ‘regulates’ the fall by adopting a homeostatic process that reduces its traumatic character and, at the same time, enhances its expressive effectiveness.

Impact

The fall tends inalterably to its completion: its inevitable end is the impact, a literally traumatic moment that is programmatically ‘censored’ precisely due to both the visceral and psychological violence that its explicit display would cause. Inspired by Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s short film 11’9”01, the chapter ‘Impact. Experiencing the unrepresentable’ describes the ways in which the film spectator experiences the non-representation of the cinematic human body hitting the ground, beginning with a reflection on the tragic events of September 11, 2001. A discussion of the amodal perception of occluded movements and its neural correlates will show that contemporary cinema adopts a series of formal strategies in order to negotiate with the trauma and make the ‘unrepresentable’ experienceable.

Vertigo

The chapter ‘Vertigo. Towards a Neurofilmology’ offers an introduction to the book’s contents and methods. The implementation of psychology of perception, philosophy of mind, and suggestions from cognitive neuroscience (in particular the role of ‘mirror neurons’ and the hypothesis of ‘embodied simulation’) has the capability to renew contemporary film theory and to reduce the distance between competing approaches (i.e. cognitivist and phenomenological film studies). ‘Neurofilmology’ adopts an enactive and embodied approach to cognition and provides interpretative tools for the exploration of contemporary cinema. Through a series of recurrent ‘aerial motifs’ in which the film character loses his/her equilibrium—acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift—the cinema offers an intense motor and emotional experience that puts the spectator’s somatosensory perception in tension. At the same time, it provides compensation by adopting embodied forms of regulation of stimuli and a dynamic restoration of gravity and orientation (the so called ‘disembodying-reembodying’ dynamic).

Neurofilmology of the Moving Image

A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void … Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator's sense of equilibrium. The 'tensive motifs' of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift reflect our fears and dreams, and offer imaginary forms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition, along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of 'Neurofilmology'—an interdisciplinary method that puts filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—, this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.

Acrobatics

The chapter ‘Acrobatics. On the wires of empathy’ takes as a starting point Edith Stein’s critique of psychologist Theodor Lipps’ notion of empathy (Einfühlung) and her original proposal for a phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Since this debate revolves around the example of an observer watching an acrobat walking on a wire in mid air, the chapter offers an analysis of acrobatic actions in contemporary cinema (such as in Zemeckis’ The Walk) and reflects on both disembodied and embodied accounts of empathy in film studies. Recovering the filmological meaning of this term (introduced into film studies by psychologist Albert Michotte) and developing a model of cinematic empathy along the lines of Stein’s theory, the chapter illuminates the importance of the unbalancing/rebalancing dynamic in creating the spectator’s proprioceptive experience of disequilibrium.

MISE EN SCENE FILM CRITICISM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FILM WAITING FOR HEAVEN

It is a need to tell, to share the experience. A human being is an entity that tells stories and also needs stories. Myths and tales have explained the world to human beings when rational mind was not used and science was not developed yet. Myths are the first teachers of humanity, and tales have continued to form new narratives with new tools in the later ages. By the 20th century, humanity meets with a new storytelling tool. Apart from narrative films, cinema, although there are genres such as educational films, documentaries or news films, primarily undertook the mission of 'storytelling' and attracted the attention of the masses by telling stories. The paradoxical relationships and distance presented by the contemporary world to humanity are presented to the audience through sounds and images, and the audience tries to make sense of the existence of its environment and itself in a critical framework. Director and cinema question themselves in contemporary cinema narratives. The greatest innovation brought by contemporary cinema is hidden in the feature that leads the narrative to questioning activism. In the study, Derviş Zaim's, one of the most important directors of modern Turkish cinema, film Waiting for Heaven, was used as an example. The film was evaluated under the titles of technical structure, light, sound, time and space, actor, movement and performance, decor, costume and make-up in order to gain a qualitative understanding of the work. Keywords: Cinema, Movie Criticism, Derviş Zaim, Waiting For Heaven

Page, Stage, Location

The growth of globalization has greatly expanded the exposure of writers and now filmmakers to the wider world beyond their home country or region, offering new opportunities to bring elements of the outside world into their works, and in turn to take their works out to distant audiences. This essay discusses the increasing presence of foreign cultures in the progression from the literary detail to the stage prop and then the movie location, and then focuses on three films based on literary works, films that display the growing presence of the world in contemporary cinema and of the films in the world.