So…FTC day was, once again, extremely exciting. I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve had a class where the response to debate wasn’t…total apathy. I was kind of surprised to find myself actually getting involved in the issues at hand, and even getting a little angry and freaked out at some of the opinions put forth by the authors. It was also hard to find a camp that I agreed with.
I mean, I think film definitely has responsibilities. For me, those responsibilities are primarily narrative: film for me is a storytelling medium, with the director responsible for telling the story in the most evocative and smooth way possible (for this reason I can’t agree with the realists simply on the basis that Paris factory workers, and even films like The Bicylce Thief don’t exactly have the best storyline going for them. They are boring). Now, also simply in my opinion, this narrative responsibility is supposed to give the audience an experience they can’t get at home–thus the reason that movies entirely of security camera footage pretty much wouldn’t cut it in this or any other film industry. Ultra-realism, besides being impossible to fully achieve, removes the magic of the movies. Oddly enough, the other side of the spectrum does the same thing. In a film where reality is blurred to the degree that technology convinces us that what we’re seeing is real when it fact it’s not, I think that also harms the magic of the film, because we forget that it is in fact a film.
Maybe this is incredibly naive of me, but I don’t think film has to do anything or be anything other than what it is. Actors only have to act, directors only have to direct, the camera only has to take it all in, the scriptwriter only has to produce a script. If everyone does these things right, you have a beautiful film, a good film, maybe even a great film. Shouldn’t that be good enough?