The Metaphysics of Film vs. Painting: A Subjective Analysis
Dedicated to Werner Herzog
Film
The perfection of The Third Man, Carol Reed (Director), Graham Greene (Writer), Alexander Korda, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard. What a talented group of people, joining forces to produce a masterpiece.
The original Great Expectations with Alec Guinness and John Mills, David Lean (Director). A collaboration of genius.
Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, original version with Ian Holm, Vivien Merchant and Cyril Cusak. Every word echoes a distinct valuable perception. What dialogue! What acting! "Maybe the movement of my lips is more meaningful than the words that come through them."
Pinter paraphrased
Take a painting, really take it. But once you've taken it, where are you going to take it? Once you've got hold of it, what are you going to do with it? Don't you detect a certain logical incoherence in the central affirmations of Christian Theism? Existentialism, for example? The individual determines the essence of absolute freedom of choice.
Film
You can quote dialogue from films, compare story line with actuality of life experience. You can emotionally immerse yourself in a film and relate personally to it, by way of self contained conceptual ideas. Film mirrors life as life does film. Film has shifting dramatic lighting enhanced by music, expressive moving angles that can suggest immanent danger or tension.
Film has direction and editing that can lead you in and out of a situation. It can make you laugh, cry, happy, angry--the total range of emotions. Film can reach millions of people; a painting is hidden away in personal collection or burried in a museum.
Film is alive.
It reflects the collaboration of script, direction, camera work, acting, lighting, music, and editing. It evolves in sequence before your eyes, one frame at a time, just like life evolves...
When it's all blended together, it can reach the highest of heights. Painting is static. It doesn't move--it's immobile.
Film can, like a book or a live performance, speak to people who have abstruse problems, that can be an exchange of understanding with someone. If they feel that they are not alone and another human can comprehend their innermost thoughts and "speak" to them, that is a valuable participation of giving and taking in the ultimate emotional experience.
A painting is a collectible commodity for one individual to possess a personal investment, emotionally and monetarily. Film is a sharing experience to give to many people, again and again. The more your intellectual capacities expand, the more they have to offer.
Every "ism" of painting has needed intellectual dialogue to explain the art to the viewer. Without the dialogue the art founders, it doesn't stand on its own merits. Only by reading, studying, analyzing, and viewing life can you be conceptual in arriving at the truth of anything.
Robert Doak '10
Film
The perfection of The Third Man, Carol Reed (Director), Graham Greene (Writer), Alexander Korda, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard. What a talented group of people, joining forces to produce a masterpiece.
The original Great Expectations with Alec Guinness and John Mills, David Lean (Director). A collaboration of genius.
Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, original version with Ian Holm, Vivien Merchant and Cyril Cusak. Every word echoes a distinct valuable perception. What dialogue! What acting! "Maybe the movement of my lips is more meaningful than the words that come through them."
Pinter paraphrased
Take a painting, really take it. But once you've taken it, where are you going to take it? Once you've got hold of it, what are you going to do with it? Don't you detect a certain logical incoherence in the central affirmations of Christian Theism? Existentialism, for example? The individual determines the essence of absolute freedom of choice.
Film
You can quote dialogue from films, compare story line with actuality of life experience. You can emotionally immerse yourself in a film and relate personally to it, by way of self contained conceptual ideas. Film mirrors life as life does film. Film has shifting dramatic lighting enhanced by music, expressive moving angles that can suggest immanent danger or tension.
Film has direction and editing that can lead you in and out of a situation. It can make you laugh, cry, happy, angry--the total range of emotions. Film can reach millions of people; a painting is hidden away in personal collection or burried in a museum.
Film is alive.
It reflects the collaboration of script, direction, camera work, acting, lighting, music, and editing. It evolves in sequence before your eyes, one frame at a time, just like life evolves...
When it's all blended together, it can reach the highest of heights. Painting is static. It doesn't move--it's immobile.
Film can, like a book or a live performance, speak to people who have abstruse problems, that can be an exchange of understanding with someone. If they feel that they are not alone and another human can comprehend their innermost thoughts and "speak" to them, that is a valuable participation of giving and taking in the ultimate emotional experience.
A painting is a collectible commodity for one individual to possess a personal investment, emotionally and monetarily. Film is a sharing experience to give to many people, again and again. The more your intellectual capacities expand, the more they have to offer.
Every "ism" of painting has needed intellectual dialogue to explain the art to the viewer. Without the dialogue the art founders, it doesn't stand on its own merits. Only by reading, studying, analyzing, and viewing life can you be conceptual in arriving at the truth of anything.
Robert Doak '10
