How to learn to watch movies, in 5 steps
In a certain sense, it is not a cliché that "an image is worth a thousand words". And the cinema is the realm of the image. The minimum effort is required of the recipient: he only has to see and hear; He does not have to read, not even think. Everything that comes to him through cinema is essentially sensitive, more shocking than what comes through oral language or print. But it can also have a negative effect: it can numb your intelligence.
In front of other means of communication, the mission of the cinema is to form and entertain more than to inform, although it must not ignore the reality it portrays. Its fascinating power is enormous. Alone in a room, face to face with wonderful images, usually enveloped by suggestive photography and music, the viewer is caught without any external influence can help. Everything good and bad that the film transmits will be burned into your mind. He can only avoid his influence in two ways: by leaving the cinema or applying what his own intelligence reaches him.
5 steps to learn to watch movies
To take advantage of the undoubted potential of the cinema as a means of information, training and entertainment, it is necessary to make a remarkable personal effort to appreciate it. That is, you have to know how to watch movies. In this sense, a basic virtue that any spectator must have is a critical spirit, a deep nonconformity that acts before, during and after watching a film.
1. Make a good cinematographic selection
The critical spirit necessarily leads to the selective criterion. The viewer must select what he sees, so that this activity does not harm others and does not mean a waste of time. This leads to the need to advise, to ask for advice, to be informed.
This initial effort is perhaps the most expensive, but also the most important. That is why at the time of making the selection, superficiality or naivety must be avoided at all costs.
In this same line, a good viewer should have a broad horizon of tastes. It is not good to be monothematic. Like a person who only reads adventure novels and is unable to read a profound novel, a good essay, the one who only watches superficial films proves to have a rather limited cultural background. In the cinema -as in books-, there is poetry, drama, reflection, there are also good adventures and comedies. It is very enriching to know how to value all the good that there is in each of these genres, without being limited to watching only one of them.
2. Keep the critical spirit during and after the movie
This done, the exercise of the critical spirit during the contemplation of a film will be much easier. Simply have to continue to keep their neurons in operation to know how to discover the successes and errors of the images that come to him, their traps and their greatness, in order to value them conveniently and not be trapped by their networks.
The critical spirit after seeing a movie, if the two previous ones have been taken care of, does not have any problem. The ideas that have transmitted the images will be based on intelligence in its proper place, they can be related to others that already exist and will enrich the training itself.
3. Set the theme of the film by reading
The critical spirit will not be effective if it is not based on a solid personal formation in all senses. You have to be informed, but above all you have to know how to value the information, you have to be trained. And this is achieved - apart from other means - through an enormously simple and accessible activity for all: reading. It is not a bad motto: "Anyone who wants to see a film without danger of alienation and with profit, who reads, who reads a lot". Books that are worth it, of course, that's another.
Undoubtedly, there is no question that everyone who wants to see a movie should read voluminous treatises on philosophy. But it must have something very important: clear ideas, a sufficient human and cultural formation. And this, to a large extent, is acquired with books, especially with those that make one think, that stretch the intelligence.
4. Distinguish the quality of the movie film
The cinema has great power as a means of information, training and entertainment. It is a power that is usually summarized with the expression "the power of images". But cinema is much more than a succession of images.
The cinema is an art, the Seventh Art, and the visual is just one of the elements -perhaps the main one, of course- that shape its artistic potential. Actually, the cinema groups elements of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, theater, philosophy ...
This global approach has led some essayists to talk about cinema as "a shared art", as opposed to the thesis of auteur cinema or the director as a star.These authors defend that a film is always the result of the artistic work more or less independent of a group of very varied professionals.
In this sense, and independently of completely agreeing with the concept of cinema as "shared art", it is already possible to provide a first trip that allows us to assess whether a film is good or bad: the quality of a film depends on the quality of the films. different artistic and technical elements that compose it. From the point of view of the global perspective of cinema, it is clear that a film will be good if, as a whole, it maintains a high degree of quality, more or less similar, in its script, its realization, its photography, its music, its montage, its setting, his wardrobe, his artistic direction ... and also in his background.
5. Discontinue the background treatment of the film
Although it is a very discussed topic, I think that the background treatment that a movie gives to the topics that it deals with It says a lot about its quality, also artistic. For example, the recourse to the low instincts of the viewer, through hyper-realism, naked violence or explicit sex, usually, rather than a sincere conviction, responds to a commercial approach to the film or an inability of the director to achieve the viewer's attention by other means.
Especially extended andn the current cinema is hyperrealism, according to which anything can be shown on the screen, without further artistic or ethical considerations. And any attack against this filmic approach is considered a reactionary attack against freedom of expression. But this is unfair. Many times that hyperrealism or physical and sexual violence on the screen, is a lack of artistic taste or simply a lack of respect for the viewer. Well, in the long run, what he gets is that he becomes insensitive to beauty, to depth of argument, to subtlety and insinuation, accustomed, as it is, to festivals of flesh, blood and easy graces.
Tips for going to the cinema with a critical spirit
1. Read the reviews. Before going to see any movie it can be interesting that you read the criticisms that have been made in publications that you trust. In some media, there is no such criticism but simply publicity.
2. Do not be afraid to go against the current. No need to see what everyone. That a movie is in fashion does not mean it's good.
3. Stay informed. Maybe you can get ahead of your friends, proposing good movies, instead of the fashionable ones that maybe, do not contribute anything. If you like, you will have more prestige. And other times this information will help us argue, with more weight, the reasons why we did not like that movie we just saw.
4. Getting out of a movie because it bores us sovereignly, because it is simply bad or because there is too much violence, aggressiveness, shameless sexuality, not of the "silly genre" but of people who do not want to be manipulated. And then, write an e-mail or a letter to the Spanish distributor or the director, expressing your opinion.
Jerónimo José Martín
