MOVIES ARE AN IMITATION IN DRAMATIC FORM

By David Beilstein

TODAY, I have posted some more from sections of my writings on screenwriting and movies. In this piece, I begin to lay out a proper understanding of what movies are, and conversely, what they are not.

Still to come, will be more interaction with Christian faith and the filmmaker.

Enjoy.

What are movies

really about?

“Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing

and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes of imitation.”

-Aristotle, Poetics

Imitation, for starters.

Movies are about the imitation of human experience, and human life in all its elaborations, good and bad - couched in dramatic conflict. The form, cinema, must imitate the temporal nature of human experience, its warring against mortality; the effect of time and humanity’s experience of time within human conflict.

The passage and effect of time exudes sadness in it and our relation to it, regardless of ontological and epistemological opinions. The notion that things will never be the same and are somehow becoming and ending is sad to us and experienced by all of us unless death comes in infancy. Note the plethora of historical circumstances in which a man who has accomplished the world’s most high and lofty peaks; wealth, sex, fame - and still longs for the seas of days gone by even if this means when he, himself, had nothing. "Citizen Kane" is probably the greatest “imitation” of this truism in filmic history. Charles Foster Kane, who has gained the entire world, lays close to death in his mansion but longs for Rosebud, a childhood sled - the tragic metaphor representing the closest longings of his essence as a human being. Certainly these stories have often been expressed in sappy and sentimental expressions, but the spirit of the story is true.

A dramatic representative imitation of humanities’ complexities in dramatic conflict through a uniquely tuned voice is the starting point to drama. Period. If one is to keep this firmly in the privacy of the mind while writing, it will create an edifice if you will, against confusion - against unnecessary postulations finding room to burrow into writing/scriptwriting.

Since this has become somewhat of a manifesto of sorts, I will have to express thoughts and conclusions already spoken in the past and risk being tedious. But this is a “recording” of my own ideas and reflections concerning the art of movies, scriptwriting, and literary themes. Clarity is important, thus some things will have to be rewritten. My subject concerning cinema and artists who are confessing Christians appears strained only because of misperceptions of what movies are and are not. Within my stated definition of movies/cinema/film, it must be maintained movies must - and can only - work on an imitative, dramatic, level alone. From there, critical analysis must be based on the fundamental truth “reported” in the dramatic event depicted. What is the integrity of the piece of drama in question? 

This is true for mainstream fare as well as more artistic forms of filmmaking. I must postulate any scene or “excess” into dramatic creations, which seeks to add to the definition of movies stated above, is bound to loose upon the writer and viewer ideals not able to be reached. While certain didactic opinions about the world we live in may relate or not relate to the audience, whatever does relate will mostly be on a subjective level. This does not overwhelm the absolute rationalism of objective truth - God forbid! - but it does give great weight to the notion that similar to a great many things in this life, movies are not about all things.

Movies, films - may be about all things dramatic - but they cannot wade into the waters of confession, piety, and practise - in a word, confessionalism, either of ideological insight or religious illumination. This is what the Documentary film was developed to do. Certainly characters can experience these elements of life, indeed must, because they are objective elements of human experience. Characters, depending on the story, genre, et cetera, should experience all the things real people experience in order they be real. But these elements of characters experience, are not rooted in confessionalism, but in imitation, or narrative storytelling. The viewer of a movie does not presume the beliefs of the characters are true, objectively, but are central to the unfolding of character motivations, thus the narrative of the story. Thus, an adulterous character is in the throes of adultery because that will mean something further down the narrative framework of the film. Picture first, in a movie scene, a man shouldering out of his house, nesting in the back of the house where he can see the road. He lights up a cigarette. Minutes later, this man sees his beautiful wife’s car pull into the driveway. He stomps out the cigarette, smells himself, goes to the driveway, where he helps his wife unpack the car.

Is this scene about smoking - about the promotion of cigarettes? No, it is about a man hiding something from his wife. Something, then, that will figure centrally into the plot of the movie, and something of the man’s character. Character is action in movies, and action is character. Now, this scene could be comedic or serious, it does not matter. But what does matter is, movies use universal language - a language steeped in universal human experience - to move the story ahead frame-by-frame, scene-by-scene. Our above scene is about a marriage in some form of an inability of communication. And so, the beliefs and actions of characters in movies, are for the story, not an argument for the audience, pushing them to some kind of apologetical, epistemological self-consciousness.

There is something to be said for David Mamet’s statement, 'Plays are not about nice people.'