Welcome back to CraveOnline’s Free Film School, my lovely students. It’s good to see you back, learning about the varied and textured world of cinema, most likely while you’re slacking off at work. That you can study so casually instantly is what makes this school way better than anything you’d ever have to pay for.
Last week, I lectured at length about Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, easily one of the best movies ever made. Ozu is a contemplative director to say the least, who uses stillness and silence to tell his stories. I also recently reviewed Richard Linklater’s 1991 classic Slacker, which is a film all about talking, discussion, philosophy, and contemplation. Thanks to these two articles, I find myself in a meditative mood, and will discuss briefly how films can – and often are – used as a conduit for meditation. Indeed, a film may be making you meditate more often than you think.
We tend to think of films in terms of their structure, their story, and how they deliver drama and thrills to our brains and hearts. Films are visual, and as such we primarily think of them as vehicles for action and reaction. For movement. For happenstance. Often, if little of consequence happens in a film, we tend to reject it as boring or “slow” or, at the very worst, self-indulgent on the part of the filmmakers.
I have felt this often. I’m typically pretty aware of my surroundings in a movie, and I’m always aware of how much time is passing, but I have experienced this one-on-one relationship with a movie on many, many occasions. It’s not even necessarily a sign that the film is good. But it does have a hypnotic quality that draws you away from the world.
I argue the following: That fugue state is a form of mild meditation. A movie is essentially pulling your mind away from your body, and meeting you in a non-physical place where you can commune with it. It’s an extraordinary feeling. Any film is capable of giving you this feeling. A good one, a bad one. The experience will be different for each viewer. I cannot recommend any movies that have this quality universally. You have to find them on your own.
Since finding these films can be spotty, and you can’t really plan to achieve the fugue state, using films as meditations would seem to be random. What’s more, it’s hard to achieve a fugue state with a film twice. It’ll usually only work the first time you see it.
I can, however, recommend several films that are actually, actively, intending to be meditations.
