Why Cinema is the Pinnacle of Human Expression

Of all the things that preoccupy my interests, cinema will always reign as my biggest passion. Is it the most important of all topics? Is it valuable enough to justify the large-scale means in production? As the Chauvet Paintings have proven, art is paramount to humanity. It's always been a window into how people lived in their time, and coped with the changing attitudes and mores of our collective narrative unfolding. Cinema, at its finest, is the fusion of all arts coaxed and shaped into a time frame (the most vital of all life forces) to inspire empathy and provoke thoughts in several frames per second.

Like many mid-eighties children, I was raised with the populist pleasures of an archaeologist sprinting from a boulder, a galaxy far far away, the Austrian cyborg bent on murder, the butchered cop re-Christened as a robot avenger. The turning point from the passive joys of those movies to the transcendental high of intricate, mature cinema came from those creator's mentor of popular entertainment from Alfred Hitchcock and his down-and-dirty horror show Psycho. The smeary VHS dub I sneaked into my room while home sick played to my six-year-old eyes, and a different person was born once the tape ejected.

Psycho is still cherished by me today. It touches, with its percussive b-movie sophistication, the crossroads between a classic Hollywood thriller sensibility and the removal of the safety net that foreshadows 20th Century culture's loss of innocence that would prepare us for the Manson Family. The movie rewired my mind in its startling images, and taught a resonant lesson in the evil potential that lurks underneath the facade of normalcy. The cross-dressing and shift in perspectives from a thief on the run to a disturbed mama's boy also showed the possibilities of the form. I'd only known the actors, but I knew after Psycho that there was more to a movie than its actors reciting lines. There was a vision that was created by someone who uses images to create visceral meaning.

From Edison's Black Maria to the green screens of today, the moving image documents the humanistic life force of the time and place it captures. Actors and people live on, and their collaborations for a unified vision still breathe to each new generation of spectators. The images came first, then the sound. But all throughout, the need to harness life in pictures to be shared with loved ones, or the intimacy of one person to the images, that can inspire or reinforce our solitary place in the world. Everything from music, paintings, photography, literature, and theater are potentially woven together to create profound meaning. That fusion at its height can express intangible emotions that are only, with the unique element of sculpted time involved, comparable to a life lived.

Loftiness aside, movies can be fun. The good ones trickle in people's hearts and minds long after leaving the theatre and are reminisced in our psyche or with good company. Even the crappy misfires can inspire laughs or at least remind people of their tastes through lively revulsion. Movies can hold a mirror to an audience's soul or unto itself in a clever breakdown of its aesthetics. It's been an artistic medium for over one hundred years, and the possibilities are still boundless because they find their vitality reflecting any period or place. At its best, it presents nothing less than the multifaceted depths of the human experience.