The Cinematic Object

 The Cinematic Object

Shall we say, in Cinema we are stuck with a ‘frame’ just as humans are stuck with marriage? If you wish to give form to content, you have to frame it.  A frame is something Cinema shares with Painting and Photography. With the help of a frame, we can either include or exclude, depending upon whichever way one would like to look at this function. The ‘Motion Picture Frame’, however, can be differentiated by its fluidity. Not only does motion picture frame move about freely in space, content within a frame can & does move.  This, in ‘Cinema’ doesn’t happen, it has to be organized; orchestrated with a number of other elements that constitute ‘Film Form’; about which, later. We shall come to some of these concepts while correlating Cinema with ‘Western Classical Music’ and that shall be last of all in this narrative; such is language & that is what we are using here. Cinema, incidentally, shares this ‘linear unfolding’ in time with literature even if you go somersaulting into ‘flash-backs’ , ‘dreams’ & ‘streams of Consciousness’….for that duration it still unfolds forward & linear. The viewer, just as a reader of lingual texts, however, is free to jump backwards and forwards at will within unfolded narrative thus far. (…sub-text: a touch of Destiny? Memory..? )

So what is ‘Cinematic Object’?  Perhaps an idea shall emerge. Perhaps it is something that can only be indicated, it is so inherent in Cinema Practice it cannot be articulated outside of it. Yet a very clear indication will be given as reward for patience, just as ‘mise-en-scene’ brings about ‘The Cinematic Icon’ for anybody to look, listen & experience extra dimensions. Here is something, this ‘iconicity’ I feel, Cinema shares with Sculpture as well as ‘Architecture’ where one can move around an ‘object’, live in it and even get lost.   

Apart from this business of the ‘Iconic’; that it stands alone in time & three dimensional space; Cinematic Articulation shares structural affinities with Sculpture & Architecture.  To create a Cinematic object one can use either one of two methods. One can ‘chip away’ to reveal beauty / Goddess within a marble mono block; somewhat like cave temples of India, alternatively, one can construct brick by brick (read: shot by shot) a structure which, according to me, if pregnant with emotion shall constitute The Cinematic Object.

The ‘Sound’, in collusion with perspective & montage is responsible for creation of ‘Virtual space’ in fourth dimension, where it is possible for viewers to transcend limitations of two dimensional frame… very much like the enlightened one who enjoys boundless love, beyond confines of marriage, me & mine! This is a state when Cinema arising from behind the screen, in a dark auditorium, like some ozone rich aroma, engulfs the entire audience, raising en-mass, aesthetizing, saturating each individual man, woman & child with emotion or what we call ‘Rasa’. A bit like moments of glory in American soccer game, live on a stadium! …only richer, fuller spectrum, deeper, subtler, more meaningful, very beautiful, perhaps  pointing to a sliver of the Truth.

So, here is a brief notional description of what I shall know as ‘Cinematic Object’. We shall practice & we shall learn by problem solving, but first of all we must “Create Our Problem”..! There is more to be said around seven Muses; not now.

Rahatavalokit

Cacareadings#537