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Friday 26 January 2018

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in ...



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 the function. The ‘Motion Picture Frame’, however , can be differentiated by its fluidity. Not only does the frame move about freely in space, content within a frame can & does move.  All this, in ‘Cinema’ doesn’t happen, it has to be organized; orchestrated with a number of other elements that constitute ‘Film Form’. We shall come to them while correlating Cinema with ‘Western Classical Music’ and that shall be last of all in this unfolding narrative; such is language that we are using here. Cinema, incidentally, shares this ‘linear unfolding’ in time with literature even if you go somersaulting into ‘flash-backs’ , ‘dreams’ or ‘streams of Consciousness’….for the 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 for it is inherent in Cinema Practice, it can not 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. 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 the marble mono block; somewhat like the cave temples of India, or alternatively, one can construct brick by brick (read: shot by shot) a structure.  Which, according to me, if pregnant with emotion shall constitute 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, like some ozone rich breathing  material, engulfs the entire auditorium, raising en-mass, aesthetizing audience, saturating each individual, man, woman or child alike with emotion or what we call ‘Rasa’. A bit like moments of glory in  American soccer game, live in a stadium! …only richer, full spectrum, deeper, subtler, more meaningful, beautiful, perhaps  pointing to a sliver of the Truth.

So, here is a brief notional description of what I shall know as ‘Cinematic Object’. There is more to be said around the seven Muses; however, not now.

Rahatavalokit
Cacareadings#537