Multiple Perspectives

After watching a film, the most common response when telling a friend about it is four things:

1)    Was the film good or bad?

2)    Who were the actors in the film?

3)    What was the plot?

4)    A specific part of the film that justifies why the film was good or bad.

In most cases, movies are judged by the enjoyment created by the fictional characters and the story. After a while, individuals get use to particular genres of film and will only watch movies that fit that category.

My favorite genres include romantic comedies, documentaries, classics, and action. Personally, I don't usually care for horror or western films. Horror films seem to elicit way too much fear and leave me overly sensitize to things in my environment, while western films seem slow and seem uninteresting in the many shots of scenery or the protagonist riding off in the sunset. Now, however, I look at films from three different perspectives that help me to better appreciate the film separate from the genre it is placed in. 

There is the stylistic perspective: themes behind the plot, certain choices made by the director to better enrich the storyline, camera angles and techniques that perhaps aid in character enhancement, and how the actors themselves project their character. It's the little details that you don't really notice unless you might be intentionally looking for it. For example the lighting in one scene might be different than another, to emphasize the lightness of the mood of the characters or give a more angelic feel to the surrounding. While a darker light might indicate something mysterious to come, perhaps the mood appears heavier and uneasy.

The perspective of intent: what was the reason for making the film, whether to tell a narrative or elicit an emotional response from the audience? Did the film complete its intent therefore the audience could better understand what the director was getting at? If the director's goal was to bring awareness to a particular issue in a documentary, was there enough evidence to show that every individual needs to do his or her part for the greater good? It's not to say that every film has a noble intention of global concerns, but could be simply to bring about laughter and a feeling of happiness when watching the film.

And finally the enjoyment perspective: how pleasing were the images? Were the characters relatable? Did the film elicit any emotional response and was appropriate to the actions of the characters? Did the plot make sense and have a satisfactory conclusion? Sometimes this perspective gets more attention overall than the other two, because there might be times where people just want to know if it is worth taking two hours of their time to watch a film. If not, then the other two perspectives cannot really come into play.