The Essence of Celluloid

I am sick and tired of people who watch movies and then they'll say, "Ok, that guy jumped from a cliff, onto the ledge underneath, thats believable. He misses that ledge, thats believable too. But then he lands on a tree, and then it so happens that there is a cave opening in front of that tree. Now hows that possible?"

I am sick and tired of such people. Its not that I am saying "look dude, its a movie, just watch whatever they show, and if you cant keep shut, just take off and go and dig yourself a hole". Though let it not be mistaken, I would say that if I could.

But there's a deeper reason in my humble opinion than "its just a movie" If a person jumps from a cliff to escape whatever predicament he finds himself in, there are hundreds of possibilities of how the next few seconds will pass. At the point when he takes off, he can pass through any point on his way down, there is always a finite possibility. But if he went straight on, would you care to make a movie about that? Would you tell a story that goes like "He jumped from the cliff, and fell straight on down, and smashed to smithereens on the hard rocks below, and then slowly the vultures swooped down one by one, and the wolves started howling. Next morning, they found just the bones"

Poetic maybe,but not a story worth telling. No, Out of those hundreds of possibilities, the one that seems the most outlandish, is the one thats worth telling, Its outlandish , so its worth telling.
There is this new practice among film makers to make movies about "nothing"
no climax, no nothing, just plain life taking its least action path, no deviations, just plain , anticlimactic as life alone can be, no shocks, and then the titles come up, and people say " oh thats it? what a great art film"

Now with all due respect to these "filmmakers", they miss the whole point of telling stories, of making movies. A movie is a temporary suspension from reality. I dont need to watch a movie to know what'll happen 99 times out of hundred. I see it everyday. Artistic license is not a freedom, its a constraint that all artists have to obey in order to earn the right to be called artists. Otherwise there is no difference between art and pornography. If there were cameras 2000 years ago, then I am sure Jesus would be considerably less popular than hes now. People dont want reality. People want a representation of reality, reality seen through bottle, distorted pleasantly out of shape. That is the essence of a good story

So my advice to all cynics who manage to find something wrong with every movie, go out onto the streets, maybe you'll enjoy what you see out there