Thursday 17 February 2011

A Cinema is a Cave


A cinema is like a cave. The bright screen is the light of the world outside, and its images the many and diverse vistas seen through its mouth.

There is something civilising (one could say the essential character of all art) for a group of Neanderthals staring out.

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Caves and underground passages of any kind can be used in films not just as an impressive setting or as a claustrophobic space to ratchet tensions but as a metaphor for, and exposer of, the hidden fears of characters, their insidious subterranean thoughts (with sewers and catacombs as the corridors of the subconscious). Perhaps we too, in this darkened room, have our (collective) troubles (and joys) projected before us.

The Descent
Mourning the loss of a daughter and a husband

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Batman Begins

"If you make yourself more than just a man, 
if you devote yourself to an ideal,
then you become something else entirely"

"Which is?"

"Legend, Mr Wayne"

It is well known that the person and the idea of Batman is born in a cave. 


In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne decides that he doesn't want to be a spectator any longer. He doesn't want to watch corrupt and criminal elements bring down Gotham.

We see him pass his hand through the waterfall that guards the Batcave's mouth:


This wall of water acts as a silver screen and by going through it Bruce Wayne becomes a "legend". At first he is tentative. Later he launches the 'tumbler' punching through it, becoming an actor, a changer of things and not a bystander, no longer hiding:


His butler Alfred is far more circumspect. He declines to go up to the waterfall:

"Alfred, come up here!"

"I can see everything all right from down here, Sir,
thank you"

He's happy to watch from the cave. When we are sitting in a cinema, watching things we wish we could see in real life, watching others do what we wish we had done, how happy are we to stay hidden? How happy are we to let the fiction calm our restlessness, to inspire us without consequence? How often do we, like Wayne, step out of the protection of the cave and see and do and create in the world beyond?

15 comments:

  1. On the contrary - the cinema is a place of total freedom, like the blackness of space, and the cinema screen simply represents the reflection of light off of a world sitting in front of us. Taking this too literally would mean that the world is a white screen and the sun projects oddly coherent images directionally out into space in defined aspect ratios, but I think that's taking it a bit too far, myself.

    However, following this line of thought, because of a bad cinema experience that his father had (an interaction with the 'world in front of us') Batman chooses to attempt to right the perceived injustices he sees on the screen - he is a studio executive throwing his weight around to alter the art on the screen. It makes sense that he's rich! The butler, meanwhile, is a true cineaste, taking in the world projected in front of him and relishing its poetic flickering, but always at the mercy of the oddly dressed studio executive. Poor butler. Poor cineastes.

    I guess it's open to interpretation, though.

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  2. Jean,

    This is a little fancy on the physical similarities more than anything.

    You can draw all kinds of parallels between cinema and other things - the more spurious and pretentious the better! - and a parallel with a cave and its mouth felt one of the most apt to me regardless of how the physical similarity can be given further meaning.

    As to it being a place of freedom and not entrapment, the point is that the screen is the freedom (the light at the end of the tunnel) rather than the hall itself.

    I like your riff on Batman/Alfred. Makes sense.

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  3. I wouldn’t be surprised if our real lives and reality are in fact being viewed, selectively perhaps, by…others…at the mouth of some…other…cave. But, yeah, caves are a trip in movies. Lean’s PASSAGE TO INDIA makes a defining moment inside a cave. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH features a cave-like tunnel into the human mind.

    Gandalf’s freefall battle with the Balrog takes him, and us, to the very center ocean of the world – the middle of Middle Earth! Hell, within a single favorite of mine a Jedi-in-the-making confronts his fears in one subterranean while his love quarreling pals escape the vices of another (“This is no cave!”). In short, caves are places where some serious shit happens.

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  4. Space Cadet,

    I was going to mention Luke confronting a vision of Darth Vader in a cave (it really does typify the symbolic use of caves in some films) but the piece wasn't primarily about things that happen in caves so I used only one example as illustration

    Isn't there a dramatic encounter in a cave in SHUTTER ISLAND? There the cave is a shelter for the character from the rain as well as a place where sinister hidden 'truths' are revealed.

    "I wouldn’t be surprised if our real lives and reality are in fact being viewed, selectively perhaps, by…others…at the mouth of some…other…cave."

    Perhaps...

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  5. I really appreciate your work here, Stephen. You have an artistic sensibility, and I really admire those who are creative with their film criticism (or simply writing on film). The vulnerability that comes from artistic expression is always present, but the risk-taking is always worth it.

    I've tried my hand at creative writing on film, but it's nowhere near as good as yours. This was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking piece.

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  6. Thanks so much Hans.

    I'm glad that you enjoy what I write here and that you find it of interest. Thanks for your contributions here and on other posts.

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  7. Your cave interpretation is certainly an apt one. People often use Plato's Cave to refer to cinema, but they're just recycling his work. Batman's cave is breaking new mold. I was just playing devil's advocate by flipping the script - and making Batman a studio executive certainly highlights the devil part of the equation. Did you know that some studio allowed a third Transformers film to get made for its hundreds of millions of dollars? Demons are at play, surely. Oh, look at me, I got caught up in my own spin again. Narcissism!

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  8. The Tree-Cave on Dagobah is a perfect example of the cave-as-house-of-illusion idea, a hand-me-down from Plato, and a great metaphor for the whole cinematic experience. "Being John Malkovich" is another great example, Space Cadet, though that's one that pushes the metaphor closer to something like gaming, a medium that is traditionally associated with television, the modern equivalent of the home's hearth, the fire that households sit around and share a communal experience with.

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  9. As a connected idea, I've found myself having numerous dreams in which I go to a movie theater that is reached by descending a flight of stairs, or down a gradual incline. For some reason, my sleeping mind recognizes a movie theater as an underground location. Perhaps the same is true of all of us, on a collective unconscious scale...

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  10. Jean,

    I'm vaguely familiar with PLATO'S CAVE. I'll be sure to read it soon.

    "Did you know that some studio allowed a third Transformers film to get made for its hundreds of millions of dollars? Demons are at play, surely."

    Haha!

    Thanks Jean.

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  11. Bob,

    Very interesting that you push the analogy into the living room with The TV as both fire and mouth of the cave.

    "For some reason, my sleeping mind recognizes a movie theater as an underground location. Perhaps the same is true of all of us, on a collective unconscious scale..."

    Perhaps. I wonder if you have always gone downstairs to watch films at your local cinema. I wonder too whether most cinema-goers have to descend or ascend to their film experience.

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  12. It's a mix, Stephen. A couple of the art-house theaters around me have inclines leading down, but no stairways. Meanwhile, nearly all the mainstream theaters by me now employ stadium seating, meaning I wind up walking UP an incline to the theater, and then UP stairs to choose a seat. In fact, if anything most of the movie theaters I've gone to in my life have included stairs and ramps leading up, instead of down. Furthermore, to make things even more perplexing, in the dreams where I'm descending into these underground cinemas, I'm always going to see a big blockbuster release, like "The Phantom Menace" or "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", rather than an art-house feature. But then, maybe that's the message of the dream-- by and large, I don't see any difference.

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  13. In the nearest cinema to me you go up and then up stairs to the seats. I've always liked the American word 'bleachers' for these tiered stands - odd word.

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  14. Ah, Stephen, another fascinating concept and metaphorical connection. I am also prodded here to think of specific "cave" sequences in the cinema, and right off the bat I think of the one in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," where Injun Joe (Victor Jory) menaces Tom and Becky in the cave. Also, the celebrated horror film "The Descent" was shot in the claustrophobic confines of a cave, and then there's the cherished "Journey to the Center of the Earth." That may not exactly be the focus of this piece, but I thought I'd offer that embellishment.

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  15. Thanks Sam.

    "...and then there's the cherished "Journey to the Center of the Earth." That may not exactly be the focus of this piece, but I thought I'd offer that embellishment."

    I always enjoyed that book. It's exciting instead of travelling up or away to explore what's under your feet. It also felt like this was a one-off exploration, that the world wouldn't follow - as opposed to going to the moon or circumnavigating the globe.

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