What's It Like to Watch a Movie Properly for the First Time
This article was originally posted to Medium on April 15, 2022 (https://medium.com/non-monetized-together/what-its-like-to-watch-a-movie-properly-for-the-first-time-53a6bb491c4f?source=friends_link&sk=f2539908ed60b0d7eacfc046c4951902)
#Escapism #NewExperience #Movie #Film
How many differences are there between a movie and a dream? Unlike a dream, a movie can be watched multiple times, it can be viewed by more than one person, it can make money, and it is made by a team of workers. For much of my life, there was another difference — dreams are fantasy words you can travel to.
How couldn’t have I considered that movies could fulfill the same role? Aren’t films often discussed in a way that makes this obvious? Well, I was aware of terms like “escapism” and “immersivity,” but I slightly misinterpreted the meaning of these words, and I never thought of those topics enough to consider other possible interpretations of them.
When people would mention a movie as a source of escapism, I thought they meant that the movie was something that makes you forget about the hustle and grind of everyday life, but in the sense that they are just images on a screen that you shift your attention toward, not an entire fictional journey that you’re invited on. As for “immersivity,” I thought that was only a thing that a great movie manages to achieve occasionally, not the purpose of movies in the first place.
Anyways, I was recently feeling urges for escapism, and I realized that shifting into a film’s universe could satisfy them. So yesterday, I sat down to watch the movie Bowfinger, and now I am presenting a blog post about what it is like to properly watch a movie for the first time.
Microsoft Office stock image
I was expecting to find that this new approach to entertainment would make the quality of the movie matter a lot more. If I start viewing movies as an alternate world to inhabit, a movie’s flaws wouldn’t just be missed opportunities, it would be an entire alternative universe that’s not up to my standards. But I realized that since it’s a comedy, the Bowfinger experience was slightly complicated.
Before I had my revelation towards the film-watching experience, narrative comedy films were about laughs first, plot second, and characters third. Everything else was irrelevant. However, when I was watching Bowfinger, I was suddenly putting less effort into laughing and more effort into escapism. Yet instead of weakening the humor in the move, it produced a comedy experience that was, for me, fresh and exciting.
I started viewing the jokes more as sources of entertainment than that of comedic effect. A lot of this had to do with the ridiculous world the movie finds itself in. Since I found myself deep in this world, the comedic material put me in an overwhelmed state of disbelief, but in a good way. It was a similar experience as watching crazy viral videos that seem real (unless I’m doing that the wrong way too). Many online videos blow up because of the contrast between their sense of authenticity and the unusual events depicted in them. The characters and events in Bowfinger may not look realistic on paper, but I was into the movie enough that it felt real.
Microsoft Office stock image
Paradoxically, I simultaneously knew that the film not actually real, so unlike viral videos, I didn’t have to worry about any real-life consequences that might arise from such absurdity. This movie made me not want to watch a documentary or any other sort of factual film/video production again. I’m exaggerating a bit, but it’s initially hard to see the purpose of a documentary when you are already living real-life and there are fine-tuned bizarre alternative universes available in fiction movies.
Perhaps, though, having real people in a documentary can be a strength? Yes, the characters in Bowfinger were pretty wacky, but that meant I didn’t empathize with them individually as much. I could connect with them when the group of characters were experiencing something collectively, and that was because I made myself feel like I was in the group. But there’s just something about the way film characters behave, the way they time their movements and dialogue, the way they phrase their words, and the way they express themselves that is just different than real people. And I am not just talking about Bowfinger. A lot of movies have characters like that.
Since I was watching the movie in a different way than usual, this was jarring at first, but I got used to it quickly. This didn’t mean I could connect fully with the characters though. While the lack of empathy succeeded as a barrier to be lifted off my shoulders, there can be times when having relatable characters can make the movie feel like even more of an immersive experience. This wouldn’t be appropriate in a movie with a premise and scenes as unreal as Bowfinger’s, but it would be for documentaries. Once you put that honesty through post-production, real life can become an escape too.
But I’m talking about Bowfinger, not a documentary. This silly movie contributed to a rarely-catalogued experience — watching a movie correctly for the first time. Overall, it was a lot more fun than my usual detached method of film-viewing, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Whatever tone a movie takes, it becomes a lot more purposeful when you as a viewer are so fully involved. I’ll add that it makes feature length a lot more bearable as well. I hope this blog post is useful for people who have questions about the experience of watching a movie for the first time. Yes, Bowfinger was not the first movie I saw, but it was still a new experience for me.
I’m giving a shoutout to Vincent Van Patten for “When We Open Our Hearts, the World Begins to Mend.”