Thoughts: Film Art

When I first started college I believed that I was destined to become a great biologist. Well maybe not great. But at least competent. I thought my future lay in research labs; I imagined countless hours spent bent over a microscope, running gels, growing bacteria, analyzing, understanding, and discovering.

That's not exactly what happened however. After three semesters in a lab I found my enthusiasm for science waning. I couldn't find the motivation to study and earn more than a C, maybe a B-, on material that I easily understood just did not apply myself to. Science was clearly not for me.

At the same time my grades in Organic Chemistry were slipping, my energy and enthusiasm was drifting elsewhere. To film.

My first semester in college I finally took my first film studies course. Intro to Film Studies. I always thought movies were fun and had wanted to take the film studies class my high school had offered. There had just never been enough room between all of the AP classes earning me college credit. So I waited and looking back I'm glad I did.

While that high school class covered the basics of American cinema, your Spielberg and Godfathers and Taxi Drivers, my college Intro to Film delved deeper. Sure we watched the obvious choices like Citizen Kane and Psycho, but there was more. There were directors I had never heard of. Bergman, Goddard, Eisenstein. Whole worlds were opened before me and I loved them all. With so many new movies to watch, new directors to discover, new favorites to acquire, is it a wonder that I stopped caring as much about how exactly the Hydrogen bonds were forming? Or how much bacteria was growing in my cultures?

That class was a revelation for me. I knew by its end that I was at least going to have a minor in film and it didn't take me much longer to figure out that it would be my concentration. And along with all of those films, guiding our discussion through all of the supplemental essays, was one book. A book that sits on my bookshelf even now.

David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson's Film Art. It is arguably THE text book for film studies. Bordwell and Thompson lay a foundation for appreciating cinema as an art form. And they continue to push the limits of film studies. I'm a regular visitor of their website, a regular reader of their blog.

What prompted me to post about them and Film Art is David Bordwell's blog today about the changing face of film criticism and blogging's role in these changes. I've all ready talked about the argument that film criticism is dying here. Bordwell writes his own response to the assertion that the departure of well known print critics as well as online writers signifies the end of criticism.

He also lays out nicely what exactly film criticism is and the difference between different types (i.e. a review vs. a critical essay). For a very well informed, thought out, and educational view of blogging and criticism, check out his blog In Critical Condition.

I also recommend following the links he has in the article which shed further insight into the current situation.

Personally, while I'm sad to see talented writers leave the scene I don't necessarily feel that their departure means that film criticism is dying. I agree with Bordwell's assessment that the web has much to offer film critics. Room for them to develop their writing into longer, more intelligent pieces that can bring a lot more to the table than the current trend of quick blurbs and word vomit that somehow passes for criticism.

Sure there's a lot to read, so much that it's probably not humanely possible to read it all, but as Moviezzz points out over at his blog The Moviezzz Blog, you can always use something like Google Reader and subscribe to RSS feeds (it's something I do and HIGHLY recommend).

So not dying then. Just changing and I don't think that's a bad thing. Which may be sort of an obvious statement, considering what this is and what I'm writing. But there you go.