What are films for?
I wrote an essay on art some years back, which asked what art is. We can often find out what something is by looking at what it does. So what does art do? Tough one, right?
We can say that while art has no useful function like, say, a wheel or a light bulb, it’s value is that it reflects the human condition and character. In that, it can clarify what it means to be human, and (more importantly, perhaps) show us what human are capable of.
Capable of? I mean the worst and the best of what people do. The past and the future. The origins and potential. Evil is a shadow of the past, and goodness a harbinger of the future.
Because the future must be kind, or be nothing.
But this is getting somewhat hifalutin. So let’s pull this back to films. Odeon films.
Popcorn movies that we watch because we want to be entertained.
Even popcorn films can tell us about the very worst and the best of us. In the dramatic structure of most films, someone gets a problem that they can’t solve initially. Through the acquisition of allies and new strengths/talents within them, and perhaps wisdom, they become able to meet the challenge they have been set, and triumph. Is real life like that? Not really.