The Denouement

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu!"

I have no idea why I'm using this lyric from The Sound of Music to start my final blog. Actually, I do. I find this movie to be overly saccharine and very nearly disastrous in nature. So why is the lyric stuck in my craw? Because even a nugget of gold can be found in a mound of shit. Even a bad movie can have something indelible contained within it, even if its only one scene. I don't see that as chance, I see it as the filmmaker got something right, if even for a moment. These moments can be found in many a mediocre film. What they represent, at least for me, is twofold:that the filmmaker should be commended and respected for at least trying to find his/her authentic voice and the filmmaker should also be reprimanded for failing to deliver on the promise, the fecundity, of that one indelible scene. As a moviegoer, I wish to see continuity of vision, not just drips and drabbles. Transcendence can only come by one's full immersion in the director's vision, an intense empathy of the tableaux of emotions and the vicissitudes of the characters' lives painted on the screen. As a moviegoer and critic, I'm doing my part. I'm stripping myself of any artifice and making myself completely emotionally and cognitively "naked"- completely receptive to the film's power through every pore of my being. It is not effortless, it demands commitment and patience and a honed critical acumen. In return for our effort, the filmmaker must reciprocate with equal commitment, equal dilligence.

This is why I started this column-to rally moviegoers out there to realize what they can invest, what they should invest, in their movie-going experiences and what they should demand from the filmmakers. As I stated again and again, cinema is an art form and should be discussed, analyzed and picked apart as such. Good cinema is not shallow and neither is good criticism. We all have the innate ability to demand transcendence and to articulate this demand in the most cogent way possible. And what better rallying cry than an extremely well-written and entertaining blog. I was pleased to find that this blog has reached a few people and has opened their eyes to the vastness, the power, of cinema. If I have opened only one person's eyes to this, then to me, the world on the whole is that much less blind, less naive.

So I urge all out there to realize their potential as critical thinkers and receptors of emotion to start voicing their opinions on films and their inherent faults and/or transcendent moments through either written or verbal exposition. Film must be seen as worthy of debate as the philosophical musings of Kant or the stylistic vagaries of Picasso. Film is the most powerful medium for expression out there and must be respected as such as well as being held accountable for its actions, for the power and influence it yields.

As I now relinquish my seat as movie blog critic, I hope a plethora of others will pick up the quill and continue the good fight to keep art alive and to make sure that it is consistently representative of the human condition, a cogent record of why we keep slogging through life, minute by minute, day by day, year by year...

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu!"