The Cinema Within
4 stars (out of 4)
Director: Chad Freidrichs
Available: For streaming on Amazon, Apple TV and Kanopy
Anyone who enjoys dissecting the technical aspects of film should add The Cinema Within to their viewing list. The new documentary takes a fascinating look at cinematic editing, using the broadest of all questions: Why does it work?
For those who have grown up watching movies, TV shows and short videos, this query may seem nonsensical, but – as the film rapidly demonstrates – it is not. It was never a given that humans would logically connect one cinematic sequence to the next, thinking of them as a story instead of random clips. In fact, The Cinema Within spends significant time demonstrating that reactions to cuts where one scene is replaced by a new perspective might have been met with a feeling of seasickness. Imagine, for instance, walking down the street and having your view shifted 180 degrees without warning. Humans don’t experience shifts like this in nature, but they are commonplace in film editing, and we didn’t know how our brains would react until the first movies were made.
Fortunately for all who love cinema, humans did comprehend that visual edits are nothing more than a storytelling shorthand allowing us to fill gaps and see the same story from different perspectives. The Cinema Within goes into significant detail explaining a variety of basic editing techniques and attempts to explain both why they are used and why they work. Director and film educator Chad Freidrichs achieves this with many fascinating interviews, including perspectives from neuroscientist Jeff Zachs, psychologist Tim J. Smith, cinema historian David Bordwell, and renowned film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The English Patient).
Particularly fascinating is Freidrichs’s breakdown of a study by researcher Sermin Ildirar who traveled to rural Turkey to show movies to people who had never experienced them. Her data is presented through personal interviews, archival video of her experiments, and narration about the results. It is fascinating and demonstrates that the human mind is good at making some connections, but poor at others. For instance, she found that showing a sequence with a single person looking right, then cutting to another (similarly framed) person looking left would not immediately allow viewers to ascertain that the subjects were interacting. But adding conversational dialogue made the connection, even with unchanged visuals. In simple terms, she showed that our minds always seek contextual clues when connecting cinematic images. Give enough clues, and the story is told in the manner an editor hopes. Eliminate too many clues, and there is confusion.
Freidrichs not only presents interviews and data about why edits work, he purposefully demonstrates varied techniques in a manner that helps viewers understand. For instance, there is a scene where three different performers reenact Walter Murch at work. One actor serves as his face and voice. Another is shown only through closeups of his hand manipulating equipment. Another is shown from behind, looking at a screen. But when clips of the three different performers are carefully edited together, the viewer gets the sense that only one man (Murch) is present, and he is more fully fleshed out than if presented from a single angle.
Most serious film lovers have likely spent time thinking about why movies work. This tendency is one thing that sets critics and scholars apart from the average moviegoer. In fact, some artists complain that the more they learn about a given form, the harder it becomes to simply enjoy because they are always dissecting the craft rather than immersing themselves in the art.
Certainly, The Cinema Within will make viewers think more about the editing techniques on display, but I think the danger of movies being ruined is low. When a film is truly great, it can magically transport even the most well-trained scholar out of the technical mindset and into the world on screen, just as reading can transport a person, despite a paragraph being nothing more than carefully arranged letters and symbols.
Author Bio:
Forrest Hartman is Highbrow Magazine’s chief film critic.
For Highbrow Magazine