SCFZ Blasphemies

[St. Gloede]

i think anyone using the phrase "cinematic language" is misusing the word "language".

Only if we are being extremely literal.

Cinema is a form of expression, text, etc. you use it to "speak", edits, shots down to blocking, cinematography, etc. are your words and compose your text.

Your objection may rest upon the fact that there is no "language council" like most countries have, and that as such there are no formal rules per language - but we can still look at cinematic conventions, norms per genre, country, type, etc. and as such speak of the language of horror films. Most conventional films build on a more established language, with easily understood text, while more creative works play with cinematic language in a different way.

By cinematic language, I am broadly referring to all the tools a filmmaker has, all the elements that are not strictly narrative, i.e. the text that is not text. The way a film is told, not the way it is written.

[nrh]

I don't think disliking Sholay is really much of a problem for anyone here, I mean I'm sure some people like it well enough, I thought it was fine, but not great or anything myself

yeah i like sholay well enough but i wouldn't say it's in my top 5 indian movies of 1975, or the best dharmendra/amitabh starrer of the year (that's chupke chupke) or the best salim/javed scripted movie of the year (that's deewar). and i like ramesh sippy's earlier seeta aur geeta much better, and his later shakti and saagar.

but i definitely don't think it's an incompetent movie. and sippy definitely knows how to block action! but here there is a kind of theatrical frontal quality to how things are staged that can seem kind of odd, i guess. one way to put the film in perspective is that every indian kid i've talked to from a certain generation owned the soundtrack, but not the soundtrack of the songs, just a record with the best dialogues.

it's also worth noting that sholay was not critical or commercial success on initial release. if you were looking for american film parallel you might go to star wars (the first movie) before anything else.

[St. Gloede]

Interesting, and good to know. Dialogue is obviously one thing that can not be translated properly. I am surprised it built up its momentum after its release in such a way. Quite impressive.

[flip]

Only if we are being extremely literal.

Cinema is a form of expression, text, etc. you use it to "speak", edits, shots down to blocking, cinematography, etc. are your words and compose your text.

Your objection may rest upon the fact that there is no "language council" like most countries have, and that as such there are no formal rules per language - but we can still look at cinematic conventions, norms per genre, country, type, etc. and as such speak of the language of horror films. Most conventional films build on a more established language, with easily understood text, while more creative works play with cinematic language in a different way.

By cinematic language, I am broadly referring to all the tools a filmmaker has, all the elements that are not strictly narrative, i.e. the text that is not text. The way a film is told, not the way it is written.

No, it has nothing to do with any "language council". It seems to me that if you don't think cinema is "literally" a language, there isn't much point in trying to justify that it is one. But cinema doesn't have most of the important characteristics of a language. If, as you're doing, you remove elements that are "strictly narrative" from cinema, there is no shared understanding between speaker and listener of the meaning of, say, certain editing structures or blocking decisions. That shared understanding is the basis of linguistic communication. Nor is cinematic "language", as I'm taking you to mean it, translatable to other languages. Nor is there any grammar to "blocking, cinematography, etc" that makes some 'sentences' meaningful and others nonsensical. There are conventions of course, but conventions alone don't make something a language; if they did, then the playbook for a football team would constitute a language.

This all seems important to me, because I think if someone approaches film as if it is speaking in its own "cinematic language", taken somewhat literally, then they risk missing what is (for me, at least) essential about film, and music and other art - that it conveys what it conveys non-linguistically.

[St. Gloede]

Well, of course, it is figurative language - that is to say, my description/usage of the term: "cinematic language" is figurative, and meant to solely allude to the elements described as "form", encompassing the formatic choices made/how they use the medium.

I will have to disagree on your point that "here is no shared understanding between speaker and listener of the meaning of, say, certain editing structures or blocking decisions", as at least in conventional cinema this is not true. People have been set up to form their expectations precisely from the way the formatic elements are established - now, it may be nitpicking/too specific to say that the blocking of X scene has to be understood in X way - but the same could be said for Y description/paragraph in Y book.

And clearly, as we are both speaking in what is an established language, and are still talking past each other (and I may just be adding fire onto the confusion with the above paragraph) the deficiencies seem quite shared.

But to be clear, I don't look at cinema as a language, but referring to and dissecting formatic decisions through the lense/methaphor of a writer/a writer's tools, seems fairly apt, as, when we compare the two mediums, this serves the same functional purpose. It is clearly not the same, they are different mediums, but in terms of evoking emotions when describing a specific scene, communicate the atmosphere, point of reference, emotion, action, take-aways, etc. for the reader/viewer, they are unmistakenly serving the same purpose and can be understood/compared in such a way.

[josiahmorgan11]

The issue then being, St. Gloede, that you're viewing Bollywood cinema through cultural assumptions about the 'cinematic language' that are founded outside of the home of Bollywood, no?

[St. Gloede]

Nope.

How is this still going on?

Seriously, this is strange.

As clarified: Cinematic language = Use of cinematic tools. My stance: I don't think x classics are doing much/anything special with the cinematic medium, they are creating cinematic experiences with a usage of technical tools/decisions that I do not find impressive, and to go slightly further, that I find mediocre. And as X classics are among the most critically acclaimed Bollywood films I made this blasphemy against classic Bollywood (which was also specified in the same post).