Recently, when I was staying for a weekend in Champaign, Illinois, I took a walk in the downtown area and saw a statue of famed film critic Roger Ebert outside an old-school movie theatre. Since I consider Roger Ebert to be a hero of mine, I took a few minutes of admiring and taking pictures with the statue before reading the accompanying plaque. One of the most interesting things that the plaque talked about was Ebert’s belief that empathy is “the most essential quality of civilization” and that movies are a machine that generates empathy by letting viewers “understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears…[and helping] us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.”
As someone who’s currently going to college for film, this made absolute perfect sense. As with most forms of storytelling, films put the viewer in the skin and mind of the protagonist and force them to understand their feelings and struggles and insecurities. However, I believe that what makes film different and even more special than reading a novel or any written text is being able to see real humans on a screen in real places doing (some of the time) real situations. Whether literally or metaphorically, film serves as a mirror to our society.
And one of the great things about living in Chicago is that there are a myriad of arthouse movie theaters where one can see serious independent films that are based in reality and have deep, significant meanings to them. Because while films like Transformers 7 and Ice Age 15 and Captain America 6 can be fun diversions for some people, great films can not only be an enjoyable experience but can also go deeper, and (quite literally) heal people.
For example, I decided to visit Chicago for a day during my sophomore year of high school, and while I was there I went to see a film called The Perks of Being a Wallflower at a local arthouse movie theatre. Not being too far removed from my freshman year, I was immediately struck by how much I related to Charlie, the main character of the film, and the experiences during his freshman year that the film depicts. Similar to him, I was taken under the wing by a few upperclassmen and introduced to theatre and other activities. I had a one-off “relationship” with an upperclassman girl that didn’t exactly end well. And I had parents who were incredibly supportive of me through all of that.
But the most cathartic part of viewing that film, for me, was a sequence that occurs in the last third of the film, in which Charlie has a nearly suicidal meltdown at his house, complete with flashbacks to traumatic memories earlier in his youth, many of which have been repressed. Having had similar meltdowns when I was younger that I was ashamed to admit I was having, seeing it portrayed on film so honestly and realistically was incredibly emotional for me. It still remains the most emotional experience I've ever had watching a movie in the theatre, and it not only reminded me that I wasn't alone in struggling with depression or bad thoughts, but it gave me a newfound desire to write films based on personal experience that can hopefully connect with other people who feel the same way and remind them that they are not alone.
That's not to say that there aren't any big-budget studio films that can also heal people. For example, there was a film that I saw at a film festival back in May called Life, Animated. It’s a documentary (perhaps as literal as film can get to being a mirror for society) about a young man named Owen Suskind who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Not knowing how to handle this, Owen’s parents began showing him classic animated Disney movies, only to discover that these movies were allowing him to identify his emotions and put them into words. The classic life lessons expressed in many of those films, including Bambi, Dumbo, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid are huge in allowing Owen to deal with hard situations.
It’s an odd story, but it’s a powerful one that speaks volumes about the power that not just film, but any art form can have on a person’s life. Watching him learn to read by reading the end-credits of Disney film is both parts adorable and enlightening, and watching him have to deal with his girlfriend breaking up with him is heartbreaking. So while Disney films might have taught him some unrealistic lessons (i.e., the happily-ever-after love story ending that accompanies many Disney films), the positive impact of them on his life outweighs the negative by a lot.
While it's great when a big-budget studio film comes out and has that kind of healing power on people (the classic Disney films, or even more recent Disney films like Inside Out), overall, the films that I feel are the most likely to spread empathy throughout society and serve as the necessary mirror to it are films like Perks of Being a Wallflower. These are films that deal with real-world emotions and struggle and force people to understand those struggles. And as long as I am able to make films of any kind, these are the films that I intend to make. Because if I can make at least one person feel like they're not alone, and at least one person empathize with struggles that I go through, I will consider that an amazing accomplishment.
