The meaning of movies is actually unique to each individual, just like in a biography. We do not expect everyone to have the same feelings after watching the same movie. This encompasses at least two levels: one’s own experiences and one’s perception of the real world. The former enables people to resonate with various elements in the movie, thereby understanding and experiencing the implicit content within it; while the latter requires certain personal abilities, whether it be the ability to observe small details in life or a certain level of knowledge and learning. Only then can people grasp the metaphors hidden by the director beyond the actions, dialogues, expressions, and scenes.
Of course, learning various methods of movie analysis is very important. These methods use more structured “formulas” to help people directly convert the appearance of the movie into the meaning of the movie. This might enable people to have the same feelings after watching a movie, but as mentioned earlier, people are truly different from each other, which means that different people will have different feelings after watching a movie, and each movie has a different meaning for each individual.
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People often say that watching movies is a feast for both the eyes and the ears. This is indeed true. Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener pointed out that the screen interacts with the audience in specific ways. Compared to “watching movies”, we are more like experiencing the movie with our bodies. Take, for example, the way horror movies present terrifying effects. First, such movies usually use dim and flashing lights to stimulate the audience’s vision, conveying unstable and unsafe signals. Secondly, these movies involve close-ups of bloody and terrifying scenes, to some extent simulating the first-person perspective, allowing the audience to immerse themselves more deeply into the scene and further spiral into the terrifying atmosphere. Finally, to create a terrifying atmosphere, sharp sounds are also indispensable. Sometimes some movies use instruments with poor sound quality in the music, or use dissonant chords in the composition to highlight the sense of terror. And sometimes some movies focus the sound only on certain objects in a quiet environment, using the method of highlighting contrasts to make the audience feel a strong sense of instability. In the end, movies are the sum of art that acts on various organs.
