The medium of film literally
consists of “talking” pictures in succession; that is to say, sound and image. Amidst
astounding technological improvements, audiences in the twenty-first century
could not be blamed for losing sight of what the medium actually is. It is easy
to get lost in the “bells and whistles” and miss the power simply in relating
sound and visual images. It is perhaps less forgivable when directors allow
themselves to get lost in the rarified computerized air at the expense of
realizing the potential in relating sound and image. A strong narrative is of
course also essential, and it is easy to find examples in which an orientation
to creating visually astonishing eye-candy comes at the expense of creating a
deeply engaging narrative. Nevertheless, here I want to focus on the power that
lies in relating sound and image, both of which “move” in a motion picture
(after the silent era, of course). In the film, Anatomy of a Fall (2023),
the theory that sound should extenuate image to form a more wholistic unity in
service to narrative meets with a counter-example. At one point in the film,
the loss of an accompanied visual that goes with the sound (to be replaced by
another visual) renders the continuing sound more powerful in triggering
raw emotions. The point being made by the film at that point regards the
viability of close-contact, long-term human relationships, given our species’
innate instinctual urges to be aggressive. After all, our closest relative is
the chimp. It is possible that the “civilized” conception of marriage that
became the norm presumably only after the long hunter-gatherer phase in which
the vast majority of natural selection has occurred is not as congruent with
how our species is “hard-wired” than we might think.
The full essay is at "Anatomy of a Fall."
1. The Gospel of Mark 10:7-8.