Can Cinema be poetry?

[waltzingmatilda]

Isn't the purpose of poetry to obtain immobility? and by continuing a narrative one isn't doing so. Is this at all logical? I can't think of a film that doesn't do such, although I think Godard may attempt it. Maybe I'm approaching this from the wrong angle, just something that's been on my mind.

[Capo]

Are "poetry" and "poetic" the same thing?

I'm far too deeply involved with my own preoccupations right now (more on that to come) to even consider this question, though.

[RNL]

I'm surprised at the matter-of-fact question and response here, because considering this even momentarily sends me in a tailspin down the rabbit hole.

I feel the term has to be defined first.

On the cover of my Nostalgia DVD there's a quote from the Financial Times: "Spectacular... astonishing... the nearest to poetry that cinema can ever aspire."

Why poetry? (And why should cinema aspire to a state of poetry?)

I know there's a tendency to compare cinema to the older and arguably more esteemed arts (painting, literature, theatre), but surely the poetry comparison is figurative. Calling a film "poetic" or "lyrical" is only an attempt to communiacte their figurative (and context-dependent, of course) connotations (of what precisely?).

Can cinema be poetry? Literally? No, not if poetry is necessarily the written or spoken word (though poetry can be read, written or spoken within a film and be seen or heard by the audience). Nor does it seem sensible to me to gravitate immediately toward so-called "non-narrative" movies (can such a thing exist?), since an enormous amount of poetry tells stories (and indeed, quite a bit of prose-fiction does not (also there's an important distinction between prose-poetry and verse-poetry that should be recognised, which creates further problems of definition)). I believe Renoir, Cocteau and Svankmajer have all described themselves as "poets" first and foremost. Svankmajer, on his attitude toward being a writer (of what we would generally call "poems"), sculptor, painter, object-maker, animator and filmmaker, said: "I am a poet. There is only one poetry; the tools are interchangable." So, Svankmajer uses the term "poetry" as we might use the term "art" (in his video intro to Lunacy he proclaims art dead ("in its place a mirror for narcissists") so perhaps he's simply substituted one term for the other). "Art" refers generally to "the arts" but specifically to painting. Does poetry do the same with respect to verse literature?

What is poetic cinema?

[Capo]

Can poetry, as in written verse, be cinematic? No, I don't think it can. But I think Cinema can be poetic, and also in turns theatrical, painterly, musical, many things. That's the uniqueness of the medium, how it is self-evident and self-sufficient. It needs to be seen to be appreciated. No other art form can imitate Cinema, but Cinema can present the illusion of being other arts.

I've worded that wrongly, but hopefully you get the gist.

As for current preoccupations, Kino, I'm writing an essay on how far form constructs "meaning". But it's a piece on Literature, not Cinema, and is for academic measure, not personal enjoyment (though I enjoy it very much).

[svsg]

admin said:

It needs to be seen to be appreciated. No other art form can imitate Cinema, but Cinema can present the illusion of being other arts.

Cinema appeals to just two of our senses, hearing and vision (ofcourse the mind). Imagine if some art form involves all our basic senses, we could touch, interact, hear, see, speak whatever. That will be greater than cinema. Probably the medium that comes close to that description is computer games. But in the current form, it is not really an art form. But it can be modified into one!

[Capo]

Theatre could interact, and also produce smells too.

Last year in one of Sight & Sound's issues there was a small snippet saying in Japan they were experimenting with having smells omitted into cinemas to compliment the film onscreen. The first film they were trying out was The New World.

[The Ghost of LLC]

Last Days wasn't exactly centered around the idea of a narative. I didn't think so, at least. At the same time, I wouldn't say the film is "immobile" though. There seems to be something there, floating around, that still drives the film. Not necessarily in means of story or plot or anything of the sort, but on other internal grounds. In this sense, any film that at least puts forth an effort can never actually be immobile. It will always be mobilizing emotionally, it will be mobilizing in thought, and in human-growth. And, as long as the idea of human emotion is brought into consideration, then you could do without many pages of dialouge, antagonistic characters and situations, and allow the human realm of the characters take over.

Capo posed an excellent question... Is there a difference between poetry and poetic? If cinema is either of the two, I would say it is most deffinately poetic, but the former is open to debate and opinion.