A plea for arthouse cinema and literary realism: UvA PhD student explains
It is not the great historical events or heroic deeds in film or literature that provide food for thought. It is precisely in the minor moments, the everyday scenes. Five questions to UvA PhD student Adam Chambers.
For your dissertation, you investigated ‘the minor moments’, in modern film and literature. What should we be thinking about?
“By ‘the minor moments’ you should think of the most banal and mundane events that are central to some films and books. This could be through the storyline, the setting or other aesthetic expressions. Consider, for example, the film Perfect Days in which we follow a taciturn man cleaning Tokyo’s public toilet. Every action and scene put our human existence in perspective and prompts thought. The same goes for Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in which he focused on the mundanity and banality of the life of Emma Bovary, a woman married to a country doctor in Normandy. In doing so, Flaubert laid the foundations for a new literary era, literary realism. Or take Milan Kundera’s Ignorance which is about two characters leaving Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion and occupation in 1968. The book looks at how their lives have been overshadowed by the events of the Soviet occupation. These kinds of ‘minor moments’, in which major historical events take place in the background, help us to empathize.”
In your analysis, you talk about ‘the myth of great events’. What do you mean by that?
“The myth goes back to a tradition that has existed since the ancient Greeks. There, a strong preference arose for what I call ‘the great events’, dramatic or historical events and actions taking center stage. To this day, this is reflected in comics and film adaptations of the Marvel Universe, for example, or J. R. Tolkien’s heroic quests where often one spectacle follows another. Or consider the portrayal of important historical figures in literature and films, such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or Oppenheimer. By putting such a historical figure at the centre of a film in a “Hollywood”-like manner, you immediately create a dominant idea of “this is how it happened”. It leaves little room for critical thinking. The film is, as it were, a reduced representation of reality. This can create a cultural myth.”
So why are these ‘small moments’ so important?
“The German philosopher Hegel once said, ‘In order to consider ourselves as individuals, we depend on recognition on many fronts.’ Films and literature that interpret the mundane and banal offer us that recognition; we recognize ourselves in the main characters or the film conveys a form of impermanence that we recognize. As a result, those narratives offer a more nuanced and sometimes much more eloquent rendition of historiography than films that focus on great (historical) heroes or main characters.”
So, is there anything wrong with films that run on the big screen, like a Barbie, Godzilla, or Oppenheimer?
“These films are often very superficial and homogeneous in their message. They want everyone to follow the story in the same way and you can identify with each character. The depth of everyday life and the psychology of the characters is therefore often missing. Films that do focus on this thus respect the viewer’s intellect, leaving room for a more meaningful and thoughtful film or reading experience.”
So basically, your thesis is a kind of plea for arthouse cinema?
“Perhaps yes, haha. Not that big superhero films at a Pathé cinema aren’t beautiful or can’t offer food for thought. But go and watch Happy Hour by Japanese director Ryüsuke Hamaguchi. Then you will see that this five-hour film, which offers an ode to the everyday existence of an unemployed family, is at least as appealing and inspiring. Films like this really do honor to the complex intelligent nature of human beings. Italian filmmaker Cesare Zavattini perhaps interprets it best by asking: ‘How to give human life its historical importance at every minute?’ So, these are those little moments and narratives in film and literature.”
