Cinema of Awakening

Was Buddha a filmmaker?

What was he thinking when he said:

“Each one of us sees the world through the frame of his thoughts.”

 Or was he a screenwriter?

 “Words can burn. Words can soothe. Use them wisely.”

The very process of sitting in the dark and watching a shadow play is a sign of an open heart, an open mind and an open soul. Spectators, humble and venerable, throw themselves in the lap of filmmakers. They, sit there ready to receive.

But rare are the filmmakers who would recognise and respect that openheartedness of those “chained to their chair in the darkness” as Plato predicted them in The Republic.

What is to be in control of all senses of millions of human being, while they sit in that darkness for two to three hours?

To entertain does not mean that one should proliferate our ignorance. It also does not mean that one should only propagate moral or meaningful cinema.

All genre, all stories, all epics must be told. Must be shown. But how?

Only with an awakened soul.

Only through an awakened mind.

While making movies an honest filmmaker will often reach a trance like level, that’s the reason they are often considered egocentric or insane.

Selfishness is necessary to create a story for other souls.

Creation of the film might be a totally selfish act. But projection of the film is totally a non-selfish act. The filmmaker is naked in every which way in front of his spectator when the light simmers down.

Bodhisattvas are born to help others achieve enlightenment.

True Filmmakers are born to help others inspire and entertain.

Consciously or unconsciously, several filmmakers have taken path of Buddhist awakening through their works; Teshigahara, Tarkovsky, Godard, Bae-Kung, Shindo, Antonioni, Michael Mann…

What is to be awake while making movies? To be awake is to be honest. To be awake is to be aware. To be awake is to be able to perceive life in its true light. To be awake is to have compassionate understanding of nature of things and beings.

In Woman of the Dunes (Suna no Onna), when Hiroshi Teshigahara’s camera travels over sand dunes, then over the sand soaked, perspiring body of a woman. Sand has found a new home that of a lustful body. Sensation created is that of a very understanding mind. Two characters trapped in a deep hole, maybe forever. What Teshigahara manages with these two human beings and their longing -it continues to echo in hearts of millions till today.

In Godfather, Al Pacino character looses his daughter in a shoot-out. Coppola takes away all the sound from the scene as the father begins to howl, scream and cry. Thus he creates an emotional space for spectators to feel the loss. We are moved, we are touched… but in silence. This powerful scene had such an impact that since then filmmakers have repeated (or copied) it in hundreds of movies all over the world. But if Coppola was not ‘awake’ -this moment would have been lost as a mere melodrama.

Dreyer in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc creates a transcendental world, once you are in it; you are there till the end –mesmerized by haunting images and hypnotised by unbearable silences. Pain of Jeanne of Arc is so real that you can almost touch her tears.

All these filmmakers, like many awakened souls, took enormous joy in creation of their cinema. Buddhism believes that all emanates from joy and returns to joy. To film is to find joy in every aspect of filmmaking; to find joy in writing, to find joy in directing a sad scene, to find a joy in playing a demon or divinity, to find a joy in showing a film. In the end, all must return to joy. Because joy is both, the knowledge and the bliss.

Bliss is what transcends beyond. If each filmmaker begins to be honest with the self, then the self will disappear. An act of blissful filmmaking is selfless because beyond that lies a cultivation of an awakened mind.

And cinema of an awakened mind always finds souls -that connect.

It is that very connection gives birth to classics.

Cinema of an awakened soul has rarely failed to entertain or inspire. Those films are archives of memories of humanity. Those films are our spiritual wealth. Those films are our eternal festivals. A celebration of life.

The play of shadows and sound, light and darkness has deep relation to the meditation. The concentrated soul, sitting in the dark cinema hall, is soft and flexible because there is a notion of surrendering. And when one surrenders, one is able to touch the joy of action, humour, fear, thrill, sorrow, romanticism…. One is detached from the rest of the world, like a curious child, one is back to human basics –laugh, cry, feel… They sit there ready to receive. It is up to each filmmaker what would he or she do with each of that soul, chained to their chair in the darkness, waiting to be enlightened.

-by Pan Nalin