It’s rare to come across a book that attempts to address film on all three of those levels at the same time, but In Glorious Technicolor! gives it a good shot. It’s described in the introduction as, “an impressionistic map of the way film has entered our lives, criss-crossing with our experience and permeating our values.” The thrill of seeing something that moves you, that gives you a heightened perception of life for the hours after seeing it, strays into the realms of magic. Why should one thing move you, and not another? Films as diverse as Scarface, Bambi, E.T, Natural Born Killers and La Strada are dealt with in the book. It would be difficult to take much from the discussion if you hadn’t seen the film in question, and had an emotional reaction to it yourself in order to place it in context. But if you’re a film lover and you want to read a different approach to the subject, this makes a great change. It’s not about what’s worthy, or what’s good. It’s about how we feel about film, and how film changes according to our feelings. Picking the films that feature in the book was obviously a highly eclectic business, and it made me wonder – what films would I pick as the ones that most affected me, and expressed something that I felt as an undercurrent running through myself and maybe through society at that time? So I picked a few that have really spoken to me over the years. Don’t blame me for my weird choices; this feeling business is entirely subjective, and you couldn’t make me argue that these are all good films. They’re just the ones when, afterwards, I came out of the cinema, and I wasn’t exactly me for a little while afterwards. Dead Poets Society – This caught me at just the right moment, as an impressionistic and virtuous teenager. I couldn’t speak for hours afterwards in case I burst into tears. Dune – I saw this as part of a David Lynch festival, my fourth film of his in three days, and it was so beautiful, and so strange. Maybe it was a cumulative effect of all those Lynch films, but I certainly began to see the world in a very strange way for a few days afterwards. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines – I stepped outside into a bright sunshiney afternoon and felt profoundly troubled about the fact that I’d just witnessed a film in which the thing we were meant to be saved from had actually happened. What did that say about humanity, and about the direction we were all moving in? That moment in film history where we changed from trying to save the world to just saving the few important people in it still bothers me, as a concept. What films affected you, and how you viewed society? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book, or on the films that have moved you, in the comments below. The Book Club will be back in the New Year when Kaci will be talking about The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
