Since its birth just over a century ago, cinema has perhaps changed the way we see the world, and ourselves within it, more than any other art. In his essay this month, Prospect’s film columnist Mark Cousins takes a long look at what cinema has meant to him throughout his life, and the innumerable ways in which it touches our society.
Movies, Cousins argues, shape our aspirations and desires. We live through them, we seek structures and emblems for our lives within them; and—as with all art—we are challenged and jarred by their friction with the world. Most movies aren’t great art, of course; and much movie-making is about money, plain and simple. But, as Cousins traces the course of his own cinephilia, he finds that film does matter; and that, throughout its mixed, imperfect lifetime, it has dramatised certain kinds of human hope and struggle as nothing else has managed.
Insightful, thought-provoking, nostalgia-inducing (oh, all the ways the movies made me, too!), and mind-expanding. As ever, Mark Cousins’s writing proves it’s possible to speak from the heart and the mind — and eloquently, to boot.
Nice essay. Suggestion: to cover in the next one how movies (especially Americans) have influenced culture worldwide, especially in developing countries. The American way of life shown in the movies, whose diffusion, together with music, changed habits in a great number of countries, is worth a deep study. It is a pity, however, that many times it changed for the worst, reducing recognized ethical behavior to very low levels, promoting individualism to the very possible limit and bringing other so-called civilized but outrageous ways of thinking to absolutely unacceptable levels.
Great article-I live in China but my chinese is pretty poor but watching Chinese movies really helps to open the world around me up and notice things that might otherwise go unnoticed. Also reading Mark’s book “The Story of Film” opened up a whole world of cinema from around the world which might have otherwise passed by my previously anglophone tastes. I teach in Beijing and would love to help out with Mark’s Scottish film festival he’s got planned and maybe get him to visit my school where I run a film club. Any way of contacting him?
Hi David
Thanks for comments on article and book. What you are doing sounds really interesting. Email me on mark-cousins. Perhaps we can meet up when I am next in Beijing?
Mark