Faith and Form on Screen
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 11
Abstract
To understand any aspect of being-in-the-world in general or cinematic experience in particular, both reductionist and holistic approaches are needed. Psychological accounts can give us only functional explanations of human behaviour or responses to signifying artifacts such as art. To understand the significance of these experiences the psychological must be complemented by a study on a level which may be termed spiritual. This line of thought is applied to analyses of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, starting from David Bordwell’s formalist and cognitive account of why many people experience this film as religious despite there being no explicit reference to religion. Paul Schrader’s analysis of the formal structure of this film in terms of his notion of transcendental style in film goes a step forward by explaining how the formal structure as he analyses it suggests a transcendental dimension which cannot be addressed directly. This approach connects in an illuminating way with Slavoj Žižek’s notions of the imaginary and the symbolic sphere. Bordwell’s approach, functioning on the psychological level, is basically reductionist, while Schrader’s, boosted with Žižek’s ideas as appropriated for the purposes of this article, is holistic and operative on the spiritual level. This two-tiered analysis reveals how cinematic form in Pickpocket serves as an indirect expression of faith.
Authors and Affiliations
Henry Bacon
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25628
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7110130
- Views 320
- Downloads 5
Reason, Rhythm, and Rituality. Reinterpreting Religious Cult from a Postmodern, Phenomenological Perspective
Contemporary philosophy of religion is often focused, at a theoretical level, on the epistemic value of religious doctrines, and at a practical level, on the possible impact of organized religion on secular society and...
Can Tantra Make a Mat ¯ a Middle-Class?: Jogan ¯ . ¯ ı Mat ¯ a, ¯ a Uniquely Gujarati Chinnamasta
The Gujarati mat ¯ a¯s, village goddesses traditionally popular among scheduled castes and often worshipped through rites of possession and animal sacrifice, have recently acquired Sanskritic Tantric resonances. The co...
Acknowledgement to Reviewers of Religions in 2017
Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that Religions maintains high quality standards for its published papers. In 2017, a total of 265 papers were published in the journal. Thanks to th...
Normative Virtue Theory in Theological Ethics
What place is there for virtue theory in theological ethics? Many question the normative significance of virtue theory in theological ethics today, leaving it to rule-based ethics to provide action-guidance. There are...
Characteristics of Extraordinary Religious Phenomena Accompanying the Christian Religious Experience—Reflection
This paper presents an attempt to discuss in more detail the question of understanding of religious experience in the context of the Christian religion, as well as to show the characteristic extraordinary religious exp...