On the recommendation of my father, I recently watched the movie Before the Rain. I had never heard of it, but a few days after he mentioned it I was about to go to bed when I noticed that it was about to start on cable TV. I decided to stay up to watch it. (As I get older, it seems, staying up late isn't as easy or often as fun as it once was, so this decision had some weight.) I'm not sure what to say about my reaction to it. It is a wholly sobering film. A very good film, extremely well made, but I had trouble sleeping that night. The movie uses three distinct stories (which eventually pull together into one story) to examine the cultural posturing and machismo that engenders the kind of hatred and distrust that can have had the terrible events in Bosnia happen, hatred that even allows families to kill other members of their own family if the posturing is questioned.
I have recently been wondering, worrying and fretting about what I see as a world being split between increasingly dogmatic extremes, each increasingly less willing to see any common ground. No matter what your ideology, this trend seems to me to be disastrous. I see the world being split in two, or four. Or twenty. It's happening everywhere, including here in the states where we have been more divided since the last couple of presidential elections than, I think, in the rest of our history. In much of the rest of the world (and to a lesser degree here) there is bloodshed everywhere, hatred and posturing and young men with guns, overflowing testosterone and no common sense. Sometimes, I lose all hope that we will be able to pull ourselves out of the mess we've created on the planet before some young man with a nuclear bomb ends it all. With all this going on around us, I wonder how I can justify dedicating myself to a life of art. And then, I remind myself that a society without art is a dead society.
This is not just an empty, philosophical stance. Consider that one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was declare which art was sanctioned and which art was "decadent". What they considered decadent was anything that showed any creative or original voice, not necessarily things that were sexual or salacious as the word decadent might imply. Art is often considered dangerous by totalitarian governments or dogmatic people. Again, not necessarily only art that questions policy, incites descent or demands change, but any art that questions anything because questions cause thinking and thinking is very dangerous.
Do I think movies (or any art) like Before the Rain will change the world? Probably not by themselves. But the very act of making and viewing such movies has an effect that I think can be cumulative. Do I think movies (or any art) need to be as intense and dire as Before the Rain to have an effect? Absolutely not. Any movie (or any art) that has any effect on an audience; laughter, tears, thought, confusion, pleasant feeling, awe, wonder, even, probably, horror and disgust, has an effect on the collective consciousness and keeps the collective mind open and primed for expansion. The art itself doesn't necessarily have to be what causes the expansion.
Do light movies such as Princess Bride or even Princess Diaries contribute to this? Absolutely. Do dark movies such as Silence of the Lambs, perhaps, or Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I really have no idea. I don't often watch those types of movie because I really don't like the effect they have on me, but I would be loath to censor them in case they do, somehow, contribute positively. Certainly enough people enjoy them that they continue to be made.
So. I don't know if what I do is the most important thing I could do, but it is close to the only thing I can do so what's to be done? Even in those moments when I despair, I remind myself that what I do is contributing to the evolution of the mind of man and I find some peace.
Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
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