The Last Sunset

Film makers who are engaged in practising the language of cinema in their own personal syntax have been for long debating the concept of  'realism' in cinema. To begin with, cinema captured a certain physical reality but then as the language of cinema evolved through fictional narrative and then its abstraction  it went on to find its own form of art which is not necessarily employed to tell a story or depict a certain physical reality.This contemplative form of cinema is often used by film makers who are engaged in their own interpretation of the so called "realism' or how they perceive life as such. In that context a question is often raised about what is real and what is perceived as reality. In this context I thought  of an interesting visual exercise which can be used as an example to illustrate how a  visual symbolism depicting a certain "reality" can be demystified,

Take for example a  sunset, The shot of a setting sun ,one of the most commonly used visual metaphor in  the history of world cinema. It is used in many ways in different contexts including the most famous "walking into the sunset".  At a very basic level a shot of a sunset gives the meaning of an end of an episode or just depicting an end of the day. What happens if the camera which is capturing a sunset from a certain given location is placed on a helicopter and as soon as the sun sets behind the horizon or the sea the camera lifts up in the sky to a higher altitude?The sun would appear into the frame again in its full form And if the moving platform on which camera is placed, maybe a helicopter or a flying machine follows the 'setting sun' along the globe for twenty four hours, and comes back to the exact location where it had started we would visually see the analogy of the 'sunset' demystified. That would be the end of the 'sunset'. The sun never sets, in a sense. 

It is just an example of how  certain visual representation of the so called 'reality' in cinema can be reinterpreted to understand "realism" in cinema.  Cinema  can  depict a certain 'reality' which is ever changing and at the same time its visuals contained within the frame can indicate towards a larger 'realty' which is outside the frame. 

Vishnu Mathur.

July 30.2013.