The light that changes us
What is the point of movies? Maybe nothing – and that is why they are so endlessly fascinating. My grandmother used to say that movies are dreams. The older I get, the more I find myself repeating the same thing. Every movie is its own world – someone else’s dream that I get to see. How wonderfully sincere! Experiencing a movie is an absurd process, and perhaps in that absurdity lies the deepest meaning of a movie.
The cinema experience consists of three stages. First, it is experienced together, in a hall or outdoors. The experience is miraculous. The film itself is a miracle. It is light that is reflected on the screen, which is ready to receive anything – just to reflect it to the viewer, who in turn reflects it forward, each in his own way. Then we step out of the theatre, and the second stage begins. Potentially, the whole person is someone else for a moment – something based on what has just been seen. How the body and mind feel more porous, more receptive. The city around me reflects the film again in front of me. I see everything differently, everything feels possible. I am a photographer in the middle of a modern war, I am a teenage prostitute in the middle of the oligarchs' mess, I am a penniless artist on a huge sinking ship. I am anything and anyone! And it does not care about time or place. In the middle of Berlin I have felt like Viggo Mortensen, living an idealistic life with his family. I've driven on the Los Angeles highway and seen how its sea of light turns into a Soviet-era "zone" where I drive on the border between dream and reality. Once, on Fredrikinkatu on the way home from the movies, I thought I was a couple arguing in the flashback to a murder mystery.
The final stage of the film is eternal. They stay with us – whether we are aware of it or not. Images remain in the vortexes of consciousness, and just like dreams, they can announce their existence at unexpected moments. When I jump into the water to swim, I think I am in Paolo Sorrentino’s Naples, and the water feels wonderful. When I pour coffee from the nut pot, I feel like Serpico – the street tiger! As a teenager, I walked from Kallio to Eira like Frankie.
I was recently telling a friend how I imagine myself as Anakin Skywalker every time I cut my hair. I just got my hair cut, just like Brad Pitt in The Fury. I saw the movie over ten years ago and don't remember much about it, but suddenly my mind told me that now I'm getting the same haircut as Brad. When I'm on a plane, I wish that in a moment of emergency, at the controls of the plane, there was a captain played by Denzel Washington. In these moments, someone else's dream flows through my body. Absolutely absurd, but still so incredibly wonderful! There's nothing like it. Go to the movies! Come to the Karhupuisto Film Festival! Let's celebrate the light that can change us together.
Films referenced in the text: Civil War (Alex Garland), Anora (Sean Baker) Titanic (James Cameron) Calamari Union (Aki Kaurismäki), È stata la mano di Dio (Paolo Sorrentino), Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (George Lucas), Serpico (Sidney Lumet) Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross), Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky), Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), Fury (David Ayer)
Elias Westerberg is an actor from Helsinki who lived on the 5th line during his childhood.
Last movie I saw: Joe Wright: Pride & Prejudice