Cinema and the Philosophy

Phenomenology is a philosophical issue. However it is actually an issue that we encounter in our daily lives. Most of the philosopher thought that phenomenology is some kind of decisive and the real thing is actually noumena. For some phenomenology is a way that leads us to noumena. Whether it is decisive or just a way, phenomenology is what we perceive in an object.

Cinema can be said that it is a phenomenon of life. Deleuze in his book argues that the imaginary world that film presents is virtual whereas the real life remains as actual. In this sense what films show us are the imitations of life. It shows the possible lives that we can only think of. By this way these ideas or thoughts about life gain phenomena. The characters in the scripts are actually imaginary beings. In film these imaginary beings gain their phenomena via the actors that are playing these characters. As audience, we perceive that imaginary world as real one and we never find it strange. When we see Claduia Cardinale and Marcello Mastroianni in the film of Fellini 8 ^½ (1963) in the Fontana di Trevi we do not see them as Mastroianni and Cardinale, rather we see Guido (a director in the film) and Claudia (a well known actress in the film).

Cinema helps abstract things to gain phenomenology too. For example, the idea of death can be given only showing a knife or a pistol. Cinema is the imitation of reality. It does not only imitate but it gives phenomenological appearances to the objects and ideas. As audience we do not investigate the reality of that phenomenology. We simply believe and perceive what we see. In this respect cinema excludes itself from all philosophical debates and becomes an important tool for phenomenology.