In Review...

The primary goal of our Sacred Communications course was to find the differences between European and American film, and to explore “sacred film.” The last part, exploring sacred film, is still quite fuzzy in my mind, but I do think I learned a good deal about European verse American film.

After this course, I would say that the biggest difference between these American and European film is the level of ambiguity. To put the answer simply, European film is much more ambiguous than American film. American film tends to “spell everything out” and leave very few questions as to the plot or the relationship between characters. (Of course this is a generalization and as with all, there are exceptions.) European film tends to use more symbolism and artistic elements to tell the story, which leaves a lot of interpretation to the viewers, enabling them to co-create the story, in a way. We saw this most clearly when comparing Wings of Desire and City of Angels, but I noticed a lot of ambiguity in the Decalogue series as well, particularly in the endings.

I personally found this heightened obscurity a little difficult to get used to. I missed a lot of semi-important plot lines in multiple movies because I wasn’t accustomed to the European style, and don’t naturally think so symbolically. In particular, I laugh when I remember us watching Wings of Desire and how I didn’t realize until we were walking back from the screening that Peter Falk’s character was a former angel.

I’m really glad for this exposure to European film, although not being a film buff I don’t know how much more I’ll watch. Looking back now, I feel more favorably disposed towards the movies we watched then when we were watching them, which is a little funny. In retrospect, I think my favorite films from the semester are Pan’s Labyrinth and The Seventh Seal, along with the Decalogue series.

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