Philosopher Susanne Langer has had an enormous influence on the way I look at movies. A renowned scholar, Langer authored such works as Philosophy in a New Key and Form and Feeling. She did not write about movies. She is known for far more esoteric concerns, namely, her emphasis on art as a mode of cognition, and "the creation of form symbolic of human feeling."
But I have adopted her as my mentor for film criticism and teaching, because in her philosophical writing I found a methodology which helps me evaluate film, a popular medium which I love, but which is rarely treated with the seriousness it deserves. Or, to be more precise, to which a small percentage of films deserve, since admittedly, most commercial films are so profit-driven that very few deserve to be called works of art. But some do so qualify, which is why I am captivated by Langer's perception that art, in all of its forms, is to be received at two general levels, the discursive and the presentational.
The discursive is that dimension of an art form which is "about" something; the presentational is what the work actually "is."
Or as Langer so aptly puts it: The presentational is that which comes to the person receiving the work as "between the facts." Most commercial films are largely "about" a subject with the deeper implications of what a film "is" fitted into conventional formulas designed to excite, stimulate, and above all, sell tickets. I do not mean to suggest that a film's "aboutness" should be viewed in a pejorative fashion. After all, it makes a difference if a film is "about" a galaxy a long time ago (Phantom Menace) or "about" a gangster in therapy (Analyze This).
Langer's schema is of particular significance when religion specialists turn their attention to film because the "aboutness" of a film is easy to turn into didactic moralizing, whereas the "isness" of that same film will demand that the artistic integrity be received for an authentic experience of the film's vision.
John Dillenberger has noted, in a discussion of the use theologian Paul Tillich made of art: Tillich's theological use of art is "not sufficiently grounded in the arts themselves." David Marsh, writing in a book he co-edited, Explorations in Theology and Film, picks up on Dillenberger's criticism to point out that "Tillich's approach to the arts was too heavily controlled by theological needs to allow the works of arts he considered to "speak" in a way that is true to their own integrity." Marsh commends Tillich's theology of correlation for bringing together "contemporary cultural concerns and Christian theology so that Christian theology could be allowed to address actual questions," but he is critical of Tillich's utilitarian approach to works of art.
The temptation to "use" an artistic form such as a secular film is hard to resist for writers who wish to employ cultural forms to illustrate theological issues. Langer's model, which insists that the "isness" of a work of art possesses its own integrity, is a protection against such inauthentic usage. The problem this poses in our market-driven culture, however, is that films of merit find little audience reception precisely because they are serious in their intent. The shallow entertainment vehicle packs the theaters whereas the more serious fare is ignored.
One seek film that deserves careful attention that had an altogether too brief theatrical run, but is now available on video is called Critical Care, directed by Sidney Lumet. This picture is "about" life in a critical care ward in a major urban hospital. The plot focuses on the hospital administrators' obsession with money and fear of litigation. A more careful reading of the film, however, suggests that much more is happening than its surface content would suggest.
Some scenes focus on critical moments when a patient hovers between life and death, and the implications this has for personal faith. Lumet adopts the audacious--for a commercial, secular film--stance that dying patients conduct dialogues with angels and devils, or at least, their representatives. It would be easy to leave this film with the impression that its main objective is to tell a racy, often satirical story involving sex and money, but that material is merely the outward "stuff" that invites the viewer to reflect, viscerally, on the right of a patient not only to die with dignity, but also to do so in concert with ultimate forces.
Critical Care opens with a long tracking shot of Stella, the night nurse, played by British actress Helen Mirren, as she makes her rounds of what is obviously a state of the art critical care facility. The young resident on the ward's night shift, Werner Ernest (James Spader), is a confused, not quite in focus young doctor. Werner and Stella form the film's moral center, battling the impersonal hospital administration so they can attend to their patients' needs, even when those patients don't have insurance. The film is chock full of plot lines that include an inept and drunk hospital administrator, and a conflict between two sisters over their dying father's estate.
The more significant religious content of the film, however, is at the "isness" level of Lumet's vision, inviting the viewer to consider, artistically, those final moments when life gives way to death and the eternal implications inherent in that transition. If one remains on the surface of the story, it is easy to miss the more troubling decision that Lument invites the viewer to make: Should one agree that life after death involves options or perhaps just the big Nothing?
A representative of the Devil, a humorous though unpleasant little fellow played by Wallace Shawn, appears in hallucinatory--or are they real?-- experiences of a young man with no kidneys (his body refuses to accept transplants). The "devil" offers the patient the option of moving into eternity with Satan. When the patient begs for water he cannot have, Stella, the film's most sympathetic figure, reminds him that she can only give him small bits of ice. "Remember," she tells him, "you can't pee, so you can't have water," a dash of reality which leads him to beg for death. How nurse Stella deals with his suffering is one of the more touching moments in the film.
At the other extreme is a deliberately exaggerated institutional desire to render patients so devoid of humanity that all ethical choices become market-driven. One research doctor tells a group of young residents that he is developing a critical care system with models which will make computerized medical decision-making so precise that doctors will no need to deal with patients face-to-face.
One can see this film and receive it at the facticity or "aboutness" level; or one can experience Lumet's cinematic vision as a provocative portrait of a complex set of ethical and theological questions. I prefer the vision option, which invites the viewer to confront personal decisions "amid the antiseptic whiteness and modish turquoise of a literally deathly quiet in a circular temple of life-support systems attached to various stages of human vegetation."
