Why Do We Watch Films?

Hi, this is Josh.

Recently, I watched the 1985 Western “Silverado” and was blown away. It was so engaging and fun, despite taking place in a mythic west that probably never existed. There seemed to be something otherworldly about it, featuring noble drifters, crooked lawmen and engaging gunfighters.

It started me thinking; why do we watch films? Well, there are many answers to that question. Films can educate, entertain and astound us in all sorts of ways, but a key reason people have for coming back again and again is escapism. Watching a film can transport you out of your own life and into someone else’s, for a couple of hours at least. Whether it be to find out about other cultures, to imagine places beyond our own or just to feel part of the world the filmmaker has created, escapism can create magical experiences that make us feel special even in the most trying times.

One of the best examples of this is “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964), a romance entirely sung through. The colour, music and cinematography are truly magical and take you to another world.

There are also films all about escapism, too; “Billy Liar” (1963) is all about a young man’s daydreams versus his humdrum real life, inventing a fantasy world in which he is the king of a fictional country. It manages to be both really charming and grounded at the same time, quite a hard thing to pull off.

And then there are, of course, the timeless classics that keep people watching years after they were first released, like “Casablanca” (1942) a wartime romantic drama that still to this day fires up the imaginations of moviegoers worldwide, with its tale of lost love, action and intrigue on the African coast.

A personal favourite of mine is Powell and Pressburger’s “A Matter of Life and Death” (1946), about a pilot who is shot down and has to literally fight for his life in a court in Heaven. There is a famous scene where he walks up a stairway to Heaven and that, in my opinion, is what films are all about; they transport us to places beyond our wildest dreams. At the Kino Collective we want to share our love of cinema with you and hopefully help you to find movies you hadn’t thought of before.

Thanks for reading!

Josh

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