Cinema Paradiso and Hollywood: Love and Hate

In reading many blog postings this week, many people were talking about how Cinema Paradiso does not fit into David Bordwell definition of a standard Hollywood film. I agree with this assessment, but what makes it so interesting is how much this film is a love letter to classic Hollywood. The film takes care to both mock and honor Hollywood.
First, Cinema Paradiso shows a priest removing aspects of the Hollywood films. This is the same way with the film itself, it has elements of Hollywood but is not a Hollywood picture. For one there is no clear cut conflict. There is no quest ToTo embarks upon or any evil he must defeat. He simply is growing up. If there is a conflict, it is ToTo's desire to be a projectionist, but this resolved too quickly to be well developed.
In fact, both of ToTo's flashbacks are parodies of classic Hollywood storylines. The first is of the epic quest. Only this quest is a child wanting to project film. The second is the Hollywood romance. It starts with attraction, the an act of love, followed by a conflict. It climaxes just when ToTo says it should, with a cliche kissing scene in the rain.
The final section of the film is one you don't see in Hollywood, one about real life. In this sequence there is no external climax of violence or love, just a man watching clips of movies. And yet, the scene hits you in so many different ways. In some sense the ending is anti-climatic, but in another sense it is one the most powerful emotional climaxes you will ever see.
Cinema Paradiso is about a boy who loves the movies of Hollywood. Yet this film is also a parady of Hollywood films. This why I said Cinema Paradiso has a love-hate relationship with Hollywood. And it is this paradox that makes Cinema Paradiso so beautiful.

Through the Eyes of Film

Walter Benjamin claims in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that film is a new form of reproducing life, much like literature and painting before it. However, in watching David Fincher's "Fight Club", it is shown that film can do far more than just reproduce our world it can create one of its own. The twist of "Fight Club" (don't read if you haven't seen) is that Tyler Durden is simply a split personality of the main character. This is a surprise since both the main character and Tyler are seen interacting with other characters. In fact, the narrator is incredibly unreliable since we believe we are watching everything through his eyes when we are often watching them through Tyler's eyes.
This is the power of film, it allows us to see the world in ways we neveer even imagined before. One thing that makes films unique to other mediums of art is how it can break barriers other mediums can't by combining mediums. A film can have the dialouge of a play, the imagery of a photo, and the vision of a painting all at the same time. Film is the cobination of visual art, literature, performance, and music into one fluid product. This is something Walter Benjamin fails to grasp, film doesn't just replicate life, it allows us to see the world in ways never before possible.
To Walter Benjamin, film is simply a new form of art, but to mee is is so much more. Paintings and photographs are limited by the fact they can capture but a moment in life. Photography is also lmited by the fact what is shown must exist in reality, and not just in imagination. Literature is subject to the interpritations of readers, which rarely match the vision of the author. Music invokes emotions, but can never display a clear imagery without explanions by the composer. Film has properties from all of these art forms, with all of their strengths and few of their weaknesses.
This is why a love film. It is intended simply to reproduce life, but in fact it offers so much more. It allows us to see the world in new perspectives and understand new ideas. It takes life to new extremes of the imagination or simply displays everyday struggles. It incorporates various art forms, with feew limitations. This is the brilliance of film.