“Every film is all about us, even monsters”

One day, a crowd of students came to Vsevolod Korshunov for one of his courses on film analysis (and the courses are open to everyone, regardless of age). At the first lesson, he asks all the students why they are here. “These people pissed me off: “We have nothing to do with cinema, we are not interested in cinema.” “Why are you here then?” “Don’t be offended, we go to art therapy courses. We want to learn to see. We want you to “blur” our blurred look for us.”

After all, what, according to Vsevolod Korshunov, is criticism? This is the ability to see the details — what kind of book the heroine has in her hand, what song she listened to in a taxi — and the ability to connect these details with each other. Mindfulness and cause-and-effect relationships are key skills for a thinking viewer. Seeing every little thing professionally is taught in the Practical Film Criticism course.

The curator of the project shared with the readers of Psychologies some secrets that each of us can apply for ourselves. To start looking at the cinema differently — not superficially, but deeply.

Forget the school «What the author wanted to say»

Psychologies: They say that in your course you can analyze one film for a whole year. It’s true?

Vsevolod Korshunov: Yes, we analyze frame by frame, for example, the film by Alfred Hitchcock «Psycho». Or Visconti’s Godsbane, or McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. We watch 30 seconds and analyze what is in them for half an hour. I ask students: how do you feel? Are you scared, disgusted, bored, hurt? In fact, I help them develop a universal human skill — to relate everything to themselves. What do you see? What emotions arose? The camera moved to the left, then to the right… How does the same Hitchcock achieve that we feel the same?

Hitchcock did not think: let me turn the camera to the right now, and the viewer will have horror or boredom?

Thought. Of course, there is an intention of the author, it cannot be discounted. But there is a term — «the work of the film.» This is a meeting of two fields — the author and the viewer-interpreter. It is only at this intersection that an understanding of the film is born. I don’t care what the author meant. This school program taught us: what the writer or artist wanted to say. But this is one hundredth of what is important for the understanding and work of the film. I insist on the meeting of the psychology of the author and the psychology of the viewer.

How can it take so long to disassemble one movie? Is there really so much material for «preparation» there?

Certainly. At the first lesson, we analyze only the titles. Titles are like an overture in opera and ballet. In the movie «Psycho», famous designer Saul Bass worked on the credits. There are brilliant titles! They briefly retell what will await us. The first oddity is the screensaver of the Paramount film company. On the one hand, this is a recognizable logo, but something is wrong. Bass cut through the Paramount with blind-like stripes. It’s like we’re peeping, we’re voyeurs.

Hitchcock works with a broken eye — it seems that the mountain is visible, but there is an obstacle. Then comes the music on three seconds of black background… But what do we hear? This is the famous music of Bernard Herrmann — violin, disturbing, scary. We are waiting for something like this to be seen now … But there is nothing! And then the gray stripes begin to work very unusually: they run from right to left — a movement that is uncomfortable for us, because it is more familiar — from left to right. Any good cinematographer and director knows this.

The fact that Hitchcock starts the film with such details is like a slap in the face for us. And then there are credits in three tiers. A broken word is like a broken soul, a broken psyche. And this basic feeling of discomfort remains with us throughout the film.

We have now dismantled only 5 seconds of the film. And that’s how we go about the whole movie. In some films, the credits do not go at the beginning. Often the letters are written in such a way that they annoy: they interfere with the view of the landscape, obscure something beautiful. We learn to find in the film what bothers us. In some form it is psychotherapy. We all see something different. Every movie is about us. From viewing each picture, we can come out with an insight.

At the same time, the director is still trying to convey to us what he made the film for?

Any author who makes a movie wants to totally control the audience and even its reaction. The same «Psycho» is based on the novel by Robert Bloch. Hitchcock bought the entire print run of the book and destroyed it so that no one would know how the story would end. And even on the set there were no last pages of the script. Only he and a couple of close associates knew about the final. A chair was specially made with «Mrs. Bates» written on it. Nobody saw the actress on the set. But the chair was there. And everyone thought that it was just not her shift today. She was invisibly present in the way she is in the film — in the head of Norman Bates. Hitchcock forbade the audience into the hall after the beginning of the film. Control mania in everything.

But how can he get the right reaction? He’s not a psychologist.

He is intuitive. He does as he sees, as he feels. Many directors are like that. There are fewer rationals. The first 50 minutes of the film tell us one story. And suddenly the star of the film is killed in the middle, and she will never appear again. That is, half of the movie is a snag.

Hitchcock ingeniously makes us relate to Norman Bates, to connect with the characters. He works with the unconscious elements. Here is the heroine in a white bra and with a white handbag. And when she decides to steal money, she puts on black underwear and takes a black handbag. Black and white is a powerful metaphor for me. White is the color of the introject, conservative social attitudes that are associated with the mother. And then black — as a separation from the controlling mother figure.

In general, for me this film is about the impossibility of separation from the mother figure. After all, Norman killed on behalf of his mother. Only a mother can love him, and any pretty girl is a rival to her mother. And how psychological is the moment when Norman sends the car with the corpse into the swamp! And in the end it hangs on the surface, and in those seconds we are with Norman Bates, we are physiologically nervous that the car does not sink, and then exhale with relief when it finally disappears into the swamp.

But he does not like the «crime of the mother.» And at this moment we enter into a coalition with him against her, because she killed «our girl.» We are all a bit of Norman Bates. And any monster is always about us. This is our Shadow, which we legally took out for a walk by buying a ticket to the cinema.

Film «out of the cold» or to talk to yourself

Often in social networks you can find a request: “And give me the names of films that I would like to watch today?” And everyone throws — some into the forest, some for firewood. How to choose the right movie?

I have an occupational deformity: I don’t watch a “movie for the evening”. This is my job. Here’s a new release or I need to watch something for a lecture. Sometimes I am visited by great happiness when I suddenly forget about my notebook on my knees and, like a child, I sit with my mouth open. The last time this happened to me while watching «Three Billboards on the Edge of Ebing, Missouri» in the oldest cinema in St. Petersburg «Aurora». With tears, although the viewer’s tears are not an indicator of quality at all.

How to choose a film is a very difficult question. It is important to understand why you are watching it. Relax? Something to know?

There are films that you can watch «out of the cold» without studying anything in advance. 90 percent of these are the so-called genre, commercial films: comedies, melodramas, detective stories, and so on. And there are copyright films that require preparation. Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Fellini. Worth reading before watching. Set up at least. And be prepared for the fact that these films require inner work.

Alexander Blok described the immersive state that cinema evokes as an electric waking dream. It’s more about genre films. There are films that are filled with details, symbols, blockages. For example, in Tarkovsky’s «Mirror»: a black and white image of a boy who is being treated for stuttering. And it lasts so long that you already doubt whether this is a feature film.

Well, let it be a documentary, even though Tarkovsky seems to have lost his mind. And at that moment the block again — the «colored» Terekhova appears, the fence and the doctor who says: «It’s nice to fall with a pretty woman.» And then another black and white war…

The director is constantly shifting his attention, we cannot mount the image and the plot automatically, as in films “out of the cold”. It takes work. Woody Allen films require the same work. In them we are kicked out of our waking sleep, we are forced to think and work. And you need to be ready for this.

But if there are both those and other films, then they are in demand?

Of course, I just scold the students for being snobbish when they want to occupy one camp. When we are tired, we automatically watch «waking dream». When we have some kind of request, thoughts, we want to think about something or talk about something, we choose the author’s.

Genre cinema has a colossal task and an important function: it compensates for an emotional deficit, just like art in general. And if I want to talk and think about something, then I will choose Bergman, Antonioni, Zvyagintsev, Trier.

But if you started watching a movie, but it didn’t “hit” the request, don’t torture yourself, turn it off, take another movie. Or postpone watching. Sometimes it’s good to watch a movie with someone. I watched Bergman’s «Autumn Sonata» with my mother. And then we talked about a lot with her — it was already a conversation about us and our relationship, unspoken grievances and emotions. The film helped make that conversation happen. These films are multi-layered. And they are for internal dialogue — first of all, with yourself.

Perspective of victim and winner

What else is worth paying attention to in the film?

Be sure to look at the color. In Joker, Arthur Fleck lives in a gray-brown cold world, and the Joker lives in the bright, colorful world of television, in the finale, fire. In «Billboards…» aggressive red breaks out, but then goes into green, the color of life.

We pay attention to the angle in which the characters are shown. The lower angle is the victim. Arthur Fleck is almost always shot from above, he is small. The Joker is removed from below. His figure is monumental, especially at the end, when the hero climbs onto the car.

What the character has in his hands is also not an accident. What does it say on the T-shirt, what book? Take, for example, the movie The New Pope. Everything works there. The heroine, having sent her husband to a nightly meeting, sits down to read a book. An attentive viewer will notice on the cover the title in English: «Crime and Punishment» by Dostoevsky. That is, she began to guess about something.

What music is used, what song and about what. There is such a horror «We». There, the girl ended up in a mirrored room, where she saw her copy. The doctor advises the parents that the girl should move and dance. And here she is dancing to the music of Tchaikovsky — the pas de deux from The Nutcracker. But the pas de deux is a dance for two. The girl is alone in the room, but is she?

That is, the secret meaning is encoded not only in auteur cinema and is it worth peering into the shots of genre cinema?

A good movie has a lot of characters. For example, the movie Gravity. It would seem that a movie about space. But if you disassemble it, then everything is not so simple. The heroine of Sandra Bullock is on a Russian spacecraft. For a second and a half we see a small Orthodox icon. I went to «google» what this icon is. It turned out to be Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. This could have stopped.

But I read legends, one of which told how Christopher carried people across the river. He put the boy on his back, and during the transition he felt heaviness, turned around and saw Christ holding a heavy load — all the sins of the world. And the strong Christopher weakened, it became difficult for him with such a burden.

This symbol helps to understand the film, in which the heroine is first strong and then weak. She became exhausted and froze in an embryonic position, turning from an adult into a child. And suddenly George Clooney appears, when she is ready to die, and explains how she can land. It no longer exists, and we understand that these are some vital forces, a part of her soul. She starts to struggle and turns from weak to strong.

She «splashes down» and now must literally push off from the bottom. The suit is a metaphor for internal freezing, which no longer protects from pain, but kills, and it needs to be reset. Even the angle works there. At the end, Sandra is shot from the bottom up, she is firmly on her feet after weightlessness and lack of support. This is a story about rebirth, where the living constantly breaks through the metal, through clanging sounds — a barely perceptible female vocal.

But how can this be grasped by the uninitiated?

The films encoded a multi-level system of synonyms, signals and metaphors. Even if you missed something while analyzing the film, there is no disaster. The film is stitched through with different codes. Somewhere the author will “get it”, don’t worry if you didn’t catch everything and not right away.

If we talk about the finale of films, then often they end with credits. Is it worth staying there too? Or is it just a formal listing of all the people involved?

Be sure to watch and do not leave the hall until the lights come on. You need to capture the final emotion. Not to run for a burger to the mall, but to live a catharsis, let it settle in us. We value the purification of affect. We were plunged into it, and we need to gradually get out of it. It is like bowing in the theater when we gradually move from one reality to another.

The titles themselves have a cathartic effect. I am left alone with myself and the feeling of watching. It is very important. The film does not finish its work even after the screen has gone out. There are films that «work» in us for a week, a month, a year.