"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers." Leonard Bernstein, qtd. in Maestro



About Me and Savor the View

I’ve been thinking about movies for a long time. Long before researching and teaching them at the university level. Long before writing my own screenplays.

When I was growing up, I’d watch and re-watch something like Dead Poets Society. And questions would linger, taking deep root. BIG questions, as in…what is the meaning, purpose, and value of life?

...Welp, anyway, watching that movie helped to shape me and, no doubt, many others too.

While, yes, the answer to the general question of life, the universe, and everything has already been answered (42, obviously), I still have questions. So many questions.

Smart movies engage compelling questions. After watching Oppenheimer, I was bursting to discuss it. Bursting. Thoughts and feelings and questions were just tripping over themselves to enter the world. With Savor the View, we all can watch, think, and talk about movies and the things that matter.



What We Do Here

Each Monday, I post brief, spoiler-free remarks and questions to frame viewing that week's movie on our own.

Each Thursday, I post questions to poke at the issues, ideas, quandaries, inspirations...whatever...that movie might have summoned (spoilers, ahoy!).

Questions explore more often historical, cultural, and personal context and meaning, rather than aesthetics, craft, or fandom, though such elements are also always welcome.

Paid subscribers to my Substack newsletter can gather round their screens and share their thoughts on each week's Discussion Thread.



Thoughts on Movies and Culture

Some paddles to help propel our curiosity voyage (many thanks to Dustin Henderson, wherever movies and culture might take us (many thanks to Raymond Williams):

Movies, like any other aspect of (popular) culture, can

1. engage universal/general principles, themes, concerns, feelings, and such, yet also

2. provide a documentary record – a kind of evidence – of the specific/unique time, place, people, circumstances, principles, themes, concerns, feelings, and such through which they were produced…and also

3. play a role in how we live/how we spend our time, while we create these movies, as well as while we view them.



The Takeaway

Itching for something intellectual, but also kinda casual-like? I hope these questions seed your week with thoughtfulness, not only about any given story, but also about the world - our world - that gives that story life.