Essay on The Importance of Film

Author's Note: This was written for a school project.

Films can grip people in so many ways: whether somebody is watching a hot, new summer blockbuster or a modern classic, they can influence the viewer in many more ways than just entertainment. However, there has been an unspoken thesis (much like the voices of filmmakers themselves) that film has a much larger hold on society; not only have people spoken that films can evoke a generation, but that they can inspire them as well. While they might have not affected society as a whole, they have done something, and that certain something is a point some people have forgotten. Each and every film can be considered a piece of history; whether it has just affected people personally, shows society’s views at the time, or has changed the course of history itself, all film has the ability to preserve and present a viewpoint not normally seen.

On November 28, 1976, police officer Robert W. Wood stopped an ordinary car to alert them that their headlights were not turned on. But before he could stop in front of the side window, Randall Dale Adams, a drifter who had been picked up by 16-year-old David Harris, whose car he was driving in at the time, turned and shot the officer at point-blank range, firing two times, only to drive away directly after. At least, that’s what the jury saw with unreliable and inconsistent witnesses, a lack of evidence, and an absence of logic when a judge ruled Randall Dale Adams guilty for murder in 1977; he was sentenced to death, only to have the brutal ruling repelled just days before the scheduled execution, and, instead, was given a life sentence: yet, despite all of this, Adams did not even commit the murder. Years later, filmmaker Errol Morris was looking into the infamous “Doctor Death,” a prosecution psychiatrist, who had (and still is) famous for giving nearly every criminal he meets the death sentence, one among them the innocent Randall Dale Adams. Appalled at the utterly undeserving sentence that fit the lack of evidence, Morris instead shifted his focus onto one specific case: one involving Randall Dale Adams, David Harris, and Robert W. Wood. The documentary film that was to come of this chance finding (titled “The Thin Blue Line”), which re-examined the pre-existing evidence and made dramatic reenactments of the unreliable witnesses’ contradictory testimonies, went on to immense critical acclaim, and, more importantly, brought Adams’ case back to life. At the time, Adams had already served about 12 years in jail, and was, like everyone else, surprised to hear that the unthinkable had just happened while shooting the film: David Harris confessed to the murder. “How can you be sure?” Morris asks how Harris could be so certain that Adams was innocent in his final interview with the man; and, right after, Harris responds with “‘Cause I’m the one that knows,” and that’s all it took. 6 words, and that was it; an interview that was conducted only for a film freed a wrongly-convicted man from jail. After 12 years, Adams had received no money or compensation funds from the state of Texas, and died a free man in 2010. He was 61 years old.

Over the years, there have been hundreds and hundreds of films that have been banned country- or even world- wide. Whether they are too graphic, too crass, or just something a country doesn’t like having shown to their citizens, there is certainly something bigger going on underneath the censored surface, and that’s exactly where “M” comes in. Made in 1931, “M” is a German expressionist film that was banned in Nazi Germany exactly one year after the party took office; one could say that one reason that the film could have been outlawed is that the director, Fritz Lang, fled the country after refusing the offer to create the posterboy Nazi propaganda film (which was requested by Hitler himself). However, when taking the film’s messages into play, the story changes entirely; “M” follows and studies not just the psyche of a (fictional) murderer, but, for almost the entire first half of the piece, delves deep into the inane public reaction and police’s scramble to fix the situation. Despite the initial strong, protestful start, near the climax of the movie, it escalates to a whole other level entirely: when the police fail to apprehend the murderer, the public takes it upon themselves to capture the man and hold their own wholly-unofficial trial, where they continuously berate him without giving him any chance for self-preservation… until, that is, when he gives out his one and only explanation for his actions: he, simply, cannot help it. The impulse to kill (while still inexcusable on its own right) is so strong that he simply cannot do anything else but commit the heinous crimes, and that is precisely what “M” could have been banned for- the filmmakers gave the criminal a voice. They certainly don’t excuse his actions, but combined with society’s brutal response and the police force’s inability to do their job, and along with the core idea of giving the criminal a reason- this film had inadvertently become a vigorous protest against the (at the time) present society, and even Naziism itself.

What is arguably the most historically important piece in the collection is none other than the 10-hour-plus Holocaust documentary “Shoah;” this beast of a film follows and captures interviews of tens of individual Holocaust survivors, all of whom recount their experiences relating to the unspeakable tragedy. Some interviewees had just watched helplessly from the sidelines, but others had witnessed it first-hand, even to the extent of being camp survivors. Refusing to use any stock footage, the director (Claude Lanzmann) spent 11 years and hours upon hours of pure, unadulterated filming working to prove one single point: the Nazis failed in every aspect. Not just in the war itself, no, but in their “final solution” as well- their goal to cover up every single account of the Holocaust, the goal to pretend the massacre never happened. Not only does “Shoah” rebut this with factual recounts of the methods the Nazis used (Lanzmann was physically assaulted at one point for secretly filming an interview with a former willing worker/headmaster of the camps), but it goes above and beyond with the thesis, studying and preserving both the full-scale and individual emotional impact the slaughter had. Many people nowadays are concerned that when all of the survivors die, their stories will be lost forever, but “Shoah” offers undeniable proof: fear not, for this story will be captured forever, right up until the end of time.

No matter how bad a film can get, no matter how much it can not matter to the individual, it has still affected somebody in some way. According to a recent poll (conducted on a pool of random individuals of many different varieties) on the effects film has on a single person, 41 out of 67 people said that film has heavily influenced their outlook on the world, 21 said that some had mostly affected their views, and only a few stated that they were still waiting for the perfect picture to find the right way into their mind; none said they were in it only for the entertainment. From the same study, 12 people out of 14 said that the previously-mentioned Holocaust documentary piece “Shoah” had taught them multiple things about the event that they had not known and/or realized before, even to the point where it exceeded their previous teachings; not only that, but imagine the opinions of those who hadn’t voted on the poll. Imagine “The Thin Blue Line’s” importance for changing a man’s life forever; imagine “M’s” representation of society and how the Nazis feared it enough to ban it; imagine “Shoah’s” ability to teach people who, otherwise, would not have realized the full scale of the mass genocide; imagine a film affecting a person so deeply that it would change their outlook on the world forever. Henceforth, when all is said and done, the verdict that can be reached is that films can not only affect people individually, but that maybe, just maybe, they also have the possibility to be a worthy piece of history as well.