Cinema, Empathy and the Audience

By Bhagya Rajapakse

The inherent visual nature and power of the cinema is that it allows the audience to resonate with perspectives, situations, and emotions. Well-crafted narratives and compelling storytelling with visual cues, dialogue, and music can greatly influence the audience's ability to empathise with the characters. Because of this, cinema has gained recognition as the most influential medium of visual art.

For better or worse, the empathy evoked by such cinematic work exerts an impact on society. Because as the most influential medium of visual art, cinema approaches the audience swiftly and captivates them with its fascination.

An artist (filmmaker) is someone who is involved in creating a work of art by transforming the thoughts that arise from within while encompassing emotional empathy. Filmmakers study characters they have never acquainted with or interacted with, attempting to convey their extrinsic gestures and intrinsic emotional states to the world through cinematic expression. The role of a versatile filmmaker is to delve deeper into complex human experiences, moods, and psychological struggles of the characters and present them to the audience in a sensible and realistic manner.

In a movie, empathy refers to the ability of the audience to understand and foster an emotional connection with the characters depicted. It is also about being emotionally resonant with the experiences, emotional states of the characters and the subject matter of the story and blending the human emotions expressed or communicated through the story with the emotions of the audience. The executor of all these tasks is the director and screenwriter of the film. A filmmaker who evokes empathy to the fullest is capable of conveying human dynamics to the audience through his cinematic creations in the best possible way. This results in bringing two parties closer together in a way that the creation directly impacts the audience, and in turn the audience becomes emotionally connected to its characters subsequently.

As stated by Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic Roger Ebert during a speech on ‘empathy’ at the Chicago Theatre in 2005:

“For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.”

There are many instances in world cinema where filmmakers have drawn upon extremely sensitive topics that are not addressed or are hesitant to be addressed in public spaces. The empathy and sensitivity conjured up by the filmmakers in relation to those topics and characters were crucial in altering social opinions, enabling the audience to inspire empathy in the people and topics that were avoided in their conversations following the screening of the cinematic work.

Following the first HIV/AIDS patient being identified in Philadelphia, USA, in 1981, and twelve years later, in 1993, the film 'Philadelphia', directed by Jonathan Demme, was the first to address the topics of AIDS and homophobia by means of a cinematic creation. At that time, a misconception prevailed in American society that HIV/AIDS was a disease spreading among homosexuals. The film 'Philadelphia' is a fictionalised account of the lives of two lawyers who were expelled from their jobs at different times after being diagnosed with the virus. Although fictional, the film focused on the disease or its effects in an unprecedentedly direct, truthful, and experimental manner with a humane and compassionate approach.

By the time the film was released, approximately two hundred thousand people in America, and around three thousand in Philadelphia alone, have reportedly died of HIV/AIDS. The film's lead actors, Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, performed so well that it smashed all social misconceptions on the disease into smithereens. This reflects and proves the competency of the director who developed the characters in the film. According to director Jonathan Demme, the film has been instrumental in altering societal misconceptions on HIV/AIDS and encouraging people to be more aware of the disease in a realistic and humane way.

Empathy, the ability to understand and perceive the feelings, moods, and imaginations of others, is essentially a trait that all humans must possess when living in an interpersonal environment. The empathy an artist develops towards the characters or incidents in the context in which they create their artwork directly influences the empathy they develop for the audience once that artwork is ultimately conveyed to them.

Due to the well-constructed complex character arcs and dynamics associated with each character in some award-winning films, they remain unforgettable to the audience for the rest of their lives. This comes as a result of the audience being enabled to resonate with the work, with the various mental states of the characters involved, including their victories, defeats, various struggles, breakdowns, and upheavals.

Characters that appeared in movies sometimes are engraved in the memory of the audience even after decades. Some of them are,

1. R.P. McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, in the film ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (1975), directed by Milos Forman.

2. Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's film ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976).

3. The role of Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, in Robert Zemeckis's film 'Forrest Gump' (1994).

4. The character of Wladyslaw Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody, in ‘The Pianist’ (2002), directed by Roman Polanski.

5. The role of Hanna Schmitz, played by Kate Winslet, in ‘The Reader’ (2008), directed by Stephen Daldry.

Self-empathy is a must-cultivated dynamic in an artist. A person with self-empathy understands their own perspectives, ideas, attitudes, moods, and emotions while accepting all the qualities of humanity, including both strengths and weaknesses. Such a person validates all the human traits of other characters with their own perceptions.

Even though some are endowed with self-empathy, they are at times devoid of empathy for others. In such a context, the constructive as well as destructive self-expressions of the filmmaker would possibly be unspooled via the characters in the plot. Consequently, exact qualities, dynamics, and moods of the characters remain overshadowed by the artist’s self-expressions. When filmmakers act unempathetic to the characters they portray, the audience too remains oblivious to the deep and complex emotional and inner nature of those characters while grasping on to the character’s superficial nature. But the sensible audience consciously recognises this.

A scene from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” featuring Jack Nicholson

For example, when creating a biographical film on a living or deceased person, the director might act insensitively and unempathetically to the character's extrinsic gestures as well as complex intrinsic mental phases. As a result, it is inevitable that the audience watching the film will end up grasping the character only on the surface, without knowing its true nature. On the other hand, if there are members in the audience who have closely associated with the character living or demised, portrayed in the cinematic work, then a dissimilarity would surface between the character developed by the filmmaker and the actual character. This would ultimately result in the filmmaker being questioned by the audience on the incongruities.

Empathy plays a crucial role in filmmaking. Where there is no empathy, ego fills the void. Particularly a filmmaker with no empathy would possibly end up being an egoist. An artist with a heavy ego always overvalues his or her work. Such a person is more concerned over the responses of the audience than the content. They are overly sensitive to the negative criticism and keep themselves busy responding defensively upon receiving negative feedback.

When the filmmaker’s role comes to an end with the release of the movie to the public, the creation remains in the hands of the audience. This encourages the audience to analyse, criticise, interpret, and offer insights into the movie’s meanings. It is unethical and unnecessary for a filmmaker to provide justification over plot development and manipulate the opinion of the audience on the movie. Eventually, watching it, understanding it, comparing it with other movies and giving various interpretations to it are up to the viewer.

American filmmaker, actor and author Quentin Tarantino once said, “If a million people see my movie, I hope they see a million different movies.”

(The writer can be contacted at bhagya8282@gmail.com)