A responsibility to entertain?

The poet once said “The least we can expect from art is to be entertained. The most we can hope from it is to be moved.” As a filmmaker, the thought works pretty well: create something that first entertains, but hopefully does it so well that emotions are engaged.

 

The sticky part comes when certain emotions, like hate, are aroused. Worse is when those emotions are aroused for the expressed purpose of inciting hatred or violence toward a person or group. I believe the term is “propaganda.” But sometimes even that tag isn’t so clear.

 

At the time it was made in 1934, Leni Riefenstahl’s Hitler-loving “Triumph of the Will” was hailed as a breakthrough in documentary filmmaking. Undoubtedly extremely talented, Leni was apparently pressured by Hitler to make the film, and made it she did. The film is now notorious as the greatest example of propaganda filmmaking in history, and Leni lived with that albatross her entire life, unable to make a movie after the war despite her prodigious talent. Was she at fault for glamorizing a monster like Hitler? Or was she merely doing the best job she could with her film? The argument about her continues to this day.

 

Like most of life, the responsibility of a filmmaker is extremely gray: those that deign to undertake a film risk offending, repulsing, and even angering some audiences, while at the same time engaging, entertaining, and even moving others.

 

No doubt, film is a potentially powerful weapon. We must choose carefully who to point it at.