Post 4 - Explicit and Implicit

Most of the time when you sit down to watch a film, you are hoping to watch a good film; however there are the occasional films that try to make you think about today’s society and whether or not certain actions that are taken and which actions are right and which ones are wrong. Jonathan Rosenbaum said “What is designed to make people feel good at the movies has a profound relation to how and what they think and feel about the world around them”. Different ideologies are given throughout different films and can be interpreted by the audience in different ways. There are movies that will imply certain ideologies with a film, and other movies will state the exact ideologies based in the film. Films that imply certain ideologies are known as implicit and movies that state ideologies can be known as explicit. An example of an Implicit film is Inglorious Basterds, this has implicit ideologies due to the fact that a rogue group of ‘heroes’ go across to Germany to fight the ‘enemy’ of the Nazi regime. The so called heroes of the film are seen to get revenge for all of the abuse that has been sustained to innocent people (specifically Jewish people). The Rogue group who enter enemy territories somehow manage to overcome the whole Nazi regime and get revenge on all who have attempted to stop their mission. Four of the group going into a cinema and killing and burning Hitler and all the high ranking German militants in one go without any real fight. This idea gives the image of war and terror however, it shows the heroes prevailing and none of them lose their lives or get injured in the disaster. Also the last scene depicts the ultimate hero Aldo Raine carving a Swastika onto the forehead of Col. Hans Landa. This was revenge for Landa inflicting pain and suffering on innocent people and it was also a mark of what Landa had done while in the Nazi regime. In comparison, an example of an explicit film is Saving Private Ryan. This movie shows a regiment from an army sent to collect a man who has lost his three brothers during the war. As in any army around the world, they did not question the mission even thought they felt it was a waste of time. The ending also showed the true meaning of war, instead of the heroes prevailing and coming out unscathed, all of the regiment who went to save Private Ryan died while achieving the mission. That statement depicts the truth about war and that is that a lot of people died during war, many of whom did not deserve to die. The battle scenes show both heroines and enemies both dying, just like in many wars and the ending does not give a false ending that may impress the audience. The different ideologies used in different movies make it difficult to explain the difference between explicit and implicit movies. It is hard to try and separate the difference between reality and ideology in film. However, Comolli and Narboni say that “Reality is nothing but an expression of the prevailing ideology.” So in some aspects ideology can become more of a mainstay in film than reality can.