How Real is Real?

A good friend of mine has just returned from Japan, where she went to Universal Studios and experienced a 4D movie. So along with a 3D headset, there is also a "motion master" aspect to complete the 4th dimension. The movie was Shrek, and Princess Fiona and Shrek both had colds, so every time they sneezed you get sprayed with water, also jets of air around your ankles and up your back simulate the spiders that surround the characters.

I started to think that perhaps the film industry is trying to make film less passive and more immersive by actually involving the viewers, but then I realized that this isn't really the case because the viewer is still has no agency, just a feeling of more involvement. So then I'm thinking is this related to how Bazin thinks about the representation of "the real" through cinema?

Bazin's take on things is that the Long Take is the quintessential representation of the real because it is true to life, inclusive of all life's ambiguities. Bazin maintains that art is being able to see everything, hence his preoccupation with Depth of Field because he sees it as the smoothest way of capturing reality. So although Shrek is an animated film, I think that Bazin would see it as furthering his own arguments whilst personally I think that it is naive to believe that you can capture reality because of the transient, intangible nature of such a construct as reality. In this way I am more inclined to follow the thoughts of Eisenstein, who sees film, rather than a reflection of reality, as a function of ideology.

Schweeetassss, Charlotte