Cinema paradiso: L’empathie d’une machine

A Celebration of Cinema Itself

In my daily life, I enjoy the aesthetics of cinema, the ones with emotional depth, visual beauty, and respect for the art of cinema. And for me, the best place to fully immerse myself in the experience is still a movie theater. 

I’ve always felt that there was something particularly special about the idea of watching a movie nestled into a soft chair in a dark space, surrounded by a bunch of like-minded people, as we used to see it in retro movies.

Which is to say that I was excited upon arriving at the Angleterre cinema lounge to spend a couple of hours diving into that unique sensation.

So what is so special about the cinema from a brain perspective?

Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film

I discovered that there’s already a whole new interdisciplinary subfield called Neurocinematics, which I guess is because of those in love with cinema.

Neurocinema, or neurocinematics, is an emerging field of study that examines how watching movies, or specific scenes from movies, affects our brains and what are affective responses to cinematic stimuli from different films.

Scientists conduct studies employing techniques that measure the brain activity of viewers, such as eye tracking, EEG, fMRI, and fNIRS, among others. For example, they monitor viewers in fMRI machines to map the brain’s activity and understand which pieces of a film can have the most profound effect.

However, today I want to blend neuroscience perspectives with the philosophy of cinema and to show you that where viewing takes place is more important than the dimension of the screen. 

For me, it’s about the human condition. It has a relational nature.

And here’s why.

The Empathy Machine

While I was doing research for this article and thinking about it, I’ve constantly held in my mind one of the greatest movies by Giuseppe Tornatore, ‘Cinema Paradiso.’ And its nostalgic celebration of the power of great filmmaking and cinema as a collective experience that captures the imagination. 

In the film, we see people go to the cinema not just for entertainment, but to dream. By watching great movies, they forget all their problems and find a healing source of inspiration and hope. One of the most distinctive abilities of us humans is the ability to create imaginary worlds, parallel to the world of Newtonian reality.

It turns out that scientific findings support the idea that regular cinema trips can have positive benefits on mental and physical well-being.

Not only because the trip itself is a new experience for the brain, but also because of exposure to emotional experiences may provide new perspectives and coping mechanisms. It can encourage emotional release and offer a break from everyday concerns.

But how it works?

Embodied Simulation

Many forms of human interaction actually involve the co-construction of a story, and cinematic storytelling is just one form of it.

Simply put, it’s a process of joining together in the telling of stories of daily life, describing moments of life in pictures and emotional colors. It is one way that the brain attempts to integrate these varied representations and mental models, to make sense out of nonsense.

Cinema is like a simulation machine.

When watching films, what you see is not only what stands in front of your eyes (in the case of cinema, it is images moving on a screen) translated onto the simple “visual” recording in your brain, but the result of a complex construction. To make it work it requires the fundamental contribution of your body with its motor potentialities, your senses and emotions, your imagination, and your memories. It’s not that simple, right?

For the brain, it is the same experience as if it were happening in real life. By unconsciously simulating the content of these images, it is able to establish an aesthetic relashionship with them through the process of relational learning.

At its core, you are not only training your empathy muscle, but also extending it to imagination, your relationship with objects, and the space around you.

Mindsight: Becoming Salvatore

A fMRI study (Broom, T. W., Chavez, R. S., & Wagner, D. D. , 2021) investigated the activation of the same overlapping brain networks in response to self and others, both real and fictional.

“Identification with fictional characters leads people to incorporate these characters into their self-concept: the greater the immersion into experiences of ‘becoming’ characters, the more accessing knowledge about characters resembles accessing knowledge about the self”, suggests the study.

The activation of specific brain regions, such as the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), midline brain regions belonging to the so-called Default Mode Network (DMN), and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) — a supposedly mindreading-related area — shows that during mindreading tasks the self-other differentiation at the bodily level is necessary for mentalizing activities involving real people and fictional characters in film. And it does not depend upon the fact that they contain mindreading-specific neurons.

For example, ‘Cinema Paradiso’ itself focuses on the relationship between Salvatore and his ageing friend Alfredo and is full of warmth and authenticity, highlighting the themes of friendship, mentorship, the passage of time, love, and loving what you do.

By walking you throught this story, the film becomes a visceral journey that resonates within you. This experience is not only seen but deeply felt and embodied. For the brain you are becoming Salvatore, a famous film director.

Microcosm of Life

So, in ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ the movie theater immediately becomes that one place of relational experience — a microcosm of life — where joys, sorrows, and dreams are projected on the screen.

Scientific studies tell us that when people watch movies together in a movie theater, their brain activity synchronizes. Different brain regions, including those responsible for auditory and visual processing, show synchronized activity, creating a shared experience among the viewers.

And most importantly, the shared social experience has been linked to long-term improvements in brain function, memory, focus, and productivity.

Activation of Imagination

In the demands of modern life as an experience of digital minimalism, going to the cinema provides a distraction-free environment, free from pseudo-multitasking and social media distractions. It allows you to concentrate and fully engage with the movie, providing a much-needed rest for the brain from the usual stimuli.

Remember, your ability to maintain focus has limitations. The brain, as the number one consumer of resources to support its functionality, has limited resources available at any given moment. As the number of sources among which attention is divided increases, there is less attention available to devote to any of them.

Additionally, watching movies on the big screen with larger-than-life images and immersive sound creates an inredible experience that cannot be replicated at home. The visual and auditory aspects of the movie theater engage multiple senses and can evoke transformative feelings, leading to a unique and captivating experience.

Furthermore, it gives you a new range of thinking patterns. It provides a direct link to your creativity because it allows you to detach your thinking from existing patterns. Watching movies in the same place on a tiny screen binds your thinking to that place, making it rigid.

That’s the true essence of ‘Cinema Paradiso’.

The film reminds us that no matter what our life circumstances are, we can, and must, keep on dreaming — a unique and distinctive feature of us, humans.