A Filmmaker's Guide to: The Sublime

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

The Sublime

What is it?

The sublime is often defined as something natural but is beyond human comprehension. Something that cannot be understood by the average being such as lightning in a pitch black night sky or snow in the desert. However, they can also be theories surrounding life and death: such as the meaning of life.

These physical aspects of the sublime are normally described as being breath-taking in design.

The best and most famous example of representation of the sublime that I can think of is in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" in which it states:

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”

Another book containing various aspects of the sublime in it is Bram Stoker's Dracula, in which passages of the gothic are some of the most well-known in all of literary history and deal mostly with the psychological, which back in Stoker's day was still being understood. And we could even say that we don't quite understand it yet:

“Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horror as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

So we can see where it makes its way into literature.

What about in film?

In film, the sublime is much more physical than it is in books because in books, we can delve deep into psychological descriptions whereas in film, we have to rely primarily on what we see - everything else comes afterwards.

Film's sublime scenes come in different forms. The first form you can get them in (and probably the most common) is establishing shots. A shot that establishes and opens your scene and/or entire movie. The second is in the form of long panning shots over vast spaces and areas in order to show the audience some sort of journey and the length of that journey. The third evokes emotion in which a quiet, but shocking scene tends to evoke great senses of feeling - usually sadness or sorrow (pathos). And finally, we get tension shots in which we are made to wait as the shot cuts between different, eerily still scenes before we get action.

I understand that the first and second one are a bit too common for me to require to explain but the third one is normally the one people get stuck on. So, if you've watched films like "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and you have seen the part where the mother is buried in that lengthy and silent funeral scene, then you will definitely know what I mean by the emotional-sublime because that is exactly it.

Let's have a look at some further reading you can do to learn more about the sublime. It's a beautiful concept.

Further Reading

• Burke, E (2015). A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful . 2nd ed. UK: Oxford World's Classics.
• Rhys Roberts, W (2017). Longinus on the Sublime: The Greek Text Edited After the Paris Manuscript With Introduction, Translation, Facsimiles and Appendices. UK: Forgotten Books.
• Shelley, M (2003). Frankenstein: or `The Modern Prometheus'. UK: Penguin Modern Classics.
• Stoker, B (2004). Dracula. UK: Penguin Classics