FilmTalk: Realism and Antirealism

Notes from “Looking at Film: An introduction to film” 2nd Edition by Richard Barsam

Having described the basic form that a film takes, we can see how it is possible for filmmakers to create their own world for us to view in the theaters. Not all filmmakers may try to produce a “real” world however. In fact much of the films we know of are a fanciful adventure into the world of someone’s own creation and we are immersed in this world on the filmmaker’s terms.

Realism in film is an interest in real and existing things, and in how things really appear. Now, it is beyond the scope of this section to discuss the extent of reality, but however we define reality as a whole we base our definition upon things such as senses, experiences, thoughts, feelings and more societal things such as history, politics, and economics. No matter how we define reality, realism in film can be judged by applying what we see in our own world and the world of others. “Realism is also a way of treating subject matter that reflects everyday life. Realistic characters are expected to do things that conform to our expectations of real people.”

Antirealism in film is an interest is the abstract and speculative and the fantasies that never become reality. Even though antirealism is concerned with less then real things, our eye for antirealism is still influenced by reality. Many of our science fiction and fantasy films may very well take us to these non-existent worlds, but we can believe and become interested in these worlds on screen because they have real, human, or earthly aspects to them.

The Matrix takes place in a world different from ours and separate from our laws of physics, but why is it that we believe that the fanciful world shown to us in The Matrix is really there? There is a film term used to explain why we associate with unreal things in a real way. The term is Verisimilitude. Verisimilitude in film means that the film accomplishes the appearance of truth and convinces us of the artist’s world. A film is verisimilar when we, the audience, can imagine that, within the scope of the film, the world and everything within it could really exist. The world of Star Wars is convincing because it has its own technology, its own history and civilization and its own unique look provided by aliens, plant life and much more. Now, if George Lucas had decided to throw in an earth animal, maybe a cow, then such a simple non-essential detail would ruin the creative look and feel of the Star Wars universe because we’ve, until that point, been believing in the non-earth world on the screen.

“Realism, no matter how lifelike it might appear, always involves mediation, and thus interpretation. In the ways it is created and the ways it is perceived, realism is a kind of illusion.”