Why Watching Movies with Conscious Awareness is Beneficial (part 1)

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions of life without really being present? It's not an easy task to be consciously aware in our everyday lives, but it's something that we should all strive for. Conscious awareness can help us to be more mindful, present, and content.

One way to enhance our conscious awareness is by watching movies with a mindful approach. As the movie Changing Lands demonstrates, unconscious patterns and reactions tend to take over easily in everyday life situations. We might get angry, frustrated, or fall into despair in response to something our boss or friend says or even just to a critical thought we had on our own. If we fail to constantly remind ourselves to step back and look at the situation with more awareness, we may remain caught in one of these patterns for a long time.

Mindfulness meditation or other forms of meditation can be a helpful reminder to enhance our conscious awareness and ability to be present. However, I have found that it's easier to practice conscious awareness while watching a movie than it is in everyday life situations. Using this process serves as a bridge to more awareness in general and deeper understanding of oneself. It also helps us to resolve issues and consequently to increase contentment in our lives.

When we are watching a film, part of us naturally understands that we are sitting in a seat and looking at a movie screen or television. Therefore, we usually have a little more emotional distance from the characters and circumstances in the film than we do with the people and situations in our real life. It is this greater distance that makes it easier to practice conscious awareness while watching a film compared to normal life situations. We do not get emotionally entangled and lost in unconscious patterns as we so often do with our spouses, friends, or colleagues.

The effect is similar to a phenomenon dramatists have long used in writing and producing plays — a dynamic called “aesthetic distance.” While watching a play, an audience can be so absorbed by the action that they temporarily forget they are watching play. A dramatist then would say that the person’s aesthetic distance has been reduced to zero. For some playwrights, this is precisely what they want. Others prefer to use various techniques to subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, remind the audience that they are in a theater watching actors on a stage.

In some movies, a similar effect is used, as in Equus (1977) in which the main characters address the audience from the screen. It focuses the attention back on us, the viewer. As we watch any movie, we have the opportunity to increase our aesthetic distance and consequently our conscious awareness. Reminding ourselves that we are watching a screenplay engages our observing perspective and helps us to move our attention to our inner world.

Watching movies with conscious awareness can enhance our ability to be present and increase our understanding of ourselves. The emotional distance we have from movie characters and situations makes it easier to practice conscious awareness compared to real-life situations. This is similar to the concept of aesthetic distance in theater, which can be used to enhance the educational aspect of a play. However, we may still become emotionally involved with movie characters, providing an ideal tool for learning to increase conscious awareness and discover imbalances in the way we relate to circumstances and people.

Through the imagery of films, we can discover ourselves because the unconscious communicates its content to our conscious mind mostly in symbolic images. By studying films and our reactions to them, we can learn about imbalances in the way we relate to various circumstances and people.

Next time you watch a movie, try to approach it with a mindful perspective. Engage your observing perspective and remind yourself that you are watching a screenplay. Through this practice, you'll be able to increase your conscious awareness and enhance your understanding of yourself.