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The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema
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The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema by Richard Leonard is available as both an e-book (downloadable PDF files) or a d-book (print-on-demand). Both versions are available for online purchase at the MUP e-store.

Chapter Synopses

  

Introduction

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End

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Chapter 1

Chapter One establishes what defines mysticism, especially in the West and how the traditional categories of apophatic, katophatic, nature and social action mysticism have a direct relationship to the cinema. Charting the history of describing the cinema as a magical and mystical event, Leonard moves to the theories of Baudry, Lacan and Metz to show how mysticism as a structure within the cinema has been taken for granted, rather than explored in its own right. Then, drawing from contemporary theorists, he outlines how the various theories of the gaze: dominant male; gendered; masochistic; abject/castrating; racial; as well as the look away, incorporate the mystical gaze, without ever naming it as a constitutive element in the act of cinematic looking.

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Chapter 2

Chapter Two critically studies the research of scholars interested in the relationship between religion and the cinema. Expecting to find the mystical gaze named and developed here, Leonard argues that although theologians and religionists know the importance of the cinema as a contemporary form for exploring spirituality, having variously described it in terms of a venue wherein a viewer can encounter the transcendental style, heirophany, iconography, metaphysics or Otherness. (Some have gone as far as describing the cinema as a sacrament or a liturgy.) Leonard names the mystical gaze as the missing link in this body of literature.

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Chapter 3

Chapter Three defines the shared codes within the act of spectatorship and mysticism and argues that the cinema is the context within which an increasingly secular audience encounters Otherness. Leonard argues that codified in the act of cinematic spectatorship is a mystical consciousness, within which the cinema apparatus provides the preconditions for people to exercise a mystical gaze. Like all other gazes he maintains that the mystical gaze does not exist in isolation from its object and is instituted or constructed within the cinema, and that meaning is constructed in the interaction between spectator and film.

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Chapter 4

Chapter Four moves to Weir and surveys and critically engages with the literature from critical reviews and commentators in the press, theses and academic publications that grapple to name what constitutes 'a Peter Weir film'. Establishing that nearly every one of Weir's films has been described as mystical. Leonard demonstrates that the preeminent auteur begot by Australian soil:that most secular of countries:is a cinematic mystic.

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Chapter 5, 6 and 7

Chapters Five, Six and Seven, respectively, analyse three of Peter Weir's films: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli and Witness for the ways in which he constructs the mystical gaze: making direct and indirect use of other mystical (inter) texts; establishing a participatory and empathetic identification with the hero; placing the viewer in an omniscient position over the drama; and linking the illumination of the hero with that of the one watching. This book lays out that the mystical quality of these films goes beyond the creation of a distinctive atmosphere or an aesthetic construct, to a theory which demonstrates that Weir is one of many auteurs who knows how to exploit a mystical gaze within spectators which is omnipotent, mobile, masochistic, cross-cultural and secular.

The mystical possibilities exist where a film (intentionally or otherwise) lifts the viewer out of his or her daily experience to encounter the Unconscious world, belief patterns, ethical systems or personal and social mythologies that undergird the spectator's conscious world. The mystical gaze leads the spectator to contemplate his or her place in a larger frame of reference where physical laws count for less and a relationship with a metaphysical and, often, a meta-ethical world, is taken seriously. Either in the short or long term this leads the spectator to a new consciousness of his or her surroundings, ideologies and moral imperatives. This look transforms the spectator's awareness, suggests that there are realities beyond his or her sight, and that the cinema is one way to contemplate and encounter this Otherness.

The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema shows that Weir is an exponent of this look and that until now it has constituted one of the most important but neglected forms of spectatorship in the cinema.

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