In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared to and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. This greatness is often used when referring to nature and its vastness.
Jean-Luc Godard and Notre Musique, to me was heavily sublime…
Found this site http://www.wellspring.com/movies/text.html?movie_id=59 pretty interesting in summing up the film…
In the chapter “Analytic of the Beautiful” of the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure which attends the ‘free-play’ of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide that which is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment “and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical.
A pure judgement of taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste, i.e. judgements of beauty, lay claim to universal validity. It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense. Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal.
In the chapter “Analytic of the Sublime” Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality which, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason.
Recognizing my own biasness, for me, at the end of a film, it should deliver what is in the head of the director, deliver the purpose of the film or have a message, something to ponder on and analyze.
I was watching La Petite Lili on SBS, they sure had lots of talk of aesthetics and generational conflict, and intellectual art vs. commercial pandering, lust being the primary motivator and so on but for all their intellectual bantering (perhaps well intentioned) all the characters (blame it on the actors/actresses perhaps) were flat, one dimensional.
Some may say it was a straight to the point, realistic, thought provoking film but to me it just fell flat on its face. However, my point being, for example, if you take a look at some of the comments, http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0335351/usercomments, i guess we are all at the end of the day only human and bound to make judgements based on our own experiences, upbringing, natural inclination towards certain issues….and it is so difficult to be fairly critical no matter how hard we may want to stay neutral…
(i tend to think that the time, mood we are in when we watch a film has a HUGE impact on how we feel, if you watch the film another time later on, you can really get different feelings, just like re reading a book…)
