EMPATHY IN FILMMAKING DI JOSHUA SINCLAIR – prima parte

di Joshua Sinclair

 

In my lengthy and exciting process of researching the Life, Philosophy and Faith of Edith Stein for the film A ROSE IN WINTER, I was most intrigued by the overall concept of Empathy, especially as seen through her enlightened mind. It is important for me that this film be not only true to Edith’s thought patterns but also relevant to today’s motion picture and television audiences throughout the world. That is why I have entitled this article “Empathy in Filmmaking”: I believe it is vital for a filmmaker to “become one” with his public. But I’ll explain in more detail as we go along.

 

Zana Marjanovic è Edith Stein in A Rose in winter di Joshua Sinclair

 

The first of the four great early treatises of Edith Stein was her doctoral dissertation “On The Problem of Empathy” which she completed in 1916 and published the following year.

The title itself asks us not to assume that we already know what empathy means, but instead to let Stein show us its problematic character. Now, it might go against the grain for you to “let yourself be shown” something in philosophy. If you studied philosophy in college, you probably picked up a couple of bad habits that you need to lay aside, at least while considering these remarks. The biggest of these “bad habits” is that you may have assumed that a philosophy is a set of statements, and that our jobs as students of philosophy is to memorize those statements so that we can recall them in an exam or apply them in some future situation. This sort of passive assimilation of knowledge is known as “dogmatic” or “authoritative”; it assumes that what is being taught is “truthful dogma” and holds the highest authority on the subject.

Though this method of assimilation may work for Mathematics, Biology or Physics, to Stein and the phenomenologists, this approach would be the very antithesis of philosophy. For Edith, the student can and must verify the basis upon which philosophical claims are made within conscious experience itself. In other words, if the student cannot personally experience or “feel” Edith’s principals of Empathy in his or her everyday life, all the memorizing and book-learning in the world will not make the Empathetic Experience a viable premise for everyday living. And being very practical and realistic, Edith was most dedicated to that which applies to “everyday life”.

 

Mercedes Rosell, Evocation of everyday life

 

I came to understand that this “practical rule” also applies to filmmaking. In writing the screenplay for my film and in its realization, I had to be sure that the public at large would also “personally experience and feel” Edith’s empathy in their viewing of the motion picture so that when they left the movie theater that empathic emotion would remain in the viewers’ hearts and spirits and impact their everyday life. That is the therapeutic influence of filmmaking

 

But exactly what is Empathy?

Let’s look at a few basic definitions.

 

Sandhya K Sirsi, Empathy

 

• Empathy is the power of projecting one’s personality into (and so fully comprehending) an object of contemplation.[1] It’s not enough to just admire a Rose, you must “become” that Rose so the scented perfume you smell is your own. And when you show a Rose on the motion picture screen, the public must also be able to “smell” it (perhaps through the appreciation of a character in the film).

 

• Empathy is the power of identifying oneself mentally with (and so fully comprehending) a person or an object of contemplation. [2] Take medicine as an example. For a full and comprehensive diagnosis of a patient’s malady, a good doctor must “merge” with the patient as if they were to suddenly share the same body. This may seem odd to western medicine, but they have been doing it for millennia in Africa, the Americas and the Far East.

And in movies, if this empathy is to work, the viewing public must not only be able to relate to the protagonists, they must (for a couple of hours) become the protagonist! This is accomplished by truthful and empathic screenwriting, directing and acting. Indeed, the closer we are to Universal Truths in filmmaking, the easier it will be for the public to become one with the characters and events of the story. Our films must never be “dated” but geared to be as relatable today as they will be in twenty years.  All great films are like that from Chaplin to Spielberg.

 

• Empathy is an act in which I “feel with” another person.  I do not ‘put myself in the other’s shoes,’ I do not say, ‘How would I feel if this happened to me?’, I do not project, – instead I receive the other into myself, and I see and feel with the other.  The sort of empathy we are discussing does not first penetrate the other but receives the other….I receive, communicate with, I work with the other. I become the other.  Feeling is not all that is involved, but it is essentially involved. [3] This is the secret of making a good film: the audience must “receive the characters into themselves”.

Julianne Swartz photography

• Empathy is the capacity to conceptualize the impact—on ourselves and on other people—of what we do and to feel appropriate and genuine sorrow and regret without thinking of ourselves or the Other as irredeemably bad.  Empathy gives us the necessary mental and emotional climate to guide our behavior in a moral and self-enhancing manner without being harsh and mean-spirited to ourselves or to other people.[4] This applies to instruction such as the “Categorical Imperative” of Emmanuel Kant as well as the “Golden Rule” of Christ. In filmmaking, this is that magical moment in which the public feels genuine personal sorrow or joy for the individual sorrow or joy of a character. In a good film, you can feel this empathic energy irradiating throughout the movie theater!

 

• Empathy refers to acts in which foreign experience is grasped as if it were one’s own experience. In empathy we sense what is presented, and what is behind what is presented as someone else’s experience and at the same time we sense it as our own experience.[5] In this sense empathy is the vehicle that helps us to grow in our understanding of the Other and therefore of ourselves. John Donne says it best with: “Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind; and therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Empathy is the means with which we are well and truly “involved in mankind”. There is no better way to describe a positive and impactful motion picture experience for an audience!

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[1] Oxord English Dictionary

[2] Canadian Oxford Dictionary

[3] Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1984) 30-32.

[4] Burns, Feeling Good 135-137.

[5] Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, tr. Waltraut Stein (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964).