Every time one watches a romantic scene in some film you know it's fake. Actors present a totally fake version of life. Every story has to be dramatised to get over the fact that it's largely boring to people who haven't lived it.
We watch so many films that they probably give us an odd impression of what reality is, what's possible, what' likely.
I know what it is to sit by my mother's bed with my brain burning itself out wanting her to be both miraculously cured and for her suffering to end at the same time.
I changed my daughter's nappies 1000s of times and no amount of poo mattered to me. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. It doesn't make a film.
What these things do for a human that they don't do for a machine is to give one some empathy. I have a different outlook that I could not have obtained from reading a book. Life does not last forever and one must make it a joy and not waste it. Children are the great consolation against loss and, in my case, I fear death far less because it seems less important than failing my kid in some way.
My heart swells when I see a man being kind and showing love to his child - whether or not he is the best human in other ways I see that he has got the most critically important thing right.
The words can say this and even be inspiring but its difficult to really convey the feeling and one can be strongly tempted to ignore feelings. I don't envy people who are busy all the time and cannot take care of their kids no matter how rich they might be - in my view they're wasting something that's more important than trillions of dollars.
The article and your comment reminds me of one of my favourite songs which is a beautiful tribute to the ordinary - even dull - moments that make up life.
The song starts with a man in his deathbed whose life flashes before his eyes. As he is about to pass, he pleads with God to have one last chance to write down his ordinary life from start to end:
He writes his story down on the floor of his town, and when he is done he finally passes. The next day people find his writing and are enthralled with what he described, moved by the candid retelling of an ordinary life: I love the emphasised lines. People focus on the big moments - where you go, who you meet - yet what actually captivated the readers were the small moments that fill the gaps between everything else. That's where the real life is.The song is "A Story No-One Told" by Shad https://genius.com/Shad-a-story-no-one-told-lyrics
Not only romantic scenes, but any emotion. We are watching actors, any emotion on display is some measure of fake depending on how good the actor is.
That said, we all grew up watching movies, and one could argue their way of expressing emotions are imprinted onto us, so we all ‘emote’ as actors, and their emotional acting matches our true emotions.
You could expand this argument to our sexual realms, and it explains why young people imitate or expect it to be like porn. I wonder if also our romantic/sentimental emotional range tends toward the dramatic because of this effect.
In short: media shape how people feel and behave, more than the other way around.
If you actually act a realistic way then the (general) audience will completely miss it.
You have to drop your jaws, screech, and other over the top expressions so that everybody understands what emotion is being conveyed. A quick smirk when the villain deceives the main character will get missed; it needs to be a mischievous chuckle that clues everybody (but the main character) in on the fact somebody has been duped.
Good actors do bring their own emotion in. (At least some do)
They might not feel anything about their acting partner, but they feel about other persons and bring that emotion into the play, to make it more real.
Similar to how the best lies are those that contain as much as truth as possible.
I know that I cannot watch anything with mechanical acting that is obviously fake (probably the majority of productions).
Speaking of it, Asteroid City is a very good movie that explores this theme.
By the time Robin Williams filmed Good Will Hunting, he'd already dealt with his own drug issues and been struggling with sobriety. Hell, he visited John Belushi a few hours before Belushi overdosed.^
The article doesn't mention it, but the park scene is a response to the earlier office scene.
Office scene (aka painting scene): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuBx0oy__EI
Park scene: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8GY3sO47YYo
Full disclosure: outside of Casablanca, these two scenes are my favorite in cinema
One of the things that makes them so watchable is the little ticks that Robin Williams puts in (probably from his improv experience). Maybe he doesn't have the precise lived experience, but the man knows how to emote trauma.
In the office scene, there's a neat turn right before the painting moment where they're talking about weightlifting and Robin Williams' character gives a "Don't fuck with me, kid" warning response ("285. What do you bench?"). Of course, Matt Damon's character just zooms right past it.&
Similarly, the park scene has a great beat where after he says "You've never been out of Boston." he waits for Matt Damon to acknowledge what he said.+
^ https://web.archive.org/web/20140816025724/http://franksreel...
& Office scene, 2:03 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuBx0oy__EI&t=2m3s
+ Park scene, 0:41 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8GY3sO47YYo&t=41s
> We watch so many films that they probably give us an odd impression of what reality is, what's possible, what' likely.
There’s a 2000s British TV show along these lines called “How TV Ruined Your Life” by Charlie Brooker, who later created Black Mirror.
> I changed my daughter's nappies 1000s of times and no amount of poo mattered to me. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. It doesn't make a film.
Don't say that. Adam Sandler might be reading these comments and...