FILMMAKER SPEAKS

A Discourse on Meaning in the Film’s Structure

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Fascination with Freemasonry as a historical subject is obvious; the depth of its influence through world famous men for at least the last 300 years, if not longer, would provide any film maker a rich and colorful palette from which to create art. “The Freemasons” deals on the surface level with the narrative of historical fact and fiction that defines the fraternity. The levels of meaning that lie beneath this easy assessment of the film and the influence the subject itself had on our artistic decision making is the subject here. Simply put, the symbolism and structure that the Freemasons have created in their inner workings led us as filmmakers to mirror those constructs on a connotative level. That influence and the process that led to “The Freemasons” will require further illustration.

Seventy years ago, French film director, Jacques Feyder wrote, “Everything can be transferred to the screen, everything expressed through image.” To which I would add: …even as arcane a subject as Freemasonry.

The marriage of image and sound makes it possible to achieve a certain depth of meaning even when dealing with a difficult concept such as Freemasonry. When dramatizing a complex human emotion, condition, or conflict, words are often either too specialized or too ambiguous and the rhetoric too literary for the person of average education and understanding. Other than the experience of personal research and involvement, film is definitely the most powerful communication medium capable of expressing the general ideas, feelings and notions about subjects as rich and varied as the Freemasons.

The versatility of film permits the use of a relatively straightforward verbal language while the accompanying images serve, broadly speaking, to “diagram” the scene’s intellectual or dramatic richness and to eliminate sources of ambivalence, thus making it accessible to nearly all levels of understanding. In other words, a viewer gets no more out of a film (or video) than what filmmaker puts into it. However, it is not only the artistic excellence and the skill of the filmmaker that does it.

Without the viewer (audience) no film lives – it is merely a long succession of photographs, carrying no meaning and no emotion. Its significance can be brought to life only through the empathetic reactions of a viewer’s involvement. Communicating through the film medium, both filmmaker and viewer become co-creators of the given film. Of course, while it is necessary that the filmmaker produce a film of quality and substance which can both attract and hold the attention of audience he must also possess abilities far transcending the ordinary and boring.

Producers, striving to create the right atmosphere, mood and feeling, always choose to shoot on film rather than video-tape. Technically and artistically, we felt that film was the only format that deserves to be used in capturing the royalty of the Freemasons’ ritual, the solemn elegance of their lodge rooms and the noble beauty of their centuries old tradition.

“The Freemasons” was constructed as a feature narrative film using the loose form of documentary films, or, more precisely, the sub-genre of documentary-investigative films. Choosing the structural elements for The Freemasons we made a firm and ambitious decision to produce a film that would not only inform, educate and inspire but also be a work of Art.

Art is a means of assimilating the world; an instrument for knowing it in the course of man’s journey towards what is called ‘absolute truth’. “Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe,” wrote the famous Russian film director Tarkovsky. Art is born and takes hold wherever there is that timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal. That longing draws people to art. It is also, we think, the same feeling which attracts so many men to this fascinating and mysterious fraternity of Freemasonry.

Moreover, the great function of art is communication, since mutual understanding is a force to unite people, and the spirit of communion is one of the most important aspects of artistic creativity. Art is a meta-language, by which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others.

The Freemasons define Freemasonry as an art — “a Royal Art” and if it needs to be explained, the only respectable way of communicating it’s messages is through another art form, namely through symbolism itself.

But, what do symbols mean for the Freemasons? In his book, “The Craft and Its Symbols”, Masonic writer, Allen Roberts states “… Symbolism is the life blood of the Craft. It is what distinguishes Freemasonry from other fraternal organizations. It is the principal vehicle by which the ritual teaches Masonic philosophy and moral lessons.” At another place in the same book Roberts analyzes the most commonly used definition of Freemasonry: “Freemasonry is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” He points out that morality, as it pertains to the Craft, is not what is “veiled”, but rather it’s the allegory and symbols used to express it. I completely agree with that – they are veiled by their own definition.

The poet, Vyacheslav Ivanov made this extraordinary comment about the nature of a symbol: “A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible and unlimited in its meaning, when it utters in its arcane language of hint and intimation, something that cannot be set forth, that does not correspond to words. It has many faces and many thoughts, and in its remotest depths it remains inscrutable… It is formed by an organic process, like a crystal… Symbols cannot be stated or explained, and, confronted by their secret meaning in its totality, we are powerless.”

This wonderful meditation about symbols could be equally applied to art, film and Freemasonry, and definitely reflects my personal interests and involvement in all of them.

Steven Spielberg, has said: “In America we make movies, but in Europe they make films.” What Spielberg implies is that in the USA, film is rather treated as a business, while Europeans are more concerned about artistic than commercial aspects of the films. Coming from Europe to become American I tend to agree with Mr. Spielberg. Fortunately, being European first, gave me the sensibility to care more about artistic aspects of film and relate to film as art, or cinema