When I started regularly writing film articles (or short pieces), my focus was on the films itself–or what was in it and what they were about. Sometimes I took an angle on that, like what did I have to say about screen violence, for example. They were regular, ordinary issues or matters about film. In 1998, I note a change, looking back. In 1998, my editor was pleased I starting to”think outside the box”. I don’t know what he was actually referring to, but there was something in my movie column that made him think that. And there was something different happening in my column than previous. Looking back, I think what developed was a transcendent quality to how I approached films. I was not so focused on film itself, but on what was beyond it, or what transcended it. This does not mean I couldn’t see what was in the film, but that I was sensing something more in it, or from it, or totally above it.
This may have been a spiritual inkling, as I began reviewing films with a spiritual intention, some would say religious, but was coming out somehow spiritually now.
It meant that my film articles or pieces reflected a more transcendent quality, although incompletely and perhaps unformed, definitely not consciously approaching my writing spiritually.
It wasn’t until the early millennium that my reviews implicitly took on this spiritual quality as well, but many of those reviews were lost, either as what I would call now “spiritual critiques” or “spiritualised metaphors” in part.
However, I was afraid I was going too far with how I was implicitly approaching film and later on sought a more sensible approach, but I think that on paper spiritual critiques and metaphors sounds like something I would like to tackle again, in a more articulate, formed way.
