"When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it"
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Wajda is smuggling a warning into what sounds like a craft note: cinema doesn’t merely communicate in a language, it manufactures one. By widening “language” beyond dialogue to include the codes of seeing - framing, rhythm, silence, proximity, color, even what gets left outside the shot - he’s arguing that film is an epistemology. It doesn’t just tell stories about the world; it trains audiences in how to perceive and interpret the world in the first place.
The intent is partly defensive, partly insurgent. Coming out of mid-century Poland, where politics routinely tried to monopolize public meaning, Wajda knew that control isn’t only exercised through censorship of words. It’s embedded in the deeper grammar: which faces are granted interiority, which crowds are reduced to noise, what kinds of heroism are legible, what counts as “normal” suffering. That’s why his phrasing matters: “encodes our perception” suggests a system that feels natural precisely because it’s learned unconsciously, like a mother tongue.
The subtext also doubles as a self-critique of filmmakers’ power. If every film arrives with a built-in worldview, then “neutral” cinema is a convenient myth. Even realism is a dialect with its own biases: a handheld camera can signal authenticity; a polished score can launder sentiment into inevitability. Wajda’s point lands today in the algorithmic age, when visual literacy is shaped by franchises and feeds: the dominant language isn’t just what we watch, but the way watching teaches us what to notice, whom to believe, and what kinds of futures we can imagine.
The intent is partly defensive, partly insurgent. Coming out of mid-century Poland, where politics routinely tried to monopolize public meaning, Wajda knew that control isn’t only exercised through censorship of words. It’s embedded in the deeper grammar: which faces are granted interiority, which crowds are reduced to noise, what kinds of heroism are legible, what counts as “normal” suffering. That’s why his phrasing matters: “encodes our perception” suggests a system that feels natural precisely because it’s learned unconsciously, like a mother tongue.
The subtext also doubles as a self-critique of filmmakers’ power. If every film arrives with a built-in worldview, then “neutral” cinema is a convenient myth. Even realism is a dialect with its own biases: a handheld camera can signal authenticity; a polished score can launder sentiment into inevitability. Wajda’s point lands today in the algorithmic age, when visual literacy is shaped by franchises and feeds: the dominant language isn’t just what we watch, but the way watching teaches us what to notice, whom to believe, and what kinds of futures we can imagine.
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| Topic | Movie |
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