He believed that film's true mission was to capture the Face of God. Cinema created reality, or rather captured it. Art at it's highest is just this kind of quest. Photography can also re-present to us God's presence...His Face. Painting and drawing too. There are several films that have accomplished this, none better than Terrance Malick's TREE OF LIFE. This is what I meant in my earlier post about the need to posit God to fully understand the aesthetic experience of great art.
Art can accomplish this goal by looking without, or within. The everyday is seeded with the Divine presence. I suppose a painting of a bowl of fruit, done expertly enough, could capture God's presence visually. The Holy Spirit lies within. Imagination can reach it. And so the mind's eye too, properly represented, can bring God's presence near. The internal is externalized.
There are a few times I've seen these heights reached on film. Shades of them exist in any great art.
What films would you say have accomplished Bazin's cinematic goal?
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