Intertwining of Spatial and Corporeal Folds in Baroque Cinema

Considering the great attention contemporary film theories devote to the corporeal dimensions and tactile aspects of watching movies, the potential of baroque art to construct the cinematic space cannot be ignored. Based on the baroque art, cinema rather than ensuring a superior position and an optical domination of subject/observer over images creates a territory in which the audiences are invited to immerse themselves in the film’s space and are allowed to coexist with filmic bodies. In this kind of viewing, the observers cannot look at characters and spaces separately, and the spatial folds would draw them into corporeal/sensual labyrinths of the film. Due to the fold relationship between the spectator’s inner space and filmic space, a sort of intertwining link is emerged. Therefore, any action from one side is followed by a reaction from the other side. The physical movements of the characters and the dynamic relationship between space and body in the baroque cinema, interacting with the audience’s sensory responses, can arouse an internal emotion in the viewer. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective and the concept of “intertwining”, along with Deleuze’s philosophy and the notion of “Fold”, can help us analyze the experiences of watching baroque cinema. We argue that cinematic experience might be considered as the process of the dynamic interaction between these “intertwining folds”. In the interactive process of these folds, the bipartite act of internalizing and exteriorizing takes place. In the internalizing process, the filmic spatial territories )merged with sensual/corporeal territories of the characters( penetrate through the observer’s inner space. In the exteriorizing process, the viewer projects his own spatial perceptions )affected by memories, desires, and dreams( onto the world of the film. Through this exchange, the audiences give their emotions to the characters and accordingly the film finds its emotional space through the spectator’s body. In contrast to the voyeuristic and panoptic control of optical pattern, baroque cinematic experience could be considered as a state of “assimilation into the cinematic collective sensuality” while submerging “oneself” in the sensuality of cinematic geography in a state of Dionysian ecstasy. The members of the audience that are engaged with the chaos of cinematic sensual-spatial energies, experience a kind of sensory-corporeal expansion in connection with the bodies and spaces which are extended through gestalt geography. Being attracted and absorbed, a viewer who has been immersed in chaotic energies of bodily movements and sensual flux, experiences a manner of spatial displacement, a sense of inability to coordinate navigation, the spatial exploration beyond the boundaries of “selfness” and “subjectivity”. The centralized space of subjectivity is shattered and the subject thus is dispersed throughout the sensuality of cinema’s fluid geography. Experience of baroque cinema seems like freedom from the limits of individualists “self” that is disjointed from others in order to experience a sense of connection with “others”, and to form a continuum of togetherness. Chaotic and intensive sensual cinematic geography, dissolves territories of “individual subjectivity” in the space of “collective sensuality”, and creates a sense of inter-subjective coherence.