Waking wonder

Having picked up the first 37% of a film about Jack Nicholson turning into a were wolf last night, this morning I had a film flavoured wonder on waking.

The wonder was about the possibility of making a film which tried to get you inside the main character, rather than portraying several characters from the outside. So the seeing part of the film would be just what that one main character saw, with perhaps just a short orientation scene at the beginning in which you were shown what that character looked like. Mug shots and so on and so forth. This seeing might be augmented by seeing things in the mind, perhaps when in bed or day dreaming, perhaps done in soft focus with soft colours to make it clear that these were not retinal images. Hearing would be just what was heard, including here what the character said. Thoughts might be done as sub-titles at the bottom of the screen, or perhaps as an audible & distinctive whisper, whichever worked better.

One catch would be that such a film would force identification with just one character, which might bother some of the audience. Perhaps because the sex was wrong, perhaps simply because the film had chosen to portray a character whom you did not like or whom you did not find interesting.

Another catch would be that one might find it rather disturbing - very frightening even - to be locked inside this one character in this way. Locked in for the duration of the film with no way of escape.

And it may be that in conventional films our identification shifts about or is multifaceted. We don't just lock onto the character which suits best and would not want to; our focus moves about. A high tech film could perhaps get around this by offering a choice of character, and you could choose, choose not to choose and vary your choice through the film - with a down side here being the need to wear some kind of a head set. It would not be much like a conventional cinema at all. A possible compromise would be to show the film in a group of rooms at the same time and you choose which room, that is to say which character, you are going to watch. But a compromise which would not be too hot for courting couples.

I wonder if there are films out there which go down this road at all? I can't think of one which maintains such a first person view for more than a short take at a time. On the other hand, it seems a reasonably obvious ploy for some avant-garde type, perhaps fresh out of cinema school, to try.

I do remember reading a science fiction story - possibly Lessing's Shikasta - in which worlds at war would resolve their differences with a very economical fight to the death between two champions. For the duration of the fight the populations of the two worlds would be plugged into the mind of their champion, rather in the way I am suggesting above.