Movie? Film?

Denotatively, the only difference between film and movie is the former’s restriction to actually being captured on celluloid, movies have the freedom of being digital. Connotatively, however, the separation betwixt the two words can mean the difference between good and bad, elitist and average, snobbish and modest. And while a majority of the population, myself at times, uses the words interchangeably, they exist as distinct entries of the cinematic lexicon.

You rarely hear action film, its usually action movie with the expectation that characters will fall victim to decapitations, fireballs, shattering glass, and one-liners. On the same hand, European art films are always, well, European art films. The connotative difference between film and movie is hardly important, depending on who one is conversing with, but they suggest a sharp difference in reference to the motion picture one is speaking of. I had a friend say to me once that Batman Begins was a movie and The Dark Knight was a film. While the point here is not for me to argue for or against such statement it brings an interesting point to mind. Both films did quite well at the box office. However, the latter came out on top by more than $300,000. Does this mean that people are more interested in films than movies? Hardly.

We have not taken into account the multitude of other factors; familiarity with former film, increased advertisement, Heath Ledger’s Death. And there is no doubt that this is still an action movie despite the fact that it might have a plot. All this aside, and the standing notion that The Dark Knight is a film as compared to Batman Begins as a movie, lots of people went to see this film. Does this mean that audiences are now more interested in content over spectacle? I should think (and partly hope) not. Movies are still escapist fare where we can see splattering alien guts and toppling sky scrapers and slow-motion gunfights. That’s the fun of the movies; a fun that should not be lost by forcing films to have a literary drive.

Now, many if not most of my favorite motion pictures would be classified as films. And I by no mean aim to define films or movies as better than the other but simply intend to point out the connotative difference, a difference that is reflected in how audiences view and discuss movies, I mean films, I mean motion pictures. It will likely take the right kind of person; the kind who likes films, not movies, to point out the difference when we consider it as almost entirely connotative, but is it important that we make such a distinction?