Revolting in Prague
Harold and Maude directed by Hal Ashby
Catharsis is a point in the narrative of a film when an emotional realisation or internal transformation occurs, experienced by the audience, and often felt via identification with the simultaneous cathartic renewal of the protagonist. Not to be confused with the crisis, when the forces of antagonism reach their dramatic pinnacle, it is rather the release of these traumatic tensions within a film, as evidenced below in the examples of Hal Hartley’s Trust (1990), Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971) and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990).
Catharsis has its origins in Greek Tragedy, and is defined by Aristotle in his seminal work of dramatic and literary theory, Poetics or The Art of Poetry (c. 335 BCE). The term is derived from the Ancient Greek καθαίρειν – to purge, cleanse or purify (which Aristotle used as a metaphor, as it was prior to this a medical term for menstruation). Aristotle believed that tragedy could have a corrective effect on the audience – who may bring sadness or ill-feeling towards others from their own lives to the theatre, but through the exercising of these emotions, re-experiencing fear and pity via the story, may also find that dramatic catharsis purges them of negative feelings. This theory, and the Poetics in general, was counter to Plato’s assertion that poetry encouraged men towards hysterics and uncontrolled emotion. (more…)
