Copyright (2001) Michael Frost & Robert Banks

Lessons from Reel Life

Movies, Meaning and Myth Making
.
Review by Paul Arnott

"In Lessons from Reel Life Michael Frost and Robert Banks assert that 'the best films tap deep into our private and public consciousness and establish a genuine connection to truth and reality.'

They suggest that films hold a mirror to real life or remind us of what life could be like. Film maker George Miller, creator of both Mad Max and Babe, believes that the cinema storytellers have become the new priests who are doing the work of religious institutions: 'I believe cinema is now the most powerful secular religion and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively the way they once did in church.' Miller accuses the church of having 'so concretised the metaphors in their stories, taken so much of the poetry, mystery and mysticism out of religious belief, that people look for other places to question their spirituality.'"

Lessons from Reel Life: Movies, Meaning and Myth Making,

by Michael Frost and Robert Banks,

Open Book Publishers

229 pages,

rrp $32.95

Published: 2001.