Embodied simulation, empathy and social cognition: Berlin School lessons for film theory

Abstract

This essay examines the style of filmmaking practised by the German film movement known as the Berlin School, analyzing in particular how it evokes empathy with characters in an alternative fashion. The directors in this group reject the proposition that the filmmaker should attempt to guide the viewing experience by closely linking every scene and image to a controlling narrative and have developed their own style of the ‘open image’. Drawing inferences from this case study, my analysis suggests how recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and their implications for theories of mind might reshape the cognitive approach to film studies and film theory. In particular, I reassess the role of empathy in film viewing in light of scientific research into mirror neurons. Focusing on the account of somatic empathy and embodied social cognition that stems from recent findings about mirroring mechanisms in humans, I explore the limitations of a traditional approach to empathy that privileges the narrative construction of situation models designed to facilitate perspective-taking. The insistence on an explicitly elaborated and cognitively grasped narrative context for conveying emotion creates a blind spot with respect to alternative modes of cinema, such as that of the Berlin School, in which the image's autonomy from the narrative is an essential element of the viewing experience.