The Platonic and Aristotelian Forms of Philosophy of Film

Strong philosophical structures that Plato and Aristotle had established, in addition to being important in the history of philosophy, also left a great impact on the theoretical approaches to art. This article is going to follow the impact to field of philosophy of film. On this purpose, cinema is divided into two parts, image and motion, and features of these two parts have been surveyed in the arts of ancient Greek, and also have been noticed to the formation of philosophy of art of Plato and Aristotle in the relation to these arts. In this way the views of two contemporary scholars, Ian Jarvi and Christine Metz, that relation between the thought of these two great philosophers to the field of philosophy of film, evaluated to achieve the new approach from Platonic and Aristotelian form of philosophy of film. The question of present article is what is the relation between theories of Plato and Aristotle about realistic visual art and the drama of the narrative, and the philosophy of film? Question of the nature of the film is the most fundamental issue in philosophy of film that of course is divided into many questions that we noticed to the relation between film and the concept of reality. The descriptive-analytical method is used for this article. The theoretical framework of this research is based on the concept of "intentional arc" in Phenomenological approach, which says about connection between the subjective and objective. The result of this study makes clear that both Film theorist's view , Jarvi and Metz, is faced with the shortcomings, Including lack of attention to how formation the philosophy of art of Plato and Aristotle, and also because of incomplete interpretation the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (they have not noticed to the horizons of two great philosophers). According to the result of this study, from the perspective of Platonic form of philosophy of film, the cinematic image is the simulacra of true reality which belongs to the world of imaginations, and because of cinema continuing realistic visual arts it cannot be a true copy of the original. But this philosophical attitude has not noticed of the motion component of cinema and therefore this attitude is incomplete. Indeed, for Plato, motion and situations created by it, will not create a new concept and cannot bring out images from the world of imagination. On the other hand Aristotelian form of philosophy of film, with an emphasis on dramatic action in film, has more attention to the motion component of cinema, and has not noticed about cinematic image. And it believes that the film through the adherence to the verisimilitude, in other words, follow the rules of the genre, can represent true reality. Of course this does not mean that the film in any way represent reality, but according to this attitude to the cinema, it is possible the representation of true reality in film.