Can Cinema Force Us to Think?

The genesis of cinema was accompanied by a radical philosophical hypothesis: that the industrial automation of the image could achieve what the traditional arts could only simulate. When we consider the essence of the cinematographic image, we find it is defined by automatic movement. Unlike painting, where the mind must "clothe" an immobile figure with motion, or the theater, where movement remains tethered to the physical displacement of a human body, cinema provides movement as an immediate given. It is the image itself that moves. For Gilles Deleuze, this technical reality describes an automatic, almost unconscious response that viewers have to cinematic images - responses that are not just emotional reactions but are tied to cognitive processes that films can activate or manipulate.

Deleuze calls this triggered response the spiritual automaton. While the term originated in classical philosophy - Spinoza used it to describe a mind subject to the same deterministic laws as physical matter, and Descartes used it to define the material machine of the body - Deleuze reinterprets it through modern art. In cinema, the spiritual automaton is the circuit into which the viewer enters. Because the cinematic image moves at its own pace and according to its own logic, it bypasses our usual sensory-motor filters. It tells the viewer: with me, you cannot escape the shock that arouses the thinker in you. It is a "subjective and collective automaton" designed for an art of the masses, claiming to grant us a capacity for thought that we possess only as a logical possibility in everyday life.

For thinkers like Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, the history of cinema is the story of how this automaton has evolved. In the era of classical cinema, the process was organic and goal-oriented. Directors like Sergei Eisenstein didn’t see a film as a series of events, they saw it as a spark. They believed that slamming two disparate images together - such as a shot of a hungry worker followed by a factory owner’s overflowing dinner plate - would create a "collision" that generated a brand-new idea in the viewer’s mind. Eisenstein called this the "montage cell." In this model, every perception led to a response, and every action modified a situation, leading the viewer toward a clear understanding of a unified "Whole."

Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Following the Second World War, this logic began to dissolve. In classical films, characters functioned within a clear sensory-motor schema: they perceived a problem, decided on a goal, and took action. This created a predictable, satisfying circuit for the audience. However, modern cinema shattered this link. We transitioned from heroes who drive the plot forward to characters who are essentially "seers" - individuals who wander through environments they can no longer influence or fully understand. They are paralyzed and drifting, much like Travis Bickle’s aimless navigation of the streets in Taxi Driver.

In this modern regime, the spiritual automaton is no longer summoned by a tidy story, but by a void or a gap between images. Traditionally, we moved from Image A to Image B because they were connected by a logical thought - like a character opening a door and then entering a room. In modern film, however, this link is severed. In Jean-Luc Godard’s films, for example, instead of a seamless chain of events, he utilizes a "method of AND," placing images together to emphasize the interstice between them - Image A and then Image B - without a clear explanation of how they fit.

In these films, the gap itself becomes the site of meaning, creating a space for new interpretations. By focusing on the "interstice" - the spaces between actions rather than the actions themselves - cinema forces thought to confront its own limits. It reveals that much of what we consider "thinking" is just the repetition of established patterns and comfortable stories. When we encounter such a gap, we experience a moment of "unpower" where our brains can’t simply auto-complete the scene. True thinking, triggered by the shock of these gaps, involves confronting the unknown or the previously unthinkable aspects of reality.

This evolution transforms the viewer from a consumer of stories into an active participant in a "reading" of the image. Deleuze suggests that modern cinema requires us to engage with images that must be read like a text rather than just watched as a window. Here, sight and sound gain a new level of autonomy - they are no longer tied to a direct narrative. This forces the mind to engage at a more conscious level, leading to insights that are radically different from those encountered in the day to day. The spiritual automaton thus serves as a bridge between our innate mental processes and the transformative potential of cinema, expanding the very boundaries of how we perceive the world.