Take it from the Bishop of Rome: Good movies offer hope amid the algorithms.
“Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up, and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined,” Pope Leo XIV said in an audience with filmmakers and actors Saturday. “The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what ‘works,’ but art opens up what is possible.”
The pope is onto something. If you’re like me, you spend most of your screen time mindlessly scrolling through 30-second videos curated to your tastes, and you probably can’t get through a movie without checking your phone or opening Instagram.
But we lose depth when algorithm-driven entertainment takes the place of art. Short-form media acts as an escape mechanism. Film stands apart in digital entertainment as an art form that can challenge.
The algorithms that drive platforms like Instagram and TikTok keep users online by predicting the kinds of content they will like and engage with. Don’t agree with this influencer’s opinions? Great, she’s gone. Get bored five seconds into a clip? With a flick of the thumb, there’s something new.
It’s mechanized confirmation bias disguised as entertainment, and it’s hurting us. Online content has already begun to drive a wedge through civil discourse. A bill introduced in the Senate this week aims to hold social media platforms accountable when their algorithms negligently cause harm. Social media feeds on and perpetuates narrow-minded and hateful thinking because outrage keeps consumers engaged.
Film is key in cultivating a space for reflection and conversation.
Take one of Pope Leo’s favorite four movies, which he described last week, Robert Redford’s 1980 “Ordinary People.” It’s not a fun watch. Set in the Pope’s hometown of Chicago, the film follows the recovery of high school student Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) and his family after Jarrett attempts suicide following his brother’s tragic death.
The drama works because it draws attention to the darkest parts of human experience and prompts its audience to dwell in the discomfort — not to exploit the pain as clips of assassinations on X do, but to recognize and explore it.
If the scene of Jarrett’s mother (Mary Tyler Moore) screeching at him about how he ruined her family came across my Instagram feed, I would scroll past before she could get two words out.
But that scene in the context of the whole showcases the quiet pain caused by trauma and the difficulty of conversion.
My own experience watching “Ordinary People” in high school helped me become more attentive to those in my life who experienced similar hidden pain. I would not have gotten that benefit if I did not have to sit with Conrad Jarrett and his parents and become a witness to their suffering.
“You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either,” one of Redford’s characters says.
That is what great film, great art does: force us to confront truth above our own preferences, which makes us better able to perceive reality in the world outside the movie theater.
This change of sight effected through film is something fragmented, algorithm-driven entertainment can never accomplish.
Moira Gleason is a senior studying English.
