Neoformalism

It is interesting that formalism (I think) means not what it seems like. It's not a formal approach to critiquing film, but instead an informal, abstract way of interpreting something. This backwards way of thinking seems odd but once I got my head around this it was a little easier to understand the article. The article stated that a formalist way of thinking was to find motivation for transitions in film, asking why and finding the answers in maybe not the most conventional of ways. For example, Christie uses examples from film where we can find answers in metaphors in the film October. However, the problem is that this approach only works when an active audience member genuinely wants to know more. If it is more of a general public viewing the work, it can be harder to get a formalist interpretation from it.