I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel

Hear the sharp and paradoxical words of Jean-Luc Godard, the revolutionary of cinema, who declared: “I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie.” These words, spoken with the mischief of irony and the depth of philosophy, strike at the heart of art’s relationship to life. Godard reminds us that though the cinema can dazzle the mind and stir the heart, it is but shadow and light; it cannot replace the warmth of flesh, the immediacy of breath, or the mystery of human intimacy.

The meaning of this quote lies in Godard’s rebellion against false idolatry. He warns us not to mistake the illusion for the real. A film may move us, but it is not a living being. One can debate a film, admire its craft, even weep before its power—but it cannot return a gaze, nor respond to a touch, nor share a kiss. By contrast, a woman—a symbol here of life itself, of love, of human connection—is a living truth that no artifice can surpass. Godard urges us to remember: art exists to enrich life, not to replace it.

The ancients knew this danger well. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, men mistake the shadows upon the wall for reality, forgetting the blazing truth of the world outside. So too with cinema: we risk mistaking the projected light of the screen for life itself, when in fact it is but an echo. Godard’s words are a call to step out of the cave, to remember that the film is shadow, while the true object of our passion must remain the living world and those who dwell in it.

History gives us an example in the fate of Don Quixote, who was so enraptured by the stories of knightly romance that he mistook windmills for giants and peasants for princesses. He lived in illusion, forgetting reality. Though noble in spirit, his madness shows the peril of confusing fiction with life. Godard’s warning is the same: do not give your deepest affections to shadows on a screen, but to the living beings who can meet your love with their own.

The lesson here is not to despise cinema—it was Godard himself who reshaped film into poetry, who gave it power to stir thought and provoke revolution—but to keep it in its place. Movies are tools, mirrors, provocations, but they are not ends in themselves. They are made to remind us of love, of struggle, of death, of beauty—but they are not those things themselves. To treat them as substitutes for life is to trade substance for shadow.

Practical action follows: enjoy film, honor art, but do not live inside it. Go out into the world and give your heart to what is real: to people, to relationships, to love that breathes and responds. Do not fall so deeply in love with the idea of life that you forget to live it. Watch the film, yes, but then leave the theater and step into the streets, where laughter and sorrow are unscripted, where the kiss is real, where love is risk but also reward.

So let Godard’s words endure as a paradoxical blessing. “You can’t kiss a movie.” No, the screen cannot return your embrace. But it can awaken your longing for the embrace itself. It can remind you of what is absent and what must be sought beyond the cinema. Thus, the true purpose of art is revealed: not to be life, but to awaken in us the hunger for life, so that we may leave the shadows of the screen and step into the light of reality, where love waits to be lived.