ABSTRACT
An important aim of eco-film criticism has been to promote a better and more urgent understanding of environmental issues in the culture of the arts and humanities. This chapter argues that cognitivist film theory is useful in exploring the aesthetic assumptions that have shaped such criticism, and analyses three films of radically different aesthetic styles whose content may be of interest to ecocritics: Gideon Koppel's sleep furiously (2008), John Sayles' Sunshine State (2002), and Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2008).1 It examines the implications of the different aesthetic options chosen by these film-makers, such as their use of slow pacing and long takes, and considers them in light of three conceptual oppositions central to eco-film criticism: art and popular cinema, realism and melodrama, and moralism and immoralism. An underlying question is whether one film style, genre or taste culture is more effective than another in promoting ecological understanding. The purpose of the essay is not to undermine the activist ambitions of eco-film criticism, but to clarify the assumptions about audience reception and the aesthetics that inform them.
