Reconsidering Mood and Narrative Cinema.

The article focuses on the relationship between mood and narrative cinema, critically examining dominant theories by Carl Plantinga and Robert Sinnerbrink that emphasize how films artistically express "art moods" and their capacity to elicit equivalent "human moods" in viewers. It argues that these accounts overlook the complex moods spectators bring to film viewing, proposing a phenomenological approach centered on the concept of "attunement," drawn from Heideggerian philosophy, to better capture the nuanced interactions between a film’s mood and a viewer’s mood. The author introduces the notion of sympathetic attunement, where viewers engage affectively and cognitively with a film’s mood without necessarily sharing it, illustrated through examples from films like Michael Mann’s *Heat* and Robert Altman’s *M*A*S*H*. The article concludes by highlighting ethical considerations regarding both filmmakers’ and viewers’ responsibilities in mooded engagement, suggesting future research explore how spectators might cultivate more reflective and complex modes of attunement to cinematic moods.