Both. It is generally too simplistic to ask "what is the point" because things generally have more than one purpose.
Film
is art. Film is commerce. Film is spectacle. Film is documentarian.
Film is protest. Film is stimulus. Film is conversation. Film is
amusement.
Studios are businesses. They make
films to provide a financial return to their investors. Film is their
product. They make films they believe a large audience will pay to
see.
Writers, directors, and actors are
artists and entertainers and storytellers and employees of the studio.
They want to create art. They want to please the audience. They want
the studios to see them as good investments and thus to provide more
work at greater reward.
The audience is
complex. Going to the cinema is a form of entertainment. They want to
have a good time. Depending on their mood, they want to be told a story
that will excite, amuse, thrill, scare, motivate, or communicate.
My
view of film is that great film is both entertainment and art. Art is
an expression that says something about the human experience. A great
film should have something important to say, but it should do so in a
way that is entertaining. Film is modern storytelling. A good
storyteller enthralls their audience, completely capturing their
attention and stimulating their emotions while simultaneously leaving
them with something to think about after the story is told. A good
storyteller teaches their audience something without making the audience
ever feel lectured.
Here is a diagram I made
that explains how I think about film. I believe if film has a main
purpose, it is to try to be in the top right corner of the chart.
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