The transcendentally minded film-maker finds himself in a unique position: he must properly dispose of a surfeit of abundant means (cinema’s inherent “realism”). He cannot ignore or neglect these means, but must turn them to his advantage. Cinema may have freed the other arts from their desire to imitate life, as Bazin and Sypher contend, but it did not free itself. In fact, Bazin writes, cinema thereby acquired new chains to the “obsession with reality.” This unique alliance of media and abundant means has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. On one hand spiritual cinema was freed from the need to prostitute itself in order to achieve a sense of “realism.” Before the advent of cinema, certain religious artists attempted to first create the illusion of the immanent, then break that illusion, thereby revealing the Transcendent. But, for the most part, these artists spent most of their energy unsuccessfully creating the illusion which they never could successfully “break.” Because the transcendentally minded film-maker already has the illusion at his disposal, he can go immediately to the next stage, attempting to break the illusion. However, the religious film-maker cannot ignore the abundant in the way other artists can. A transcendentally minded painter like Kandinsky, for example, could functionally ignore the abundant means. For him, the abundant means were given; they were the physical gallery where the spectator stood. The canvas itself could be totally sparse, the interplay of abstract forces. Because the cinema is an imitative art in time it not only creates the abstract painting but the gallery as well; a transcendentally minded film-maker simply cannot dismiss the abundant means out of hand.