Objects of "Mummy Complex" in Film

I find Bazin's comparison of aesthetics of painting and film quite intriguing (and a bit bothersome, from a painter's point of view.. ) I find it a bit problematic - his simplification of painting as a medium in pursuit of "realism" mainly... Yes, the question has become "the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny," and that painting is permanently tied with "inescapable subjectivity." (Bazin, 12) But what about the essence of the medium, the "presence" that is "the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity," as Benjamin argues? (Benjamin, 220) That authenticity that fades in the products of mechanical reproduction, the decay of aura, but of works of art? 

Bazin argues that at the origin of painting and sculpture lies a "mummy complex" - the psychological need in man that is the view of survival as "depending on the continued existence of the corporeal body."  Yes, originality in photography lies in the "essentially objective character" and thus is separated from the realm of painting in its different quality. However, consider the films La Jetée and Grizzly Man. A considerable number of scenes of both films captures objects that are mummified - the museum of "ageless animals" in La Jetée in which the couple is situated, becoming immersed in the world of the museum, the collection of past lives and memories - the scene that screams punctum of the mummified animals. (How do we view this merge of life (human) and the life ceased and yet captured in the frame of appearance/ resemblance to the life in existence of one point?) Also consider the scene in Grizzly Man in which a man is being interviewed in a room of mummified human adventurer and of a bear with his paw cut off - covered with a bandage.) The quality of "mummy complex" of painting is revived through the actual presentation of the mummified objects - thus a significant, defining nature of painting is examined rather unmistakably and evidently in film. Curious.

I am interested in comparing further the aesthetics and qualities of painting and film - and at which points they overlap... how Benjamin's idea of "decay of aura of mechanical reproduction" stands in relation to the appreciative speech of Bazin and Barthes of photography (and film.) One idea that I am strongly opposed to is to devalue a medium of art to another in order to set a hierarchy within the arts... "Painting is, after all, an inferior way of making likenesses, an ersatz of the processes of reproduction. Only a photographic lens... satisfy the deep need man has to substitute for it something more than a mere approximation, a kind of decal or transfer." (Bazin, 14)  I would like to consider the vast evolution of painting, not solely its period of rampant realism... What about other aspects of human judgment/ view/ interests? Is it only the psychological or aesthetic needs that one longs for, that are needed to define real - true - ? What about the sentimental, emotional, sensational, sensual values, the ones that are not necessarily evoked by realism but perhaps by purely abstract/ expressionist representation? 

...relating this thought to the projected theme of the moment: real - true - time..?