映画
えいが · eiga · JLPT N5 · noun
movie
🎬🎥 映画 = project (映) + drawing (画): drawings projected on a screen
映 means to reflect or project, as light does on a screen. 画 means a drawing or painting. Put them together and a film is literally a projected drawing. The same 映 shows up in 上映 (jōei, a screening).
映 — sun 日 + center 央 (phonetic)
映 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The sun radical 日 gives the meaning—light, shining, reflection—while 央 (yāng) supplies the sound, shifted to yìng. It originally described sunlight shining on something, and now broadly means 'reflect,' 'shine upon,' or 'project' (as in films).
画 — hand 一 + field 田 + frame 凵
Originally a pictograph of a hand holding a brush drawing boundaries around a field, depicting the act of marking out land. The top once showed a brush (聿), and 田 represents the field being divided. Over time it came to mean 'to draw, paint' and also 'a stroke' in characters.