slow it down!

According to Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", the term "shock" refers to a tactile sensation that should be 'cushioned by a heightened sense of mind', however it is the times when there is no cushion to be found that we remember. A few years ago I watched a documentary called "Tarnation" which was so brilliant, yet eerie, that to this day it is difficult to express or explain the film because I cannot pinpoint anything specific about why it was so memorable. I was stuck with a tight feeling in my chest, a light head and a fluttering stomach- and not in a 'i'm-floating-on-air-because-i'm-so-twitterpated' sort of way. What caused the images to register on my body in such a way, I believe, was the fragmented and montage style of the film (the main character had chronicled his life via video clips, photographs, drawings, phone messages and assembled them together in a narrative type fashion). The speeding and slowing of the images and sounds, as well as the sheer humanity of the piece left me no time to reflect but only to feel. Not only does the film rely on "shock", it is as John Fiske states 'excessive' (a device which magnifies ideological norms in order to bring them to attention in order to disrupt them), however I cannot pinpoint what norm it would be hyperbolizing- it seems as if he is hyperbolizing his whole existence in order to create an empathetic viewer.
Perhaps the reason the film resonated in such a way, was because I watched it alone, so I wonder, is that 'simultaneous contemplation'? It certainly was asocial, and others watched the exact same images as I, so does the 'simultaneous' mean the image(s) are being seen by many at once, or simply that the same image is being viewed?
Also, in regards to Benjamin's usage of the term 'apperception', what I understand it as is since sound and film have occurred in art, we have a heightened sense of our surroundings. Does this mean our material surroundings, or the surroundings of the art (for example in a movie, we as the audience are the 'experts', therefore are conscious of more than the characters)? It seems the only thing clear to me about apperception at this moment is my confusion. If anyone can clarify that would be fantastic.