Tài liệu Writing the short film 3th - Part 32 pdf

energy it injects into the story. The consequence of the latter point is that exper- imental narrative works best for those who are innovative with their stories. Borrowed styles are obvious, and because the narrative content is often modest, the borrowed style fails to capture the audience it seeks. The conse- quence is that the shelf life of an experimental narrative filmmaker tends to be short. There are exceptions—Buñuel, Tarkovsky—but they are few. When Richard Lester made A Hard Day’s Night in 1965, he was looking for a style that would capture the energy and anarchy of the Beatles. He knew their strength was their music and their individualism, so he sought out a style that would capture those qualities. In essentially the first MTV-style major film, Lester created a series of set pieces in A Hard Day’s Night, unified by the song of the same title. Within that unity he would go anywhere, show any- thing, shifting tone or point of view. The key was to recreate the energy of the Beatles. He used multiple cameras, a series of running gags, and an absurdist attitude—and the rest is history. The MTV style in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers is a direct descendant of Lester’s film; however, it broad- ens the stylistic palate to include variances in the style of the set pieces, and the pace, now 30 years later, has picked up considerably. The style in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994) is probing. The story, set princi- pally in a sex bar named Exotica, follows multiple characters. All are wounded; all are sexually confused. Egoyan uses a restless style, probing for understanding, finding primarily the characters’ obsessions, delusions, and smoke screens. It’s as if he is looking for an opening but the characters avoid it. It is only at the end that he (and we) find that opening; until then it is the probing, eroticized style that maintains the energy in the story. The style may focus on stills, as in Chris Marker’s short film La Jetée; it may focus on long takes, as in Miklos Jansco’s The Round-up; it may focus on haunting images, as in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger; it may be driven by a fascination with a particular piece of music, such as the use of the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” in Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express; or it may contain all of the above characteristics. Whatever the mix, the distinct style of the experimental narrative infuses a powerful energy into the experience of the film. Linkages to the Other Arts More than any of the other genres in this section, the experimental narrative takes up the other arts, both for inspiration and for affiliation. All of the arts struggle with the issues of form and content. But the experimental narra- tive, unlike melodrama and the docudrama, does not affiliate itself with realism. Instead, it uses style to probe for psychological meaning, as opposed to a sociological realism. The work of Buñuel and Dalí, for example, links directly to Dalí’s paintings, his “dream works.” Chris Marker’s La Jetée The Experimental Narrative 207 Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 207 links to the tension between photojournalism and fiction. Federico Fellini’s Satyricon links Dante’s Divine Comedy with the paintings of Heironymous Bosch. Dovschenko’s Earth and Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky link to the epic poetry of the Far East and the Middle East, respectively. Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade has everything to do with his own ideas and plays about space as it is used in the theater. The key point here is that the experimental narrative links to other arts to draw inspiration and to use the affiliation to point up the style chosen for the narrative. The Intellectual Concept Not only is experimental narrative tied to the other arts, but it is also linked directly to intellectual concepts. A few examples will illustrate the point. Freud’s ideas about sexuality and aggression are influential in the images in Buñuel/Dalí’s Un Chien d’Andalou. They are even more central in Deren’s Meshes in the Afternoon. Erik Erikson’s stages of development mix with Jung’s archetypal ideas in Friedrich’s Sink or Swim (1989). Her self-reflective autobiography and its structure are also influenced by her father’s anthro- pological background. The structure of the film, made up of chapters, echoes an anthropological diary of growing up, from conception to adulthood. The Abstraction of Character Character is often less important in experimental narrative than in any other genre. As in hyperdrama, the character is a vehicle for the ideas of the writer- director. Whereas in hyperdrama the character has a goal, however, in exper- imental narrative the character has no apparent goal. Consequently, he or she is clearly present in the narrative for the purposes of the writer rather than of the narrative. Identification is not at all likely; we follow characters in Antonioni’s The Passenger without sympathy or apparent reason, except that they are in the narrative. In a film like Exotica, there are multiple char- acters and the absence of an apparent goal precludes identification. We view them from the outside looking in, rather than from the inside looking out. Perhaps the most we can say about these characters is to see them as obsessed, to understand their behavior as habitual (they reject themselves a good deal of the time), and consequently, to care about their fate, rather than to see ourselves in them. These observations make us curious as to the rea- sons for their desire and the consequent self-abnegation. Unlike in hyper- drama, where the character serves a moral purpose or goal, no such purpose is obvious for the characters in experimental narrative. They are abstract 208 Writing the Short Film Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 208 figures—often troubled, always mysterious. Only the style directs us to their habits and to their obsessions, often commenting on both. The Reliance on Pattern What is required when plot and character are downplayed is a style that invites involvement from the audience, that creates a pattern substituting for the functions of plot and character. In Exotica, we follow each of the five char- acters through a gradual revelation of their sexual confusion and the sources of their despair. In Sink or Swim, the pattern is literary—chapters unfolding chronologically. In Natural Born Killers, the pattern is the frequent references to television. Pattern is the grid along which we begin to find structure, which in turn will lead to meaning, though obvious meaning in the experi- mental narrative can be elusive. We may be left with no more than a feeling at the end of the experience of the experimental narrative. Nevertheless, it is the pattern that gives us pleasure, and the motivation to search for meaning. Ritualized Tone Just as hyperdrama uses ritualization of the action to create metaphor, exper- imental narrative uses the organization of the details, aural and visual, to develop a tone that creates metaphor. The tone may be poetic, as in Satyricon; it may be beautifully mysterious and menacing, as in The Passenger; it may be hallucinatory, as in The Double Life of Veronique; it may be epic and inhu- mane, as in The Round-up. Whichever tone the filmmaker chooses, that tone will tend to have a formal quality that ritualizes the behavior of the charac- ters or creates a metaphor about the sense of place. In Egoyan’s Calendar, Armenia is every homeland. In Chungking Express, Hong Kong is every ultra- urban city, throwing people together and yet making each person the loneli- est in the world. The characters in Exotica are not simply wounded or confused individuals; they are refugees, running way from 20th-century alienation. The Voice of the Author If most forms of drama (like melodrama, for example) are deliberate, pur- poseful, focusing on an emotional experience for the audience, no such con- tained experience is the objective of the writer of experimental narrative. The feeling sought might be too diffuse or too intense to be dealt with directly. For this reason, the author seeks out a more indirect or meditative experience for The Experimental Narrative 209 Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 209 his audience. The writer might feel as much passion as the writer of the docudrama, but that passion is not as directly accessible to the writer of the experimental narrative. Whereas the writer of the docudrama uses form to say, “This is important,” the writer of the experimental narrative uses the form in a more exploratory way. In a sense, the writer is in the position of the poet rather than the popular prose writer—it is in the cadences of the words that a feeling will emerge. Metaphor, image, and feeling substitute for the dramatic tools the docudrama writer uses—character, plot, and structure. There is nevertheless a voice—a definite will to convey a feeling, to share an insight—but what is being shared is not a moral tale, as in hyperdrama, or a political or social polemic, as in docudrama. It may be very simple or com- plex, but it is very personal and always surprising. MOTIFS—CASE STUDIES In the case of experimental narrative, the presentation of the motifs is con- siderably different from that of the other genres. The following two case studies will illustrate those differences. We will look at Atom Egoyan’s Calendar (1993) and Clara Law’s Autumn Moon (1992). Calendar The Main Character and His Goal The main character in Calendar is a photographer. He goes to Armenia, osten- sibly to photograph churches for a calendar. He travels with his wife and a driver. While in Armenia we see only his point of view, never him. He asks questions, he reacts, but never in a sympathetic manner. His wife acts as the translator for the driver, explaining the history of the sights. The photogra- pher seems rigid, defensive, and eventually jealous of the developing rela- tionship between his wife and the driver. On a deeper level, he seems to be reacting against her acceptance of being both Armenian and Canadian (she speaks the language). He, on the other hand, seems a stranger in Armenia, certainly separated from any sense of identification with the place. Interspersed with the Armenian sequence is a later sequence, which takes place in Canada. The photographer has dinners with a number of women, all from ethnic minorities; each excuses herself when he pours the last glass of red wine. They ask if they can make a phone call. They each do so. Each speaks (apparently to lovers) in her mother tongue—French, German, Finnish, Arabic. As they do, he ruminates on writing to his wife (in Armenia) or to his foster child (also in Armenia). The scene moves back and forth in time between Armenia and Canada. 210 Writing the Short Film Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 210 The Antagonist There is no overt antagonist in Calendar. However, to the extent that the main character is torn between his Armenian origins and his Canadian self, he is his own antagonist. The film seeks no resolution, but the issue of identity— the struggle between the identity deriving from the mother country and that deriving from the host country—is the premise in Calendar. The Catalytic Event Going to Armenia to photograph churches is the catalytic event. The Resolution There is no real resolution in Calendar. Although his wife has stayed in Armenia and he has returned to Canada, we do not know if the marriage is ended or simply in trouble. Nor do we know if the wife has remained with the Armenian driver. The Dramatic Arc The story progresses back and forth through time rather than along an arc. The Armenian sequence has two distinct parts—traveling, and photograph- ing. Each is presented differently in terms of visual style, but the proximity of the travel footage contrasts sharply with the more distant images of the pho- tography footage. The photographer’s point of view unites the two, and the wife is prominent in both. These Armenian travel sequences contrast with the stillness and the focus on the photographer in the Canadian sequences. Repetition of images, points of view, and style mark each sequence. The Narrative Style The conventional descriptions of plot-driven or character-driven structures do not really apply to Calendar. There is a journey to photograph churches for a calendar, but the character’s struggle is not so much with the pictures as it is with his resistance to being in Armenia. He is there physically, but emotionally he is consistently backing away. Back in Canada we see the actual calendar (the published calendar serves as a transition device between the visit to take the pictures and the present in Canada). In Canada, the character tries to relate to women (as his guests), but each rejects him. The fact that they speak their native language on the phone implies that his bland Canadian presentation does not engage them. Consequently, there is no development in the relationship dimension of the narrative. The Experimental Narrative 211 Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 211 The photography seems a professional success. Having taken the pictures he went to take and thus achieving success, he appears to fail on the personal front—with his wife in Armenia and with these various women in Canada. In a sense his limited engagement with the places he has photographed (Armenia) implies a personal unease about who he is (identity). The Narrative Shape Physical time is a factor, but in terms of psychological time, the sense of alienation in the main character contrasts with the spiritual well-being of his wife. In this sense, psychological time for the main character stands still. Tone The tone of Calendar is formal and emphasizes the spiritual value of conti- nuity (his origins in Armenia) and the alienation of displacement (he now lives in Canada). This is an intellectual premise, to which Egoyan gives roots by using himself and his wife as two of the principal actors. The style reflects the fact that Armenia and Canada are very different—Armenia is exterior, open, while Canada is interior and closed. The Armenian sequence is marked by movement; the Canadian sequences are marked by stasis—no change. Autumn Moon The Main Characters and Their Goals There are two main characters in Autumn Moon. The story takes place in Hong Kong, but in this film the city is pictured as a city of skyscrapers and sea. Each is fascinating and offers the two characters a formal space to occupy. The female character is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her grand- mother. Her parents and brother have already emigrated to Canada. Whether she is finishing her schooling or waiting for the passing of her grandmother, she is very much in between—being in Hong Kong and being in Canada, being a child and being a woman, being Chinese and being a new generation of internationalists (her favorite food is from McDonald’s), between being happy and being disappointed in life. She has no discernible, specific goal that drives her through the narrative. The male character is older, possibly 30, Japanese, and a tourist. He too is in between—between being single and committed, between being material and being spiritual, between being cynical and being curious, between being unfeeling and being feeling. He too has no discernible goal that carries him 212 Writing the Short Film Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 212 through the narrative. He does not speak Chinese, and she does not speak Japanese. The two of them converse in English. Autumn Moon carries us through the course of their unorthodox friendship. The Antagonist There is no apparent antagonist in the narrative. If anything, they are two products of traditional family-oriented cultures and yet both seem uprooted, floating, without benefit of tradition. They are two modernists, and in this sense they may be their own antagonists. No other characters represent clear antagonists, although there are two important secondary characters, one in each of their lives. The girl’s grandmother, who is utterly traditional, is the only character who proceeds with confidence through the story. For the man’s part, he meets the older sister of a former lover from Japan. She too is uprooted, divorced—a modern, unhappy person. They become lovers, but lovers of convenience, and neither of them seems to be able to benefit generally from the intimacy. The Catalytic Event The two characters meet. The Resolution The ending is open-ended. Although the two characters have benefited from each other’s friendship, it is clear that the girl will go to Canada and that he will return to Japan. He has more feeling than he did, but spiritually neither seems more grounded than they were. The Dramatic Arc Beyond the course of the relationship, there is no clear dramatic arc. The young girl also explores a relationship with a male classmate. They are attracted to one another and arrange a tryst but are reprimanded by an adult. He may be a policeman, but he seems more like a truant officer. Neither the young girl nor the classmate is in any case capable of moving the relationship away from the link of school work to a future. The Japanese tourist, who calls himself Tokyo, also progresses along the line of a male- female relationship. But the narrowly sexual band of that relationship seems as frustrating as the asexual band of the young girl’s relationship. The friendship itself between the two seems richer than their individual attempts at relationships. The term “richer,” however, implies satisfaction, The Experimental Narrative 213 Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 213 . in them. These observations make us curious as to the rea- sons for their desire and the consequent self-abnegation. Unlike in hyper- drama, where the. Whatever the mix, the distinct style of the experimental narrative infuses a powerful energy into the experience of the film. Linkages to the Other Arts