Some of you may already know this, but underneath the love of Will Ferrell, the appreciation of a classy euphemism for genitals, the gratuitous use of the words motherfucker and c**t, is a girl who is incredibly snobby when it comes to film.
Yes, just as I don't really like fart jokes, I also am very pretentious when it comes to film. Do not get me started on the subject of why filmmakers should also be film critics. Or try to suggest that watching narrative cinema is a passive experience. I will crush you with film analysis. I will also talk for a very long time with little to no pauses.
As recent posts will suggest, I'm not so pretentious about film that I enjoy art cinema. That's for people who can't tell a story or be bothered hiring a crew that knows what they're doing. It's also for wankers who know nothing about film to discuss the power of the images. Yeah, all I see is Jurgen Haarbemaster and Vulva - helping all of us who prefer to explore film in an interesting way to take the piss about people who can't do it right.
Why, then, am I a film snob? Because I detest films that reveal nothing about either characters, genres or visual styles. I want to vomit at films made purely to generate revenue. I get irate when casting decisions are made purely on looks and not talent.
I like Ingmar Bergman films. In fact, I think he was one of the best filmmakers of all time. I could, hypothetically, talk about why Citizen Kane is so amazing, or why Alfred Hitchcock's films are perfect for several days. I love Jean-Luc Godard and I think Robert Altman is still the master of ensemble dramas. I also think Romero is the zombie film's real father, if not its biological father. I can find subtext in many films people consider to be ridiculous, shallow, or just plain disgusting, like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Which is all three, in equal measure.
But more than that, the films I admire and the films I want to make are so ridiculously wanky in scope, that sometimes I astound even myself. I want to reach that perfect combination that filmmakers like Scorsese, Tarantino, Wright, and Coppola have done before me: that perfect blending of style and substance - an exploration of film that doesn't feel shallow, using characters so perfectly that you like them or are fascinated by them even if they are merely a device or yet another exploration of film.
I want to explore the work of other filmmakers and develop my style from them. I want to make analyses of genre so powerful that they inspire a hundred nerdy blog posts like this one. I want to hear lines of my dialogue quoted on the streets and in the statuses of social networking profiles. I want a visual style that people literally wee themselves over, they're so impressed.
I began this quest with the first film I actually wrote, or came up with the concept for. It was a music video for a friend's band. It was supposed to be an homage to those wonderfully bad B-Movies with monsters in them, using ridiculously poor effects. Check out my earlier post on it - Sirens by Fictions, formerly Montana Fire. Whether it was through poor shot choice or whatever, it didn't work. So what we did instead was intercut the band fleeing from a monster with scenes from the 1958 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. What started as pure homage and an exploration of old filming techniques became an exercise in montage, really. An ability to create meaning between two disparate sets of images. And still, in essence, an homage to old films that didn't have the same kind of technology we do.
The next film was another exploration of genre and the conventions of the buddy-cop drama, much in the vein of Hot Fuzz. However, I wanted to put a twist on it by changing the location of the drama for comic effect: the two cops became dishpigs, and the police station became a small restaurant. It was designed to be a sort of origins story that would form the basis of a television series or feature film, however, again, being student filmmakers and therefore still pretty rubbish, the film had to be modified quite a bit from its original form. The bad lighting couldn't really be saved with colour correction in post, so it became a black and white film. The audio issues couldn't be fixed without a lot more time, either, so it became a silent film. Not just any old silent film, either: a 1980s silent film. I'm pretty sure it's the only one of its kind. While again, my aim was still present - to do an analysis of genre, it's not quite what I had in mind, though people were quite blown away with it, although sadly not the tutors.
Well, that changed with the film I made recently. While on my student exchange, I decided I wanted to direct a film to see if I could do what I had wanted to do for quite some time. And the film I had to make was a film with a non-linear narrative. That was the part that was the most exciting. So when I first started thinking about it, this is what I wanted to do:
Make an art film that was not actually an art film, but a series of randomly assembled homages to scenes in films that sort of relied on an artistic feel - surrealism and all that sort of thing. The techniques some early filmmakers were going to be played with, too. So the scenes I wanted to rip off were the following:
The in-camera editing style of Melies
The organisation of time in Un Chien Andalou
The dream sequence in Carrie
The end of Blow-Up
Good, right? Yeah. The film changed but the pretentious ambition I always had for it never changed. The original story goes something like this: a couple are on a way to a party. They're trying to take a shortcut suggested to them by a friend of the guy. They get lost in these eerie, surreal woods and strange things start to happen. They become angry with each other and the guy leaves the girl. While they're separated, he stumbles across something sort of awful, but while looking for her he trips and bangs his head, knocking him unconscious. The girl looks for him all night and finds him unconscious, thinking he's dead. He wakes up, and in his groggy state he tries to lead her to what he found, with her help. And what is it that he's discovered? They're in a children's playground. They've been lost in a playground the entire time. To top things off, a little girl is playing and she was been playing with them while they've been lost, taking their things and giving them gifts.
The way it would play out is that it would start with the couple fighting, then cut to the girl by herself, staring at something offscreen. We'd then cut to them at night, trying to work together. Then back to day time, and they've found an old tape recorder. Upon discovering that it works, they dance to the music. Then back to the girl, only this time we would see a little more and also we would see the little girl staring back at her. Then slight tension between the couple during the day when they are trying to find their way. Then we would return to the fight at the beginning and see the guy walk off. From here, the film would be linear but still surreal - we'd then cut to the girl looking for the guy and discovering him, then discovering the playground. Then, the little girl would begin playing a game of imaginary tennis and the girl would join in.
Oh, wanna know the best part? The film is called La Cour. Which in French is...playground. See what I did there?
Structurally, the finished film is still the same, minus the dancing scene (we didn't have time, shame), however, we shot in such a way as to make it even more confusing than I intended. Basically, the film goes like this: we start with the couple fighting. We then cut straight to the girl. Then, we cut to them walking together at night. Then the title. Then, the slight tension on the bridge during the day, followed by the repeated scene of the girl staring at something, followed by a little girl. It's now obvious that they're in a playground. Then, we cut back to the fight again, repeated but not quite as long. Then we see the girl searching for her boyfriend and finds him. It's no longer clear what's happened to him. Then we cut to them reaching the playground. The girl helps her boyfriend sit down and, seeing the little girl, throws the imaginary ball to the little girl for a while.
It's incredibly confusing, but now I say it's supposed to be. And it is - through shooting the film it became more about this couple in this odd, surreal wood setting. The playground at the end makes it a little more hopeful than absurd and ridiculous and I wanted the structure to sort of suggest the state of mind of the characters. Now it could even resemble the girl's memories of that time in her life.
I'd now like to share with you some of what I wrote for my tutors when handing in the film:
What sources influenced your practice in this work? This must include works by filmmakers and/or artists, but could also include works of fiction/poetry; theory; newspaper articles; music; dreams or conversations (for example.)
When I first researched this unit of the course in Australia, I originally conceived of an artists' moving image film, and I wanted to use this film to explore the relationship between art cinema and narrative cinema. The film would be, in essence, an homage to surrealist film techniques and the more abstract moments in some of my favourite films, including Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel and Dali, 1928), especially the quote from Bunuel about the film: “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” My rather lofty and perhaps pretentious ambition was to create a film that rejected all atempts to find meaning within it, using images from narrative films.
I then decided to develop a narrative and was inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone called 'Strange Planet.' In the episode, three astronauts crash-land on another planet, and without resources or a way home, tension begins to mount between them. One walks away and the others look for him. As they search, they find a symbol drawn in the sands. When they find him he is near death and before he can explain the symbol he does in fact die. As they continue searching the landscape, they make a horrific discovery: the symbol was supposed to represent power lines. They have been on Earth the entire time.
The films I wanted to pay tribute to were the following:
Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) - the scene in which the young lovers escape to the woods and dance to the song 'Love Is Strange'. I really liked this part of the film, because it represents a slightly surreal and almost absurd moment between the characters. I wrote a scene as an homage to this scene both to heighten the more absurd elements of the story, and to provide light relief in the mounting tension between the two characters.
Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976) - Susan's dream, in which she visits Carrie's grave – it was shot backwards and reversed in the editing process and I wanted to employ this technique, as I was still interested in experimenting with different ways of filming to create a surreal effect. Within my script for La Cour, the moment in which one of my protagonists, Laurie, is literally separated from her boyfriend Cabe, it is at a point when she is most affected by the landscape – she has been searching for him all the night and she is numb with cold and fear. I wanted to reflect this visually through the shots and also the editing.
Blow-Up (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1966) - the end of the film, in which David Hemmings' character revisits the park in which he captured a murder on camera. The mystery is never resolved; when he gets to the park, a group of mimes play imaginary tennis, and for a moment he plays along. The film is about a photographer who witnesses a strange event in a park, and the unassuming park becomes a dangerous other realm through the lens of his camera. He believes this evidence he has captured will change his life, but it changes nothing – he is still witnessing other people through a lens. After his experience and a night of hell looking for the woman who may know more about the murder, he returns to the park only to find the mimes who had disrupted social order in the street earlier in the film have disrupted the order of the park. At this point, the absurdity of his situation seems to hit him and he has nothing to do but to play along with the absurdity. I wanted to recreate this as the ending of my film, as I felt the story echoed this element of Antonioni's film (yes, I am actually comparing myself to Antonioni. How uncomfortable), the characters going through a night of hell only to be presented with an absurd and almost meaningless resolution. The horror of realising they had been in a park all along would give way, especially for Laurie, to a sense that she could do nothing now but to play along with the game she and Cabe had been unwittingly been involved in all along.
I was also inspired by the structure of the novel Catch-22, in which the structure of the novel reflects the memories of the main character, and one incident that forms the end of the novel is constantly referred to throughout the book, using one particular image.
During preproduction, and after consultations with Joe and discussing the look of the film with Sioned, I also looked to the television series Peep Show, which is shot entirely using subjective pov of characters within the show. This was to play up the element of the characters being watched and played with. This was because Joe suggested that the idea of who is playing a game with the characters could be clearer, and Sioned and I decided on shooting the film in the style of Peep Show, in that every shot in the film would be the subjective pov of one of the characters. Much of the shots we had using the tripod were designed to reflect the pov of the small girl we see in the playground at the end of the film. What I was suggesting most of all is that as the writer and director it was me playing the game not so much with the characters but with the audience, however, I'm not skilled enough as a writer or director just yet to make that as clear as I maybe could have.
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Picture paints a bad adaptation: Dorian Gray
When you love a book so much it changes your life, you should never think that the film adaptation will ever be as good. I've used this rule with the original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I wish I'd known better with this new British crack at Oscar Wilde's incendiary yet sole novel.
Whenever I read The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is often, I am amazed at the way this study of morality is so timeless and remains relevant even today. I've secretly wanted to adapt this book properly (see previous blog entries for more), and I thought perhaps I'd lost my chance when I read in Interview that Benjamin Barnes was playing Dorian Gray. Yeah...still have a chance to do it right.
Because the novel is really about the soul. Does it exist? What if we could see the ways in which we corrupt our soul? Would we use it as a constant reminder to be morally good, or would we use it to be bear the burden of all our misdeeds? It's also about society's obssession with youth, and what we would forego to recapture our youth. As Harry says, the only way to recapture your youth is to remember all the mistakes you made, and make them over again.
Which, by the way, is one of the very few lines of dialogue from the novel that feature in the film. I cannot believe the extent to which this film ignores the themes and concerns of the novel. All references to morality, pleasure and the soul are skipped over, so insubstantial that you feel they were put in as a break from all the sex scenes.
There are changes to the novel that make the film's plot and story seem weak. Sybil Vane's dramatic appearances are nonexistent, and therefore so is the reason for her suicide. And any credible reason for Dorian's dismissal of her. Dorian and Lord Henry, or Harry, become very superficial characters, praising only art, and pursue beauty at all costs, Dorian more so than Harry. And yet the writer has ignored this for the most part. The conversation that leads to Dorian's wish that Basil's portrait of him age is almost entirely superficial, but for the wrong reasons. Sure, there are a lot of conversations in the novel that would be hard to translate into film, but the dialogue has been paraphrased to the point of meaninglessness.
In the plot, essentially, Dorian meets Basil, who paints a portrait of him. He meets Harry, who takes him to a seedy bar and tells him to drink up. Dorian decides this is a good idea and gives his soul for eternal youth. The portrait begins to age and bear all the scars of his sexual conquests. He kills Basil after showing him the portrait, then buggers off for 25 years. Harry has a daughter, who Dorian falls in love with, Harry discovers his secret and tries to kill him. Then Dorian decides to let himself be destroyed with the picture after Harry's daughter Emily tries to save him. Dorian destroyed, the portrait reverts back to its former glory. Harry keeps it.
It seems like the novel, but it's so disgustingly superficial. The characters, the visual style, the narrative, and that's what it should be! Because describing in detailed paragraphs why the film is such a poor adaptation would take way too long, I'm going to list them here:
1. Dorian is a brunette. In the novel, he looks young, barely 20, and angelic, with curly golden hair and bright blue eyes. He looks like an innocent babe, which makes his eternal youth seem like a blessing. It also saves him from being completely ostracised from society. When people see his young face and angelic looks, they can't believe the stories are true. Ben Barnes is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but he always looks dangerous and saucy. You never believe in his innocence, even when he really is.
2. Sybil knows Dorian's name. She only ever knows his first name in the novel, and calls him Prine Charming. One of Dorian's former conquests knows this and refers to him so at the opium den, which leads James Vane to find him. In the novel, Dorian's engagement to Sybil is known only to Sybil and her family, Basil and Harry. Dorian fears his involvement with her death and Harry assures him that no one will ever know. Which makes it more shocking later when his past catches up with him in the form of James Vane trying to kill him.
3. Dorian's pleasure in art is absent. Which changes his relationship with Sybil, making it little more than a plot device. Dorian's treatment of her is truly cruel, the first time we see what he is capable of now his soul is separate from him, and Lord Henry's influence is almost total. His preference for art over some life is what makes both he and Harry more monstrous, and the breakdown of his and Sybil's relationship looks foolish, making her suicide foolish. Sybil is essentially an actress. All she knows is the theatre, and the only things she knows about romance she learned from Shakespeare. It is this investment in drama that attracts Dorian, and when she discovers reality, it repels him. So her final desperate act is her return to drama. It is diminished in the film, especially as it is Sybil who dismisses Dorian, not the other way around.
4. Harry seems intentionally malicious at points. Though Harry is shallow and cruel, his corruption of Dorian is never a serious attempt to ruin the boy. He sees a blank canvas. Just as Basil is inspired by Dorian's physical beauty, Harry is inspired by Dorian's naivety. He sees someone he can model after himself, someone not as bound to societal rules as he is, being married and held in high regard by his family. He's also bored with his society and with Basil. He's not as cruel as he seems in the first half of the film. I never thought Colin Firth would make a good Lord Henry. Harry and Basil are only ten years older than Dorian, so it seems strange to have them played by actors who are clearly older than him. My pick for Lord Henry was always David Tennant. He's younger, attractive, and roguish, and has those features that Oscar Wilde describes in the novel.
5. All of Dorian's indulgences are to do with sex. Ok, some of it is with drugs as well, and while it is heavily suggested in the novel that his exploits and exploitation of women are sexual in nature (and most likely with men, too), there is a hint that Dorian's relationship with other men involves other sins. Drug use is almost certainly one of them, but gambling to me seems another obvious sin he indulges in and allows others to lose themselves in. One of his former aquaintances goes bankrupt, and while paying for hookers and drugs all the time will help that along, so will gambling. And gambling was also frowned upon at the time. But in Dorian Gray, it's all an excuse to show sex scenes. Surely, sometimes it's more shocking to leave misdeeds to the imagination?
6. The film opens with Basil's murder. This suggests before we've even started that Dorian will become a horrible person. Which is ok, I guess. Hitchcock wouldn't mind it - suspense and all that. But then we get a flashback. A title appears on the screen: 'One Year Earlier'. What! No! Dorian kills Basil much later than that. And no one discovers Basil's body. Dorian makes absolutely sure of that, through blackmailing an old friend, Alan, into doing it for him. Alan is a minor character in the film, so he could have been called upon to do this. Instead, Dorian clumsily disposes of the body, it's found, and after Basil's funeral Dorian goes travelling for 25 years. When he returns, everybody is confused at his agelessness, and seem a little uncomfortable in his presence. But they quickly get over it. They get over it. People are surprised and jealous that Dorian never seems to age, which means they don't really question his strange appearance. Remove him from the picture, so to speak, and it seems shocking. But I get it, everything has to be so obvious in a film, right? So his actions have to have huge consequences...
7. ...Except that subtlety is Wilde's strongest point. The point of the novel is that Dorian's shallow decision ruins him, but it is a prison of his own making; he destroys himself, and other people and their superficial natures keep them from seeing his own. The comment is that society ignores the soul all the time. Dorian's morality, or lack thereof, is what has changed his life. There need be no outside punishment - internal punishment is enough. And this could have been done on film perfectly, hello, Crimes and Misdemeanors? The Player? And those films go further than The Picture of Dorian Gray. Their protagonists, rather than going mad at the lack of external punishment for their crimes, actually get over it. So the filmmakers could have been true to the book in this sense. They try, but it's too little too late. James is killed, but Dorian is only slightly haunted. So Harry then must deliver the punishment, by discovering Dorian's secret.
8. The homoerotic subtext from the book is clumsily handled. The novel begins with Basil nervously revealing to Harry that he may be revealing his love for Dorian in his paintings. He is afraid of these feelings, and needs Harry to help him understand them. Harry dismisses them, perhaps going on to have them for Dorian himself. In any case, there does appear to be a love triangle of sorts until Sybil's intrusion. The first film adaptation was made in 1945, in Hollywood, and so subject to the Hays Code. So, no homosexual subtext there. So, come the 2009 version, and no such strictures to be placed on the film, how is this handled? Terribly. Some creepy looks from Colin Firth, a quick glance at Dorian's naked back from Ben Chaplin's Basil, and...oh, a kiss and the suggestion of oral sex. Yep. That's it. Dorian comes on to Basil to distract him from the missing portrait. And it doesn't really work. In the novel, Basil's feelings are pretty obvious, and the film is all about being obvious. So why handle this theme so badly? It is very annoying. What would have been truer to the novel would have been Dorian drawing out a confession from Basil as a distraction, but also having Dorian slightly appalled by Basil. It seems obvious to most readers that Dorian and Harry have feelings for each other; they even live together at one point! Why not use more of that?
9. Harry has a daughter that makes him tame. This isn't so bad as it sounds, actually. In the novel, strong female characters are lacking. Wilde must have noticed this, because toward the end of the novel he introduces the little Duchess, Gladys. She's Harry's cousin, so they have verbal sparring matches and she seems able to see through Harry's nonsense. It's also clear that despite being married, she is taken with Dorian, who flirts with her but takes it no further. After the incident with James he is determined to change his life. I'm not this character is entirely necessary to the plot, but she is a strong female character designed to challenge Harry's sexist ideas. Making her Harry's daughter is interesting, but she's never quite as strong as Gladys is in the novel. I think she's also a nod to Dorian's country girl, whom he abandons as an act of what he thinks is contrition, and Harry thinks is self-serving. Again, I'm not sure it works, but I don't find it entirely offensive, either.
10. There is a ridiculous subplot involving Dorian's memories of abuse at the hands of Lord Kelso. It seems that the only purpose it serves is to show Dorian's imperfection and perhaps a more credible explanation for his propensity toward cruelty. This is handled differently in the novel, but it would have been hard to translate onto film. Dorian does a family history and finds that previous generations have indulged in sin and madness just as he does, and he wonders if he's simply inherited this behaviour and if the picture isn't just a figment of his imagination. But again, it is dealt with so swiftly in the film that it's clumsy. It seems little more than a visual device to reveal to Dorian that the picture is taking on all his imperfections. Which isn't strictly what the novel suggests.
11. The picture is a monstrous, living thing, seemingly infested with maggots. I can understand the film wanting to make the portrait more organic, but does it have to be so stupid? It's so loud that it's uncomfortable. And it seems to be able to see. In the film, we get subjective pov shots from the painting. I don't really like this. I like that the portrait remains largely unseen both in the novel and the 1945 film. When you do finally see it in the 1945 film it's truly hideous. I still find it disturbing. This is pretty much it:
Much scarier than the picture in Dorian Gray. The portrait should have been more like the shark in Jaws. Unseen and therefore more terrifying. And largely unheard.
It's not all bad, I guess. I did mention that Ben Barnes is ridiculously attractive? Ben Chaplin is pretty good as Basil. Colin Firth seems miscast. I like all of Rebecca Hall's appearances in film, so I enjoyed her turn as Emily Wootten. The costumes were pretty? Oh, I give up, I really hated it. I hated its guts. I vow to do Oscar justice!
Whenever I read The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is often, I am amazed at the way this study of morality is so timeless and remains relevant even today. I've secretly wanted to adapt this book properly (see previous blog entries for more), and I thought perhaps I'd lost my chance when I read in Interview that Benjamin Barnes was playing Dorian Gray. Yeah...still have a chance to do it right.
Because the novel is really about the soul. Does it exist? What if we could see the ways in which we corrupt our soul? Would we use it as a constant reminder to be morally good, or would we use it to be bear the burden of all our misdeeds? It's also about society's obssession with youth, and what we would forego to recapture our youth. As Harry says, the only way to recapture your youth is to remember all the mistakes you made, and make them over again.
Which, by the way, is one of the very few lines of dialogue from the novel that feature in the film. I cannot believe the extent to which this film ignores the themes and concerns of the novel. All references to morality, pleasure and the soul are skipped over, so insubstantial that you feel they were put in as a break from all the sex scenes.
There are changes to the novel that make the film's plot and story seem weak. Sybil Vane's dramatic appearances are nonexistent, and therefore so is the reason for her suicide. And any credible reason for Dorian's dismissal of her. Dorian and Lord Henry, or Harry, become very superficial characters, praising only art, and pursue beauty at all costs, Dorian more so than Harry. And yet the writer has ignored this for the most part. The conversation that leads to Dorian's wish that Basil's portrait of him age is almost entirely superficial, but for the wrong reasons. Sure, there are a lot of conversations in the novel that would be hard to translate into film, but the dialogue has been paraphrased to the point of meaninglessness.
In the plot, essentially, Dorian meets Basil, who paints a portrait of him. He meets Harry, who takes him to a seedy bar and tells him to drink up. Dorian decides this is a good idea and gives his soul for eternal youth. The portrait begins to age and bear all the scars of his sexual conquests. He kills Basil after showing him the portrait, then buggers off for 25 years. Harry has a daughter, who Dorian falls in love with, Harry discovers his secret and tries to kill him. Then Dorian decides to let himself be destroyed with the picture after Harry's daughter Emily tries to save him. Dorian destroyed, the portrait reverts back to its former glory. Harry keeps it.
It seems like the novel, but it's so disgustingly superficial. The characters, the visual style, the narrative, and that's what it should be! Because describing in detailed paragraphs why the film is such a poor adaptation would take way too long, I'm going to list them here:
1. Dorian is a brunette. In the novel, he looks young, barely 20, and angelic, with curly golden hair and bright blue eyes. He looks like an innocent babe, which makes his eternal youth seem like a blessing. It also saves him from being completely ostracised from society. When people see his young face and angelic looks, they can't believe the stories are true. Ben Barnes is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but he always looks dangerous and saucy. You never believe in his innocence, even when he really is.
2. Sybil knows Dorian's name. She only ever knows his first name in the novel, and calls him Prine Charming. One of Dorian's former conquests knows this and refers to him so at the opium den, which leads James Vane to find him. In the novel, Dorian's engagement to Sybil is known only to Sybil and her family, Basil and Harry. Dorian fears his involvement with her death and Harry assures him that no one will ever know. Which makes it more shocking later when his past catches up with him in the form of James Vane trying to kill him.
3. Dorian's pleasure in art is absent. Which changes his relationship with Sybil, making it little more than a plot device. Dorian's treatment of her is truly cruel, the first time we see what he is capable of now his soul is separate from him, and Lord Henry's influence is almost total. His preference for art over some life is what makes both he and Harry more monstrous, and the breakdown of his and Sybil's relationship looks foolish, making her suicide foolish. Sybil is essentially an actress. All she knows is the theatre, and the only things she knows about romance she learned from Shakespeare. It is this investment in drama that attracts Dorian, and when she discovers reality, it repels him. So her final desperate act is her return to drama. It is diminished in the film, especially as it is Sybil who dismisses Dorian, not the other way around.
4. Harry seems intentionally malicious at points. Though Harry is shallow and cruel, his corruption of Dorian is never a serious attempt to ruin the boy. He sees a blank canvas. Just as Basil is inspired by Dorian's physical beauty, Harry is inspired by Dorian's naivety. He sees someone he can model after himself, someone not as bound to societal rules as he is, being married and held in high regard by his family. He's also bored with his society and with Basil. He's not as cruel as he seems in the first half of the film. I never thought Colin Firth would make a good Lord Henry. Harry and Basil are only ten years older than Dorian, so it seems strange to have them played by actors who are clearly older than him. My pick for Lord Henry was always David Tennant. He's younger, attractive, and roguish, and has those features that Oscar Wilde describes in the novel.
5. All of Dorian's indulgences are to do with sex. Ok, some of it is with drugs as well, and while it is heavily suggested in the novel that his exploits and exploitation of women are sexual in nature (and most likely with men, too), there is a hint that Dorian's relationship with other men involves other sins. Drug use is almost certainly one of them, but gambling to me seems another obvious sin he indulges in and allows others to lose themselves in. One of his former aquaintances goes bankrupt, and while paying for hookers and drugs all the time will help that along, so will gambling. And gambling was also frowned upon at the time. But in Dorian Gray, it's all an excuse to show sex scenes. Surely, sometimes it's more shocking to leave misdeeds to the imagination?
6. The film opens with Basil's murder. This suggests before we've even started that Dorian will become a horrible person. Which is ok, I guess. Hitchcock wouldn't mind it - suspense and all that. But then we get a flashback. A title appears on the screen: 'One Year Earlier'. What! No! Dorian kills Basil much later than that. And no one discovers Basil's body. Dorian makes absolutely sure of that, through blackmailing an old friend, Alan, into doing it for him. Alan is a minor character in the film, so he could have been called upon to do this. Instead, Dorian clumsily disposes of the body, it's found, and after Basil's funeral Dorian goes travelling for 25 years. When he returns, everybody is confused at his agelessness, and seem a little uncomfortable in his presence. But they quickly get over it. They get over it. People are surprised and jealous that Dorian never seems to age, which means they don't really question his strange appearance. Remove him from the picture, so to speak, and it seems shocking. But I get it, everything has to be so obvious in a film, right? So his actions have to have huge consequences...
7. ...Except that subtlety is Wilde's strongest point. The point of the novel is that Dorian's shallow decision ruins him, but it is a prison of his own making; he destroys himself, and other people and their superficial natures keep them from seeing his own. The comment is that society ignores the soul all the time. Dorian's morality, or lack thereof, is what has changed his life. There need be no outside punishment - internal punishment is enough. And this could have been done on film perfectly, hello, Crimes and Misdemeanors? The Player? And those films go further than The Picture of Dorian Gray. Their protagonists, rather than going mad at the lack of external punishment for their crimes, actually get over it. So the filmmakers could have been true to the book in this sense. They try, but it's too little too late. James is killed, but Dorian is only slightly haunted. So Harry then must deliver the punishment, by discovering Dorian's secret.
8. The homoerotic subtext from the book is clumsily handled. The novel begins with Basil nervously revealing to Harry that he may be revealing his love for Dorian in his paintings. He is afraid of these feelings, and needs Harry to help him understand them. Harry dismisses them, perhaps going on to have them for Dorian himself. In any case, there does appear to be a love triangle of sorts until Sybil's intrusion. The first film adaptation was made in 1945, in Hollywood, and so subject to the Hays Code. So, no homosexual subtext there. So, come the 2009 version, and no such strictures to be placed on the film, how is this handled? Terribly. Some creepy looks from Colin Firth, a quick glance at Dorian's naked back from Ben Chaplin's Basil, and...oh, a kiss and the suggestion of oral sex. Yep. That's it. Dorian comes on to Basil to distract him from the missing portrait. And it doesn't really work. In the novel, Basil's feelings are pretty obvious, and the film is all about being obvious. So why handle this theme so badly? It is very annoying. What would have been truer to the novel would have been Dorian drawing out a confession from Basil as a distraction, but also having Dorian slightly appalled by Basil. It seems obvious to most readers that Dorian and Harry have feelings for each other; they even live together at one point! Why not use more of that?
9. Harry has a daughter that makes him tame. This isn't so bad as it sounds, actually. In the novel, strong female characters are lacking. Wilde must have noticed this, because toward the end of the novel he introduces the little Duchess, Gladys. She's Harry's cousin, so they have verbal sparring matches and she seems able to see through Harry's nonsense. It's also clear that despite being married, she is taken with Dorian, who flirts with her but takes it no further. After the incident with James he is determined to change his life. I'm not this character is entirely necessary to the plot, but she is a strong female character designed to challenge Harry's sexist ideas. Making her Harry's daughter is interesting, but she's never quite as strong as Gladys is in the novel. I think she's also a nod to Dorian's country girl, whom he abandons as an act of what he thinks is contrition, and Harry thinks is self-serving. Again, I'm not sure it works, but I don't find it entirely offensive, either.
10. There is a ridiculous subplot involving Dorian's memories of abuse at the hands of Lord Kelso. It seems that the only purpose it serves is to show Dorian's imperfection and perhaps a more credible explanation for his propensity toward cruelty. This is handled differently in the novel, but it would have been hard to translate onto film. Dorian does a family history and finds that previous generations have indulged in sin and madness just as he does, and he wonders if he's simply inherited this behaviour and if the picture isn't just a figment of his imagination. But again, it is dealt with so swiftly in the film that it's clumsy. It seems little more than a visual device to reveal to Dorian that the picture is taking on all his imperfections. Which isn't strictly what the novel suggests.
11. The picture is a monstrous, living thing, seemingly infested with maggots. I can understand the film wanting to make the portrait more organic, but does it have to be so stupid? It's so loud that it's uncomfortable. And it seems to be able to see. In the film, we get subjective pov shots from the painting. I don't really like this. I like that the portrait remains largely unseen both in the novel and the 1945 film. When you do finally see it in the 1945 film it's truly hideous. I still find it disturbing. This is pretty much it:
Much scarier than the picture in Dorian Gray. The portrait should have been more like the shark in Jaws. Unseen and therefore more terrifying. And largely unheard.
It's not all bad, I guess. I did mention that Ben Barnes is ridiculously attractive? Ben Chaplin is pretty good as Basil. Colin Firth seems miscast. I like all of Rebecca Hall's appearances in film, so I enjoyed her turn as Emily Wootten. The costumes were pretty? Oh, I give up, I really hated it. I hated its guts. I vow to do Oscar justice!
Monday, March 10, 2008
No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2007)
Note: If you’re one of those morons who thought the ending of this film was stupid, or just plain sucked, be prepared to feel really stupid.
No Country For Old Men, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, is the story of Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a hunter who stumbles upon a drug deal gone terribly wrong. Everyone’s dead, even a dog. So Llewellyn decides that rather than report the crime to the police, he may as well take the unclaimed drug money (a cool $2 million – not bad in the 1970s) and run. Unfortunately, he not only pisses off some Mexican drug dealers. He also pisses off Anton Chigurh (Havier Bardem), a supremely terrifying individual with terrible hair. The sheriff pursuing both Llewellyn and Chigurh, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), finds it increasingly difficult to keep up with this new generation of crime.
When I first saw that this film had won four Oscars, I was surprised. I wondered if it were really that good, that deserving (I thought Atonement had been robbed, quite frankly) of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ praise. The answer, in the technical language of a film critic? Fuck yeah. Now I’m wondering why it didn’t win more.
Every scene, every sound, every piece of dialogue -- it all feels entirely necessary. Every one of those 121 minutes is absolutely crucial to the story. The film as a whole unites to evoke the terror and the seeming helplessness of one of Chigurh’s potential victims. I have never jumped so much in a film, not even a horror film. The sound of the pressuriser gun that Chigurh uses, the gunfire, the sound of two cars colliding – the sound design on this film is immaculate. And so is the editing, the cinematography, the writing, and the performances.
And let’s just talk about the performances. Josh Brolin is fast becoming one of the most underrated actors ever. He is a consistently strong performer and his turn as Llewellyn Moss is fantastic. You’re a little disgusted by his behaviour, but you never stop hoping he’ll get away with it. I feel like Tommy Lee Jones has been playing the same character for a while now, and I know why; so that Joel and Ethan Coen could make this film. Casting Jones in the role of the Sheriff was a master stroke and it only adds to that feeling of being cheated by the film’s ending. And Javier Bardem. Oh, my Lord. You see him in his suit at various engagements, or looking fashionably dishevelled in a magazine. And you want to make babies with him. You just do. I know I do. Then, you see him play Anton Chigurh, one of the most terrifying characters ever invented and from now on, you’re going to see his face in your nightmares. Anton Chigurh is unstoppable: he’s almost cartoonish, so much like a supervillain he is. But he’s also a man trapped by his own distorted view of the world. A character tells him, ‘you don’t have to do this’. He responds by laughing and saying, ‘so many people tell me that’. He’s annoyed, and sick of hearing this, because in his mind he really does have to do this. The only amnesty he can offer his victim is a toss of the coin. That’s it. Bardem’s portrayal of this character is flawless. It’s fitting that both Bardem and Day-Lewis received their Oscars this year for portraying villains, because villains are really hard to portray convincingly. Bardem nails it. Absolutely nails it.
And now, for that much talked-about ending. In most films, the good guy wins and the bad guy gets his hash settled. The guy in the white hat gets the girl and the guy in the black hat usually gets a bullet to the guts. Now, that may be an overly simplistic description, but essentially it’s true in most films, even contemporary films. And if you see a film about two guys chasing one another, who are in turn being chased by Tommy Lee Jones, you expect that in the end the bad guy is getting that bullet he’s been earning throughout the film. I think at this point it may be time to explain some things about plot and narrative.
The protagonist (or, the main character for those playing at home) has a desire or a goal. S/he encounters many obstacles in the pursuit of that goal. The function of the film is to set up certain expectations for the viewer of that film. Often, a film will fulfil those expectations, i.e., the boy gets the girl, the bad guy gets killed, etc. But guess what? The film is also allowed to cheat the viewer out of having those expectations fulfilled. This isn’t a new thing. No Country For Old Men really isn’t the first film to have a ‘twist’ at the end. Nor is it the first film to set up certain narrative expectations and then cheat them. Casablanca, anyone?
And if you’re at all confused about why the film ends the way it does, perhaps you might like to consider the title: No. Country. For. Old. Men. Think about it. the film starts with an old man discussing what it was like to be in law enforcement in the ‘good old days’. This story is about a man who is finding the world increasingly difficult to understand. As a sheriff, he no longer feels as though he knows what the common criminal is thinking. And because he no longer understands the criminal mind, he feels unable to bring them to justice. Nobody gets what they want because they underestimate their rival. And that’s essentially why there’s no traditional showdown between the characters involved. And there’s an implication that this is not a new thing; essentially, from the beginning of time, weird shit has happened. There’s no escaping it. But Tommy Lee Jones’s character feels as though the modern world is moving forward without him. Hence, it is No Country For an Old man such as himself. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Now that my rant about film narrative is over, I shall sum up by saying that Joel and Ethan Cohen have entirely repaid their debt to the film community (you know, after the whole Intolerable Cruelty/The Ladykillers thing?). And I think I still want to have Havier Bardem’s babies. I think.
If you like this you should:
* Read No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy.
* Watch Fargo
* Replace that image of Anton Chigurh strangling the deputy with something more friendly.
No Country For Old Men, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, is the story of Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a hunter who stumbles upon a drug deal gone terribly wrong. Everyone’s dead, even a dog. So Llewellyn decides that rather than report the crime to the police, he may as well take the unclaimed drug money (a cool $2 million – not bad in the 1970s) and run. Unfortunately, he not only pisses off some Mexican drug dealers. He also pisses off Anton Chigurh (Havier Bardem), a supremely terrifying individual with terrible hair. The sheriff pursuing both Llewellyn and Chigurh, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), finds it increasingly difficult to keep up with this new generation of crime.
When I first saw that this film had won four Oscars, I was surprised. I wondered if it were really that good, that deserving (I thought Atonement had been robbed, quite frankly) of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ praise. The answer, in the technical language of a film critic? Fuck yeah. Now I’m wondering why it didn’t win more.
Every scene, every sound, every piece of dialogue -- it all feels entirely necessary. Every one of those 121 minutes is absolutely crucial to the story. The film as a whole unites to evoke the terror and the seeming helplessness of one of Chigurh’s potential victims. I have never jumped so much in a film, not even a horror film. The sound of the pressuriser gun that Chigurh uses, the gunfire, the sound of two cars colliding – the sound design on this film is immaculate. And so is the editing, the cinematography, the writing, and the performances.
And let’s just talk about the performances. Josh Brolin is fast becoming one of the most underrated actors ever. He is a consistently strong performer and his turn as Llewellyn Moss is fantastic. You’re a little disgusted by his behaviour, but you never stop hoping he’ll get away with it. I feel like Tommy Lee Jones has been playing the same character for a while now, and I know why; so that Joel and Ethan Coen could make this film. Casting Jones in the role of the Sheriff was a master stroke and it only adds to that feeling of being cheated by the film’s ending. And Javier Bardem. Oh, my Lord. You see him in his suit at various engagements, or looking fashionably dishevelled in a magazine. And you want to make babies with him. You just do. I know I do. Then, you see him play Anton Chigurh, one of the most terrifying characters ever invented and from now on, you’re going to see his face in your nightmares. Anton Chigurh is unstoppable: he’s almost cartoonish, so much like a supervillain he is. But he’s also a man trapped by his own distorted view of the world. A character tells him, ‘you don’t have to do this’. He responds by laughing and saying, ‘so many people tell me that’. He’s annoyed, and sick of hearing this, because in his mind he really does have to do this. The only amnesty he can offer his victim is a toss of the coin. That’s it. Bardem’s portrayal of this character is flawless. It’s fitting that both Bardem and Day-Lewis received their Oscars this year for portraying villains, because villains are really hard to portray convincingly. Bardem nails it. Absolutely nails it.
And now, for that much talked-about ending. In most films, the good guy wins and the bad guy gets his hash settled. The guy in the white hat gets the girl and the guy in the black hat usually gets a bullet to the guts. Now, that may be an overly simplistic description, but essentially it’s true in most films, even contemporary films. And if you see a film about two guys chasing one another, who are in turn being chased by Tommy Lee Jones, you expect that in the end the bad guy is getting that bullet he’s been earning throughout the film. I think at this point it may be time to explain some things about plot and narrative.
The protagonist (or, the main character for those playing at home) has a desire or a goal. S/he encounters many obstacles in the pursuit of that goal. The function of the film is to set up certain expectations for the viewer of that film. Often, a film will fulfil those expectations, i.e., the boy gets the girl, the bad guy gets killed, etc. But guess what? The film is also allowed to cheat the viewer out of having those expectations fulfilled. This isn’t a new thing. No Country For Old Men really isn’t the first film to have a ‘twist’ at the end. Nor is it the first film to set up certain narrative expectations and then cheat them. Casablanca, anyone?
And if you’re at all confused about why the film ends the way it does, perhaps you might like to consider the title: No. Country. For. Old. Men. Think about it. the film starts with an old man discussing what it was like to be in law enforcement in the ‘good old days’. This story is about a man who is finding the world increasingly difficult to understand. As a sheriff, he no longer feels as though he knows what the common criminal is thinking. And because he no longer understands the criminal mind, he feels unable to bring them to justice. Nobody gets what they want because they underestimate their rival. And that’s essentially why there’s no traditional showdown between the characters involved. And there’s an implication that this is not a new thing; essentially, from the beginning of time, weird shit has happened. There’s no escaping it. But Tommy Lee Jones’s character feels as though the modern world is moving forward without him. Hence, it is No Country For an Old man such as himself. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Now that my rant about film narrative is over, I shall sum up by saying that Joel and Ethan Cohen have entirely repaid their debt to the film community (you know, after the whole Intolerable Cruelty/The Ladykillers thing?). And I think I still want to have Havier Bardem’s babies. I think.
If you like this you should:
* Read No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy.
* Watch Fargo
* Replace that image of Anton Chigurh strangling the deputy with something more friendly.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
“I came across time for you”: Time Travel and Classical Character Motivation
In a recent episode of Doctor Who, entitled ‘Blink’ (Hettie MacDonald, 2007), the Doctor (David Tennant) attempts to explain the logic of time travel to a young woman called Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan):
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.
What the Doctor is suggesting is that time is not a linear progression; rather, it is in a constant state of flux, allowing people to revisit different moments in time. Under this view, time is never stable, and with the possibility of time travel, narratives can be rearranged because at any given moment, a character can change story events and story order. This concept of time being in a constant state of flux appears to be in contrast with the idea of film narrative, which demands a beginning, middle, and end. The way in which an audience member understands a story is through a particular structure, and the theme of time travel represents a rupturing of that structure. It follows, then, that a film narrative about time travel must follow a structure that can be understood by the audience. Time travel, at its core, represents the subversion of a linear narrative, because it allows the story to revisit different points along that narrative. But does this mean that time travel in film can be represented without some kind of linear narrative structure? How do time travel films negotiate the structure of film and its construction of time? This essay will attempt to explore these questions through an analysis of La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) and The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), with reference to Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995).
In La Jetée, a man (Davos Hanich) is obsessed with an image from his childhood. Just before the advent of the Third World War, he sees a man die at Orly airport. After the war, he becomes the subject of an experiment, which forces him to travel through time. In the past, he falls in love with a woman. At the film’s end, he travels back to her, where she is waiting at Orly airport. As he is shot down by one of the men performing the experiments, he realises that the death he witnessed as a child was his own.
In The Terminator, the machines known collectively as Skynet have enslaved humankind in the future. One human named John Connor has defeated the machines. In order to prevent this victory, the machines send a cyborg into the past to kill John Connor’s mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton), before she can give birth to him. Connor discovers the machines’ plan and sends a human into the past to stop the cyborg known as the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The Terminator is defeated and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), John Connor’s best friend in the future, becomes his father in the past. Sarah Connor leaves town, determined to keep John alive and raise him to become the leader he is in the future.
In Twelve Monkeys, a disease has all but wiped out the human race. A group of scientists are attempting to send human subjects back in time to trace the spread of the disease. They decide to send James Cole (Bruce Willis). On his first journey to the past, he ends up in the wrong year and meets a psychologist (Madeleine Stowe) who tries to assist him in his search for the truth. As the film progresses, Cole discovers that he cannot change time, and at the film’s end, he discovers the death he witnessed as a child was his own.
According to David Bordwell, ‘a discreet narration oversees time, making it subordinate to causality, while the spectator follows the causal thread’.[i] Bordwell is referring to the classical Hollywood cinema and its detailed conventions. If narrative is subordinate to cause and effect, as Bordwell asserts, then time travel films pose a problem for narrative. Causality in a time travel film works on a different level, because the chain of cause and effect is linked in a different way. Often, events are motivated by actions which have not yet taken place. Sarah Connor vocalises this complicated idea when she berates Kyle Reese, saying ‘you’re talking about things I haven’t done yet in the past tense. It’s driving me crazy’. In La Jetée, the actions that lead to the protagonist’s death have already happened when he was a child. With this complicated chain of cause and effect in time travel films, how can story information be presented in such a way as to still be understood by an audience?
Bordwell conceives of classical Hollywood narration in the following way:
The classical filmmaker needs an opening, a threshold – that concentrated, preliminary exposition that plunges us in media res. Events unfold successively from that. Advance notice of the future is especially forbidden, since a flashforward would make the narration’s omniscience and suppressiveness overt. The only permissible manipulation of story order is the flashback.[ii]
The classical Hollywood cinema’s imagining of time is not irrelevant to a discussion of time travel films. The way in which these particular time travel films negotiate time and structure can be better understood through an application of the classical Hollywood cinema’s construction of time.
La Jetée and The Terminator both begin with what Bordwell calls ‘a concentrated, preliminary exposition’. The former begins with images from Orly airport, with a narrator (Jean Negroni) who informs the spectator that ‘this is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood’. Through the voice of the narrator, and the still images, the audience is able to understand the story of a man travelling through time. The film’s opening is declared as a moment in the past, and the main story is told in a distant future. The latter film begins in the future. Images of machines rolling over human bones are accompanied by titles stating that ‘the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here in our present. Tonight…’
In the classical Hollywood cinema, time and story order are negotiated in two key ways. The first is crosscutting, and the second is through the flashback. Crosscutting is used to give the impression of two events happening simultaneously, and is not as important to this discussion as the use of flashbacks. In the classical Hollywood cinema, flashbacks are introduced by character motivation. Once the scene has been established, the accompanying flashback can be portrayed objectively. In order to have a greater understanding of the time travel film, the way in which the time travel film crosses from one time to another can be thought of in terms of a flashback. In a film such as Twelve Monkeys, the film’s climax is presented to the audience as a series of flashbacks. As James Cole attempts to discover the source of the disease which has all but wiped out the human race in the future, he has flashbacks of the day he saw a man shot to death at an airport as a child. The more he sees of this moment from his childhood, the more he realises that it is an important moment not only in his past, but also his future. All points in the story converge upon this event that Cole witnesses as a child, much like the protagonist in La Jetée, which is no coincidence, as Twelve Monkeys was inspired by La Jetée.
Bordwell notes that the flashback is introduced with a variety of visual cues:
Several cues cooperate here; images of the character thinking, the character’s voice heard over the images, optical effects (dissolve, blurring focus), music, and specific references to the time period we are about to enter.[iii]
In The Terminator, we are told from the beginning that the film will take place in the present, in one night. Aside from the nightmare vision of the future in the film’s opening, scenes of the future are motivated by flashback. The first flashback occurs as Kyle Reese sits in a stolen car near a construction site. The second flashback occurs after he and Sarah have escaped from the police station, taking refuge in a cave. Sarah asks Kyle to tell her about his world. As he begins to talk, she closes her eyes. We then go from a close-up of Sarah’s profile to the future via dissolve. We hear Kyle discussing his life in the future on the soundtrack, and a reference to the time period we are about to enter, through Sarah and Kyle’s discussion. It can be argued that in this film, the changing timelines of the future and the present are handled through a classical manipulation of story order.
Though the protagonist’s travels through time are not strictly flashbacks in La Jetée, they are introduced in a way that is in keeping with the classical Hollywood manipulation of story order. Each time the protagonist arrives in the past, it is motivated by a close-up of his face, suggesting a series of events relating to his memory. These moments are introduced subjectively, but are then portrayed objectively. The transition from the present to the past is expressed visually through a dissolve, a visual cue Bordwell notes in his chapter on time in the classical Hollywood cinema. For Bordwell, ‘character memory is simply a convenient immediate motivation for a shift in chronology’.[iv] Under this view, it can be argued that time travel films rely on a classical understanding of time to transmit important story information to the spectator, and this means that time travel must be motivated by character. In particular, it is often motivated by character memory.
Character motivation forms the focus of classical Hollywood cinema. Aspects such as plot, narration, story order, and spatial relations are all motivated by characters within the film. Bordwell argues that this is what drives these films, allowing the spectator to understand what is going on. He argues that ‘character causality provides the basis for temporal coherence’.[v] In La Jetée and The Terminator, time travel is motivated entirely by character. Authority figures determine that time travel is the only recourse to understand the impact a past event has had on the present, but this travel itself is only made possible, or is completed by, a particular character’s memory and/or desire.
In La Jetée, the scientists have been experimenting on prisoners, trying to send them into the past to understand the events leading up to the war. It is only upon meeting the protagonist that they discover the key to time travel is to find a subject who has a strong attachment to the past that goes beyond any physical or mental anguish the process might bring about. The protagonist is haunted by a still image from his childhood. It is the image of a woman’s face, frozen in anguish as she watches a man die. It is this image alone that allows him to travel to the past.
In The Terminator, Skynet, having been destroyed, determine that the only way to stop the uprising of the humans is to go back in time and destroy Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son, who is responsible for destroying Skynet and Cyberdyne Systems. Like the protagonist of La Jetée, Kyle Reese’s eagerness for the job of protecting Sarah Connor is motivated by a still image of Sarah, given to him by John. At the end of the film, we discover that the photograph is taken after the Terminator has been destroyed, as a pregnant Sarah begins the task of saving the future. The link between time travel and human desire is made explicit when Kyle tells Sarah, ‘I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have’.
The time travel film involves some imagining of the future, and in La Jetée, The Terminator, and even Twelve Monkeys, these futures are all bleak dystopias created by war or disease. In all three films, humans live like prisoners; starving and hiding from authority. It is the past that is more alive, more vibrant, and more beautiful. The spectator, much like the characters within the film, desires the past more than the present or future. While technological fantasy plays an essential role in imagining the future, these films in particular are devoted to the past and the present, and the way in which the past and present affect the future.
Though it may initially be a desire to make the future as beautiful and vibrant as the past, the characters within the film can only experience the beauty of the past for a short period of time. They cannot change things; they can only put a set of events in motion. The protagonist in La Jetée finally possesses the moment of his childhood just before his death. It is the same for Cole in Twelve Monkeys. In The Terminator, Kyle Reese can only ever be with the woman he loves for a few hours. In all three films, the characters that travel through time discover that this moment in the past they have been yearning for is the moment of their destruction. In La Jetée and Twelve Monkeys, the image that haunts the time traveler is both the beginning of the film and the end of the film, and the chain of cause and effect ensures that all moments within the film establish both the beginning and the end. In The Terminator, the image that haunts Reese is the end of the film, and perhaps the beginning of the sequel, more so than the beginning of that particular film.
According to Brooks Landon, time travel films reveal the inherent power of film to transcend the limits of time:
If we consider time travel films as the manipulation of our experience of time, then cinema’s most basic and fundamental special effect of movement from stillness constitutes a kind of meta-time travel story – not one told by cinema, but one enacted by the film-viewing experience. For all the time machines, time tunnels, and disruptions of the space-time continuum SF has imagined, motion picture technology may itself be the most effective time machine of all.[vi]
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.
What the Doctor is suggesting is that time is not a linear progression; rather, it is in a constant state of flux, allowing people to revisit different moments in time. Under this view, time is never stable, and with the possibility of time travel, narratives can be rearranged because at any given moment, a character can change story events and story order. This concept of time being in a constant state of flux appears to be in contrast with the idea of film narrative, which demands a beginning, middle, and end. The way in which an audience member understands a story is through a particular structure, and the theme of time travel represents a rupturing of that structure. It follows, then, that a film narrative about time travel must follow a structure that can be understood by the audience. Time travel, at its core, represents the subversion of a linear narrative, because it allows the story to revisit different points along that narrative. But does this mean that time travel in film can be represented without some kind of linear narrative structure? How do time travel films negotiate the structure of film and its construction of time? This essay will attempt to explore these questions through an analysis of La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) and The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), with reference to Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995).
In La Jetée, a man (Davos Hanich) is obsessed with an image from his childhood. Just before the advent of the Third World War, he sees a man die at Orly airport. After the war, he becomes the subject of an experiment, which forces him to travel through time. In the past, he falls in love with a woman. At the film’s end, he travels back to her, where she is waiting at Orly airport. As he is shot down by one of the men performing the experiments, he realises that the death he witnessed as a child was his own.
In The Terminator, the machines known collectively as Skynet have enslaved humankind in the future. One human named John Connor has defeated the machines. In order to prevent this victory, the machines send a cyborg into the past to kill John Connor’s mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton), before she can give birth to him. Connor discovers the machines’ plan and sends a human into the past to stop the cyborg known as the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The Terminator is defeated and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), John Connor’s best friend in the future, becomes his father in the past. Sarah Connor leaves town, determined to keep John alive and raise him to become the leader he is in the future.
In Twelve Monkeys, a disease has all but wiped out the human race. A group of scientists are attempting to send human subjects back in time to trace the spread of the disease. They decide to send James Cole (Bruce Willis). On his first journey to the past, he ends up in the wrong year and meets a psychologist (Madeleine Stowe) who tries to assist him in his search for the truth. As the film progresses, Cole discovers that he cannot change time, and at the film’s end, he discovers the death he witnessed as a child was his own.
According to David Bordwell, ‘a discreet narration oversees time, making it subordinate to causality, while the spectator follows the causal thread’.[i] Bordwell is referring to the classical Hollywood cinema and its detailed conventions. If narrative is subordinate to cause and effect, as Bordwell asserts, then time travel films pose a problem for narrative. Causality in a time travel film works on a different level, because the chain of cause and effect is linked in a different way. Often, events are motivated by actions which have not yet taken place. Sarah Connor vocalises this complicated idea when she berates Kyle Reese, saying ‘you’re talking about things I haven’t done yet in the past tense. It’s driving me crazy’. In La Jetée, the actions that lead to the protagonist’s death have already happened when he was a child. With this complicated chain of cause and effect in time travel films, how can story information be presented in such a way as to still be understood by an audience?
Bordwell conceives of classical Hollywood narration in the following way:
The classical filmmaker needs an opening, a threshold – that concentrated, preliminary exposition that plunges us in media res. Events unfold successively from that. Advance notice of the future is especially forbidden, since a flashforward would make the narration’s omniscience and suppressiveness overt. The only permissible manipulation of story order is the flashback.[ii]
The classical Hollywood cinema’s imagining of time is not irrelevant to a discussion of time travel films. The way in which these particular time travel films negotiate time and structure can be better understood through an application of the classical Hollywood cinema’s construction of time.
La Jetée and The Terminator both begin with what Bordwell calls ‘a concentrated, preliminary exposition’. The former begins with images from Orly airport, with a narrator (Jean Negroni) who informs the spectator that ‘this is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood’. Through the voice of the narrator, and the still images, the audience is able to understand the story of a man travelling through time. The film’s opening is declared as a moment in the past, and the main story is told in a distant future. The latter film begins in the future. Images of machines rolling over human bones are accompanied by titles stating that ‘the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here in our present. Tonight…’
In the classical Hollywood cinema, time and story order are negotiated in two key ways. The first is crosscutting, and the second is through the flashback. Crosscutting is used to give the impression of two events happening simultaneously, and is not as important to this discussion as the use of flashbacks. In the classical Hollywood cinema, flashbacks are introduced by character motivation. Once the scene has been established, the accompanying flashback can be portrayed objectively. In order to have a greater understanding of the time travel film, the way in which the time travel film crosses from one time to another can be thought of in terms of a flashback. In a film such as Twelve Monkeys, the film’s climax is presented to the audience as a series of flashbacks. As James Cole attempts to discover the source of the disease which has all but wiped out the human race in the future, he has flashbacks of the day he saw a man shot to death at an airport as a child. The more he sees of this moment from his childhood, the more he realises that it is an important moment not only in his past, but also his future. All points in the story converge upon this event that Cole witnesses as a child, much like the protagonist in La Jetée, which is no coincidence, as Twelve Monkeys was inspired by La Jetée.
Bordwell notes that the flashback is introduced with a variety of visual cues:
Several cues cooperate here; images of the character thinking, the character’s voice heard over the images, optical effects (dissolve, blurring focus), music, and specific references to the time period we are about to enter.[iii]
In The Terminator, we are told from the beginning that the film will take place in the present, in one night. Aside from the nightmare vision of the future in the film’s opening, scenes of the future are motivated by flashback. The first flashback occurs as Kyle Reese sits in a stolen car near a construction site. The second flashback occurs after he and Sarah have escaped from the police station, taking refuge in a cave. Sarah asks Kyle to tell her about his world. As he begins to talk, she closes her eyes. We then go from a close-up of Sarah’s profile to the future via dissolve. We hear Kyle discussing his life in the future on the soundtrack, and a reference to the time period we are about to enter, through Sarah and Kyle’s discussion. It can be argued that in this film, the changing timelines of the future and the present are handled through a classical manipulation of story order.
Though the protagonist’s travels through time are not strictly flashbacks in La Jetée, they are introduced in a way that is in keeping with the classical Hollywood manipulation of story order. Each time the protagonist arrives in the past, it is motivated by a close-up of his face, suggesting a series of events relating to his memory. These moments are introduced subjectively, but are then portrayed objectively. The transition from the present to the past is expressed visually through a dissolve, a visual cue Bordwell notes in his chapter on time in the classical Hollywood cinema. For Bordwell, ‘character memory is simply a convenient immediate motivation for a shift in chronology’.[iv] Under this view, it can be argued that time travel films rely on a classical understanding of time to transmit important story information to the spectator, and this means that time travel must be motivated by character. In particular, it is often motivated by character memory.
Character motivation forms the focus of classical Hollywood cinema. Aspects such as plot, narration, story order, and spatial relations are all motivated by characters within the film. Bordwell argues that this is what drives these films, allowing the spectator to understand what is going on. He argues that ‘character causality provides the basis for temporal coherence’.[v] In La Jetée and The Terminator, time travel is motivated entirely by character. Authority figures determine that time travel is the only recourse to understand the impact a past event has had on the present, but this travel itself is only made possible, or is completed by, a particular character’s memory and/or desire.
In La Jetée, the scientists have been experimenting on prisoners, trying to send them into the past to understand the events leading up to the war. It is only upon meeting the protagonist that they discover the key to time travel is to find a subject who has a strong attachment to the past that goes beyond any physical or mental anguish the process might bring about. The protagonist is haunted by a still image from his childhood. It is the image of a woman’s face, frozen in anguish as she watches a man die. It is this image alone that allows him to travel to the past.
In The Terminator, Skynet, having been destroyed, determine that the only way to stop the uprising of the humans is to go back in time and destroy Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son, who is responsible for destroying Skynet and Cyberdyne Systems. Like the protagonist of La Jetée, Kyle Reese’s eagerness for the job of protecting Sarah Connor is motivated by a still image of Sarah, given to him by John. At the end of the film, we discover that the photograph is taken after the Terminator has been destroyed, as a pregnant Sarah begins the task of saving the future. The link between time travel and human desire is made explicit when Kyle tells Sarah, ‘I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have’.
The time travel film involves some imagining of the future, and in La Jetée, The Terminator, and even Twelve Monkeys, these futures are all bleak dystopias created by war or disease. In all three films, humans live like prisoners; starving and hiding from authority. It is the past that is more alive, more vibrant, and more beautiful. The spectator, much like the characters within the film, desires the past more than the present or future. While technological fantasy plays an essential role in imagining the future, these films in particular are devoted to the past and the present, and the way in which the past and present affect the future.
Though it may initially be a desire to make the future as beautiful and vibrant as the past, the characters within the film can only experience the beauty of the past for a short period of time. They cannot change things; they can only put a set of events in motion. The protagonist in La Jetée finally possesses the moment of his childhood just before his death. It is the same for Cole in Twelve Monkeys. In The Terminator, Kyle Reese can only ever be with the woman he loves for a few hours. In all three films, the characters that travel through time discover that this moment in the past they have been yearning for is the moment of their destruction. In La Jetée and Twelve Monkeys, the image that haunts the time traveler is both the beginning of the film and the end of the film, and the chain of cause and effect ensures that all moments within the film establish both the beginning and the end. In The Terminator, the image that haunts Reese is the end of the film, and perhaps the beginning of the sequel, more so than the beginning of that particular film.
According to Brooks Landon, time travel films reveal the inherent power of film to transcend the limits of time:
If we consider time travel films as the manipulation of our experience of time, then cinema’s most basic and fundamental special effect of movement from stillness constitutes a kind of meta-time travel story – not one told by cinema, but one enacted by the film-viewing experience. For all the time machines, time tunnels, and disruptions of the space-time continuum SF has imagined, motion picture technology may itself be the most effective time machine of all.[vi]
Landon argues that it is film’s singular power to be able to portray past events as though they are happening in the present, and that this in itself is a form of time travel. Time travel and film do share the idea that time is a construct and so can be manipulated in certain ways. This is not being disputed here, but it is important to remember Bordwell’s argument that temporal order must be manipulated in such a way as to be understood by an audience. The key to audience understanding is in character motivation, and time travel films are able to manipulate temporal order through character desire and memory. This allows time travel films to negotiate the structure of film.
Endnotes
[i] David Bordwell, ‘Time in the Classical Film’ in Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., and Thompson, K. (Eds), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985). p.49.
[ii] Ibid. p.42.
[iii] Ibid. p.43.
[iv] Ibid. p.43.
[v] Ibid. p.43.
[vi] Brooks Landon, The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992). p.74.
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