Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  PAN’S LABYRINTH (WARNER BROS., 2006)

  The faun comforts Ofelia after the death of her mother and promises her she can enter the safety of the Underground Realm if she performs a final task. Del Toro’s extraordinary film explores the role fantasy plays in a world of darkness and cruelty. Frame enlargement.

  ( continued)

  360

  Modes of Screen Reality

  world, a fate that befalls all people. But her parents

  death, and the experiences with the faun pre-

  believed always that her spirit would return and live

  sented as a flashback at the moment of her death.

  forever in the Underground Realm.

  As a narrator explains the legend of Princess

  The faun tells Ofelia she is the princess and that

  Moanna, a close-up of Ofelia’s lifeless face shows

  she must perform three tasks to prove herself worthy

  time moving backward, her blood flowing back

  of returning. Del Toro intercuts this plot line with

  into her body rather than out of it.

  Vidal’s harsh treatment of Carmen and his brutal

  Del Toro thus poses a question about the

  interrogations of captured guerillas. Carmen’s preg-

  Underground Realm—is it real? Does Ofelia find an

  nancy goes bad, and she dies while giving birth.

  immortality with her lost parents that is denied ordi-

  Fearing for the life of her infant brother, and on

  nary people, each of whom is fated to die and van-

  the faun’s instructions, Ofelia abducts him from

  ish from the earth? Are the faun and the mythical

  Vidal’s quarters and rushes into the maze, pursued

  kingdom true? Or are they a psychological fantasy

  by Vidal. He seizes the child and callously shoots

  that provides Ofelia with some comfort in the final

  Ofelia with his pistol before the anti-fascist guerillas

  moments of her life but has no authenticity beyond

  capture and execute him. Mercedes, Vidal’s house-

  this function?

  keeper who became friends with Ofelia, finds her

  Del Toro shows that Ofelia’s fantasy is a response

  body and weeps beside it.

  to unbearable cruelty in a world of pain and violence

  As she dies, and in a colorful sequence

  that overwhelms her. The Underground Realm pro-

  with glowing imagery, Ofelia appears in the

  vides her with a safe and protected space. Is this the

  Underground Realm where she is joyously

  role that fantasy plays in human life—by creating

  welcomed home by her parents and by the faun.

  imaginary worlds as alternatives to the real one, does

  Del Toro has counterpointed the film’s two narrative

  it make life less unbearable?

  lines. Ofelia’s adventures with the faun and her visit

  The film’s power lies in its ambiguity. Del

  to the underworld kingdom have been entwined

  Toro leaves open both possibilities—that the

  with the brutal political drama of Captain Vidal’s

  Underground Realm is real and, alternatively, that

  efforts to torture and kill the anti-fascist resistance

  it represents the final flicker of consciousness in a

  fighters. They’ve been entwined as well with Ofelia’s

  dying mind. The ambiguity gives the film its poetic

  experiences of violence, cruelty, and loss.

  force and its haunting power. In Pan’s Labyrinth, Del

  Furthermore, the film begins with imagery

  Toro constructs a beautiful but scary parable about

  of Ofelia bleeding and dying from the gunshot

  fantasy and the human longing for an escape from

  wound, with the visit to Vidal’s post, her mother’s

  pain and mortality. ■

  CINEMATIC SELF-REFLEXIVITY

  However unusual or fantastic their settings and design, the other modes of screen reality aim to persuade the viewer that the world depicted on screen is real, that it is, for the purposes of the narrative, a valid world whose premises are not questioned within the body of the film. The fantasy world that George Lucas creates in the Star Wars films is, taken on its own terms, a self-enclosed and internally valid one.

  By contrast, the self-reflexive mode makes no pretense that the world represented on screen is anything other than a filmic construction. Films in this mode remind viewers that what they are watching is, after all, a movie. Self-reflexive films tell the viewer that the reality on screen is a movie reality. These acknowledgments take a variety of forms. Typically, they fall into two categories. They tend to be either comic or made with didactic intent.

  361

  Modes of Screen Reality

  ANNIE HALL (UNITED ARTISTS, 1977)

  Woody Allen, as Alvy Singer, turns toward the camera and speaks to the film’s viewers in this scene from Annie Hall . Allen breaks the illusion of make-believe in a moment of comic self-reflexivity. In popular films, self-reflexivity is quite common in comedy but rare in drama. Frame enlargement.

  Case Study AUSTIN POWERS AND KILL BILL

  Contemporary screen comedy often makes use of a

  A secret agent from the 1960s, Austin Powers is

  self-reflexive style. Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 , for ex-based on the many screen spies who had popular film

  ample, play with the viewer’s familiarity with the horror

  series in that era. These include James Bond, Derek

  movie conventions that are being satirized. Like Woody

  Flint, and Matt Helm. Myers weaves numerous refer-

  Allen, Mike Myers has made playing to the camera an in-

  ences to those movies into his own. Austin Powers in

  tegral part of his ironic comic persona. His Austin Powers

  Goldmember (2002), for example, costars Michael Caine

  films (1997, 1999, 2002) include numerous moments

  as Powers’s father. Caine is an actor closely identified

  of self-conscious comedy, in which Myers jokes with the

  with the sixties spy craze, having played secret agent

  camera, making humor by acknowledging its presence.

  Harry Palmer in several pictures (including The Ipcress

  He winks at it, grins broadly to it, and uses it to make a

  File , 1966). His presence in Goldmember evokes this his-

  formal introduction of key scenes, such as when he leans

  tory. Furthermore, Goldmember plays with the title and

  forward, smiles, and says into the camera, “Ladies and

  character of one of the most famous James Bond films,

  gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach,” introducing cameo

  Goldfinger (1964).

  appearances by the composer, who then performs se-

  While not a laugh-out-loud comedy like the Austin

  lections from his songs. Bacharach’s songs were very

  Powers films, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill , released in

  popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and their catchy melo-

  two parts (2003, 2004), contains a lot of dark humor

  dies are major emblems of the popular culture of those

  and outrageous wit. Veering from one mode of screen

  periods. Myers’s introductions of Bacharach, then, are

  reality to another, the films have a flashy, in-your-face

  moments of nostalgia and affection, and his use of a self-

  style that makes reference to many of Tarantino’s favor-

  reflexive camera emphasizes them.

  ite films.

  ( continued)

  362

  Modes o
f Screen Reality

  AUSTIN POWERS

  (NEW LINE, 1997)

  Austin Powers (Mike

  Myers), the interna-

  tional man of mystery,

  jokes and confides

  with the camera and

  viewers, thereby ac-

  knowledging the pres-

  ence of each. Here, he

  offers an affectionate

  introduction to a

  cameo appearance

  by composer Burt

  Bacharach. Frame

  enlargement.

  He audaciously switches from color to black-and-

  many visual and musical references to Sergio Leone’s spa-

  white for a climactic sword fight (this also helped the

  ghetti Westerns, especially The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

  film keep its R rating) and, without warning, goes

  (1966), to the Shaw Brothers martial arts movies of the

  from live action to an extended animé sequence for a

  1970s, and to Japan’s Streetfighter film series. The star of

  flashback showing a character’s childhood.

  those films, Sonny Chiba, has a major role in Kill Bill , as the

  With swordfights and graphic blood spurts, the story

  master swordsman who makes the heroine’s sword.

  focuses on a female assassin seeking revenge on those

  The pleasures of Kill Bill , then, lie in its self- reflexive

  who betrayed her. It is derived from (and it makes refer-

  style, as Tarantino calls the viewer’s attention to his

  ence to) Lady Snowblood (1973), a Japanese film that is

  playful movie in-jokes and to his audacious manipula-

  one of Tarantino’s favorites. Along the way, he also makes

  tions of picture and sound.

  KILL BILL (MIRAMAX, 2003, 2004)

  Like all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, Kill Bill is very self-conscious about its relationship to other movies. Tarantino references his favorite films and filmmakers, and he playfully manipulates picture and sound in striking, attention-grabbing ways. Frame enlargement.

  363

  Modes of Screen Reality

  GRINDHOUSE (DIMENSION FILMS, 2007)

  Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to evoke the style of 1970s exploitation pictures. Their film is a double feature composed of Deathproof (Tarantino directed) and Planet Terror (Rodriquez directed) and includes fake trailers directed by other filmmakers including Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. Throughout, the footage is scratched and torn and has frames missing to evoke the experience of watching an old print that has been run many times through a projector. The entire project is an extended wink at the audience. Here, villain Kurt Russell pauses to grin at the camera just before he does something really nasty. Frame enlargement.

  The self-reflexive mode works extremely well for

  The comic possibilities of the self-reflexive mode

  comedy because it promotes the intimate relationship

  assume that the viewer will understand the social

  with an audience that is integral to effective humor.

  norms, movies, and movie characters that are being

  Austin Powers and Kill Bill invite the audience to play

  referenced. Only viewers who “get” the references

  along and be as hip as they are by enjoying the jokes.

  will enjoy the humor these films offer. ■

  Comic Self-Reflexivity

  The tradition of self-reflexivity most commonly found in popular mass-market movies employs a comic design. Throughout Annie Hall (1977), director and star Woody Allen continually interrupts the narrative with a series of humorous asides and confessions made to the camera. By speaking to the camera, of course, he speaks directly to the film’s audience. Looking at the camera lens, he looks directly at the eyes of the viewer. During one scene, when Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) quarrel over whether she said going to psychoanalysis will change her life or change her wife, Alvy breaks off the argument, turns to the camera, and reminds the film’s viewers that they know what was said because they have been there all along, listening to the quarrel. Likewise, in a subtle way, the tradition established by director Alfred Hitchcock of making guest appearances inside his films reminds viewers of his controlling presence as director and, therefore, of the film’s status as a film.

  364

  Modes of Screen Reality

  Didactic Self-Reflexivity

  The second category of self-reflexive film style is used for didactic purposes and falls within the aesthetic tradition identified with the theater of playwright Bertolt Brecht.

  Brecht was an active playwright and poet from the 1920s until his death in 1956, and his plays include such classics as The Threepenny Opera, Galileo , and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. As a Marxist, Brecht sought in his art to have a direct impact on his social world and historical period, and to do so, he developed a unique and very influential approach to drama.

  Impatient with the conventions of the theater of his day, Brecht created his own theatrical forms that he termed epic and that tried to break down the barriers that separated spectators from the play they were watching. Brecht considered the illusion of naturalism or realism, as created in theater or film, to be an obstacle preventing playgoers or film viewers from reflecting on the connections between their own lives and the events depicted on stage or screen.

  Case Study THE BRECHTIAN LEGACY IN FILM: WEEKEND

  Brecht’s work in the theater continues to exert an

  Throughout the film, title cards serve to (1) intro-

  enormously powerful influence on filmmakers. French

  duce and set off a given scene from the surrounding

  director Jean-Luc Godard is probably the most famous

  context of the narrative, (2) tell viewers what it is they

  Brechtian filmmaker currently working. Godard’s films

  are about to see, (3) remind viewers of the filmmaker’s

  offer a virtual catalogue of Brechtian cinematic tech-

  intrusion on the narrative, and (4) emphasize the way

  niques, that is, techniques that break the illusion that

  the filmmaker has chosen to shape and organize the

  the spectator is watching a real, authentic world on

  structure of the film. By calling attention to the film’s

  screen rather than a movie. These techniques enable

  methods of constructing its images and narrative, each

  Godard to speak directly to his audience as author

  of these functions is consistent with the Brechtian goal

  rather than indirectly through the characters and ac-

  of breaking the illusion of reality exerted by the screen

  tion of a film. Weekend (1967), Godard’s savage satire

  world.

  of modern consumer society, employs three kinds of

  The title card “Totem and Taboo” prefaces the

  didactic, self-reflexive techniques. These are the use of

  film’s most horrific sequence, dealing with the can-

  printed titles, nontraditional camera techniques, and

  nibalism and mutilation of English tourists at the hands

  the incorporation of imaginary characters and mo-

  of a guerrilla army based in the countryside. This title

  ments of performance self-disclosure.

  derives from a famous book by Sigmund Freud dealing

  with primitive social organization and behavioral taboos

  Titles

  in human ancestry. Here, the self-reflexive qualities are

  Title cards break up the narrative action of Weekend ,

  multiple. In addition to the four functions described

  which follows the comic and violent misadventures of a

  above, the title card tel
ls the viewer that the scenes that

  middle-class couple journeying across France on holiday.

  follow will contain shocking and taboo imagery, as in-

  The printed titles offer ironic and poetic commentaries on

  deed they do, and for viewers who know the reference,

  the narrative. During the opening credits of the film, two

  this acknowledgment positions the scenes in relation to

  title cards proclaim, with some irony, that this is “a film

  Freud’s famous work.

  adrift in the cosmos” and “a film found on a dump.” A

  long musical sequence in the middle of the film, during

  Nontraditional Camera Techniques

  which a pianist performs a Mozart sonata as the camera

  These are a second method used by Godard to create

  tracks three times around the perimeter of a farmyard,

  self-reflexive style in Weekend. Two sequences stand out

  is introduced by flash-cut inserts of the title “Musical

  for their use of radical camerawork. The tracking shot

  Action.”

  along the row of stalled cars and the circular tracking

  365

  Modes of Screen Reality

  movements around the farmyard during the musical

  sciences, prompting Roland to mutter that the film they

  interlude extend the length of these shots and scenes

  are in (and the viewer is watching) must be rotten—it’s

  to a point many viewers find unbearable, especially

  full of crazy people. His remark is a moment of perfor-

  because no new narrative information is being dis-

  mance self-disclosure in which the actor steps out of

  closed. However, the tracking shots go on for so long

  character to evaluate the quality of the film in which he

  that the visual device—camera movement—becomes

  appears. Of course, Godard does not believe he’s mak-

  the subject of the shots. By elaborating camera move-

  ing a rotten film and so the evaluation is ironic.

  ment at such length, the style becomes self-reflexive

  For the Brechtian tradition, this is precisely the at-

  by making the viewer acutely aware of the visual

  titude to be combated, and it is what motivates the use

  design. As in comic uses, however, self-reflexiveness

  of self-reflexive techniques. By breaking the spell of re-

  depends on the viewer’s knowledge of the norm that