Still Walking and Realism

What is real when it comes to cinema or art?  Can we lose ourselves in the suspicion of disbelief; a choosing to ignore our inner suspicions and lose ourselves in the story, believing for a moment that this is a real family sitting around and eating on the anniversary of the death of their son?  Or will our rational selves convince us that this is just a fictional representation?  And really, how will the film affect us, should we allow it to do so?  McGonigal wonders about the representation of the real in the world of cinema and gaming, stating that: “stories helped to define film as a dangerously immersive medium, capable of seducing rational audience members into foolish belief and producing an astonishing incapacity to distinguish the imaginary from the real.”  But she further goes on to discuss the fact that the audience chooses to pretend to believe.  Coining what she terms “the Pinocchio Effect,” she notes the audience’s unfulfilled desire to believe for real what they clearly know what is not real. 

This applies, not only to the audience’s view of the film, but also of the characters within the film and their interactions with stories.  As this is a blog post, I feel like it is permissible for me to be a bit candid in my review.  I didn’t have time to view Still Walking until I arrived at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving.  I asked my mother if she would like to watch the film with me.  Suffice it to say that this was, perhaps, her first encounter with a foreign film, and most certainly one of this nature.   The everyday conversationality of this film and its realistic depiction of a Japanese family struggling to bridge the gap between old tradition and new practices, between generations that don’t seem to communicate well might have been too much for her.  The ten minute discussions on sushi and continual walking up and down the stairs, as well as the arguments on the names of sumo wrestlers seemed to show only the mere mundane.  Often in film (and in theatre), the audience encounters moments of extreme circumstances, the life and death situations that make a film riveting.  Modern cinema certainly has a tendency to represent the remarkable, but Still Walking, perhaps in a memory of the early actualities, feels quite pedestrian.  But perhaps this humdrum quality is a better attempt to capture the real.  Certainly more real that any Tom Cruise film…seriously, any…

Brecht spoke of the urgent need for popular literature, stating that “telling the truth seems increasingly urgent.” (107)  He clarified that popular is defined as the people who are not fully involved in the process of development but are actually taking it over; deciding it.  In this quest, the masses take over their own forms of expression and enrich them.  And in this way, literature should give a truthful representation of life.  So, if the director wants to tackle the task of representing a truthful Japanese family, he must allow them to use both old methods of storytelling and new.  Traditional family life is represented in mostly still shots.  Very few cinemagraphic moments of panning are involved, and those that are deal primarily with nature.  Instead stationary cameras seem to capture a day in the life of this extended family.  It seems almost real in the dialogue, a family cooking together, flitting from subject to subject, talking around matters instead of dealing directly with them.  Further, there are a number of conversations that begin in the shot and continue of screen, just as they would for a stationary observer in the room.  There is careless jabbering between siblings and meaningful moments where they try to figure out how to deal with their aging parents.  In fact, there seems to be an excessive amount of dialogue in the pieces…the sister hardly ever shuts her mouth…as my mother frequently matched her comments with observations of her own.  The characters talk so much but have an inability to communicate about anything important; something true in any family.  It’s often easier to dart around the subjects of food than to deal with a son who feels like he can never measure up and a father who feels abandoned.  Indeed, in the brief moment when the father and son begin to have an actual conversation about something important, they are interrupted by a number of distractions.  It seems that in this realm, the filmmakers are following Brecht’s advice that with modern literature, we can’t rely on old methods for telling a story, but rather must use old and new in realistic writing; a realistic art that is meant to cause change. 

Brecht further discusses the psychological stripping down of the characters in an attempt to tell the truth; which is really the most important thing.  He says that we must “put living reality in the hands of living people in such a way that is can be mastered.” (109).  And further that “realism needs to be broad and political, free from aesthetic restrictions and independent of convention….writing from the standpoint of the class which has prepared the broadest solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting human society.” (109)  If Still Walking had been a more commercialized version of the storytelling, if it had chosen to follow the characters from room to room, to not use silence as a story teller, to use certain technologies sparingly and focus instead of doing something Bazin would approve of, which is to take still photographs and give them life and movement, it would not have been so successful in its attempt at realism. 

The characters themselves even deal with the concept of the real.  There are several references to the word normal and what it means to be a real parent.  They question whether the laughter on a television show can be real, and if a statement can be trusted if you don’t know who initially said it – like the story of the yellow butterfly of the comment about the corn that upset the brother so much.  The characters question truth, even perhaps demonstrating what McGonigal sees as the two kinds of play (make believe or make belief), which either protects boundaries of what is real and what is pretend or intentionally blurs the boundaries.  The mother projects her dead son onto a butterfly and her hatred and anger on the boy he saved.   The son defends that very same boy as a means of defending himself and his own failures.   Further, the mother uses a song to draw out uncomfortable memories from the past.  She both make-believes  and make-beliefs about what is real.  In fact, perhaps the mother could be accused of  “longing to believe in the face of the very impossibility of believing.”  She, like the filmgoer, is an intentional participant in a fabricated world; a world that helps her survive her changing one. 

Brecht states that storytellers have  “many ways of suppressing the truth and many ways of stating it.” (110)  And that their representation of truth must fulfill a purpose and their goal is to make people think.  And Bazin further clarifies that preservation of life comes by a representation of life.  He noted that “We are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-presented.”

The reproduction is the model in the process of becoming, and in that way, that “the cinema is objectivity in time” (14)  But of course, we know that these are mere actors telling a contrived story in a very convincing and often uncomfortable way.  The use of symbols and the chosen shots give movement to the representation of the real.  And those symbols are found throughout the piece.  The house is showing subtle signs of falling apart – bathroom tiles, missing drawers, etc. much like the family who barely communicates and sees each other but once a year.  The promises that “we should go one of these days” to the soccer game go unfulfilled.  Brecht further clarifies that we should not be afraid to put bold things in front of the proletariat, the audience, as is indeed the case with the bathtub scene with the father and mother.  In a very private and uncomfortable way, we find out about the father’s affair and that his wife has known all along and chosen to represent her own reality.  If the goal of Brechtian discourse or agit-prop performance is to make one think, that is certainly a task well completed by both the mother and the filmmakers.  The audience, in Brecht’s words, will be forgiving, so long as the message is truthful.

And that “the picture given of life must be compared…with the actual life portrayed.” (112)

And so it is with my mother.  She may not have loved the film, but it make her think.  She may have disliked the characters and their inability to say what was really on their mind, but that very thing opened up a discourse for her to say what was on her mind.   As Bazin noted, the cinema “allows us to admire in reproduction something that our eyes alone could not have taught us to love.” (16)  And in this realm, she, and we could appreciate this representation and what it aimed to accomplish.  And then she could go turn on Downton Abbey and feel better about life.

(500) Days of Summer, Semiotics, and Narrative Codes

(500) Days of Summer, Semiotics, and Narrative Codes

The “what-could-have-been”…in a non-classic story of Boy Meets Girl and they fall in love…or at least he does.  We begin with an establishing shot, a park bench overlooking a part of the city that we find out later is of value to the protagonist.  A closer shot of two people on the bench and then the close-up of the hands and a ring on her finger.  We feel as though we are about to participate in a classic Rom-Com.  Using the codes for romantic comedy as shared by viewers, the audience has expectations of what will take place for the next two or so hours.  As Bordwell put it: “spectators participate in a complex process of actively elaborating what the film sets forth.” (183)  Following his guide, we know exactly what the aforementioned scene means…young love.  Our set of codes leads us to a particular conclusion that the filmmakers then break into pieces.  We know this is a love story, as spectators, we are certain of that fact.  That is, of course, until a few moments into the piece where the narrator clearly informs us that our expectations are wrong and that this isn’t a love story. 

We should have known that from the start.  Aside for the cuteness factors of it loveable stars, there are obvious signs.  According to Metz, film is a signifying system and in it, each shot is a statement.  Our task is to decipher those statements using all our faculties.  The film begins with an almost cheesy wedding video montage of both Deschanel/Summer and Levitt/Tom growing up.  We have a number of perspective shots and continuity shots.  Specifically when Summer’s childhood self blows a dandelion into the frame of Tom’s childhood self, which then becomes bubbles.  The montage leads the audience in the belief that we are seeing the story of how these two people came together.  But, the illusion is shattered and a new reality – if you can present a fiction piece of film as such - emerges.  We are greeted with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental…Especially you Jenny Beckman…Bitch.”  But we simply laugh it off as a funny statement, and fall into the same trap as Tom, only viewing a part of the whole until we are forced (through repetition of events, dual shots, and non-linear narrative) to “look again.”

The fragmented narrative is told from Tom’s point of view, and often from the inside of his head.  Its non-linear story line jumps back and forward in time as Tom tries to figure out how and why everything went awry.  The spectator gets to journey with Tom as the title cards (denoting which of the 500 days is being explored, reflects the status of the relationship; with good days being brighter and bad days filled with shadows and gray) guide out journey.  It almost seems as if these placards allow for Tom, through fragmented memory, or the narrator, through almost abstract narrative, or perhaps even the audience to travel through time and space – something film allows us to do beautifully, to erase, or redraw or recolor our version of the past.  A version with is often tainted with the obsession of a view from rose-colored glasses or the haze of anger and resentment.  Metz spoke of how film operates as a visual language or system with encoded meanings.  While watching the film, the viewers decode without realizing they are doing so.  And those meanings can be found visually, aurally or in a narrative. 

This film certainly has several examples that would lead one to tie it back to the classic narrative film, as described by Kuhn; such as the use of cross-cutting and linking certain shots together through editing so the storyline can be followed.  The progression of shots within each scene certainly aids in the retelling of the progression of the relationship; indeed it seems as though each scene is actually a classic narrative of its own which are then mixed together to create the whole product.  One could also cite its use of close-ups when Tom is reflecting on his view of Summer and qualities or flaws (depending on his mood) of the parts of her body.  Cut-in shots, like the emphasis of the ring in a few sequences, or the look in Tom’s eyes, or the framing of certain scenes which are than underscored with contemporary music further the potential for characterization and create “the look.”   However, one cannot ignore its clear and rather blunt disregard for classicism.  While classics value linear storylines that follow the pattern of cause and effect, as well as clear plot resolution brought about through the journey of the hero to establish equilibrium, can one really determine the degree of closure in a film like this?  We can be mostly certain in the symbolic close-ups shown throughout the film that Summer’s resolution is complete.  These close-ups “serve to reveal emotions, and to some extent, individual personality traits of the characters.” (210)  She regains everything she loved and lost during her parents’ divorce that made her abandon her faith in love.  Specific moments highlight how she only loved two things in her life; one was her long hair and the other was how she could cut it off and not feel anything at all.  Along this vein, at the conclusion of the film, she is shown, once again with long hair, and once again, allowing herself to feel.  But the same closure is not present in Tom’s story. 

Perhaps this film is more closely associated with the tenets of Alternative narrative systems where the “narration of events in a story may not be organized according to any linear logic of cause and effect”.  Its conclusion leaves us somewhat hanging.  We know he moves on from Summer and meets Autumn, but it is left open to our interpretation after that.  Or the view that in classic filmmaking, there is a necessity of a credible fictional world; which this film establishes in its glimpse into the rather boring life of Tom, working as a greeting card copy-writer, but then completely breaks this mold in its big musical Disney-esque dance number, complete with shots of Tom seeing himself as Han Solo or dancing down the street with a marching band and animated bird.  Equally it follows a number of codes found within the art system of Film.  Parallels are found in the “temporal continuity through repetition and stretching time, by unpunctuated temporal ellipsis, flash backs or flash forwards.” (217)  The story is told through memories, as Tom digs back and encodes that mess of his relationship; but also the very thing that allows for him to wake up and change and get back to his passion for architecture.  In these perspective shots, we see Tom’s state of mind.  The other characters (sister/counselor, co-worker, best friend) fill their social required role for the piece without much background or explanation for their presence. 

Most significant of the shots, perhaps, is the split screen that highlights Tom’s expectations versus the reality of his encounter with Summer after their breakup.  The ring, so prominent on his friend from work at the beginning of the story, is now featured on Summer’s hand.  That whole moment, months before in the characters world, but just a few minutes in ours through the magic of cinema where time and space have no bounds, where the narrator simply states: “here was Tom, in her world.  And here was Summer, wanting him there” has become a thing of the past.  As Bordwell suggests, A shot by shot analysis can aid us in doing our own bit of understanding and identification with the piece.  Being armed with the codes that society has established as well as the accepted techniques used in filmmaking and editing can help us go farther into the piece.  A film, which I initially enjoyed while I sat on my couch and typed emails, has become something that fascinates me and about which I keep instructing my students…who knows if it’s appropriate…

Spellbound

It all goes back to childhood.  And certainly we have all repressed events or people or feelings from our childhood.  It might be something small that affected how we feel about certain people or places.  It might be something larger like abuse or neglect.  Perhaps an Oedipal or Ophelia complex or issue with the opposite gender?  Or it just might be that we killed out little brother by accidently pushing him off a ledge and impaling him on an iron fence….  But these repressed memories change us, and in the case of Dr. Edwards/John Ballantyne, they make us loose a bit of who we are, our past, in order to protect us from our guilt.  Baudry talks about the persuasive power of the cinema and its ideological influence.  He states that the cinema is an artificial location which shows hidden phases of our mental life. "It is the desire, unrecognized as such by the subject, to return to this phase, an early stage of development with its own forms of satisfaction which may play a determining role in his desire for cinema and the pleasure he finds in it." (184)  He further highlights the power of cinema to be like a dream.  A perceived reality and images that accompany, so much like the dream state, that allow the audience to explore the repressed emotions of other characters, and perhaps, even of themselves. 

The opening credits allude to the overarching theme of this plot.  Quoting Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; the title credits read: “The fault...is not in our stars, but in ourselves....Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind.”  This 1945 film deals with that very subject, plowing through the realms of the mind and repressed fears and memories.  The analyst’s job is to examine the mind and help the patient discover the truth that has been clouded with fear or contempt.  And perhaps our job, as the audience, is to examine the film and our response to it. 

From the very beginning of Spellbound, we encounter a variety of very clear statements about relationships with the opposite gender, the repression of feelings, and a psychoanalytic approach to dealing with the subconscious.  One female patient comments on how much she hates men and that she once “bit the mustache right off” of one man who tried to kiss her.  Yet she is an overly sexualized character who is being treated for her urges and aggression.  She equally seems to despise women, stating that Dr. Petersen tries to make herself superior.  Another male patient professes that his subconscious doesn’t want him cured.  As Freud notes, psychoanalysis is concerned with laying bare the hidden forces, those which specifically control our world our or perception of reality and our space within that world.  The distinct gender roles are certainly on the forefront of this piece.  Dr. Constance Petersen is taunted by a male co-worker for whom she won’t accept advances.  He calls her cold and emotionless, a “human glacier,” and states that she will “never be involved with any man, sane or insane.”  Once the jilted co-worker sees her attachment to Dr. Edwards, he pulls the Oedipal Complex out and shines it up for all the other doctors to see, suggesting that she has “outcroppings of a mother instinct toward Dr. Edwards.”  And indeed, she seems confused about her role in his life.  Is she the doctor to his patient, the lover, the friend, the object of his aggression?  She claims to be his wife (though that’s only to deceive others and protect John), though at times she seems to be afraid of him and what he might do.  She coos over him as a mother might a sick child and holds him like he is her longtime love as opposed to a man she met mere days before.  He frightens her and at the same time, seems to feel like home to her.  And in this way, he comes to represent the uncanny for her character.  Adding to this confusion is the role of the father.  Dr. Petersen’s mentor, Dr. Brulov, suggests to John that he is “going to be [his] father image”  And tells him to: “Trust me, lean on me.”  (This is, of course, after John attempts to murder this father figure.)  He is worried that John is making himself sicker by trying to forget and losing his grip on reality.  And working together, they can unlock the “secrets buried in your brain.”

Using the film noir genre, Hitchcock’s use of shadow, darkness and light adds to the discontent with the piece, particularly within the dream state.  The dream sequence, designed by Dali, creates quite the reaction in the audience.  It’s familiar and unsettling at the same time.  The eyes, lightening strikes, the cliff, the imagery of the door after door opening, all create the sense of disconnect with the real; a hallucination or a dream.  Further, Dr, Brulov suggests that: “Dreams tell you what you are trying to hide.  But [they] are mixed up like a puzzle.  Psychoanalysts have to put it back together.”  (An implicit nod to both Freud and Baudry there.)  Spellbound’s music furthers the effect of the uncanny.  The electric music, played on the Theremin, reaches a dissonant chord, especially in the dream or hallucination scenes, that make it sound off or strange.  And as an audience, as we encounter the text, we indeed have an emotional response to John’s episodes of mania.  Thus, the cinema proves a great psychoanalytic tool. As Baudry suggests, “The storyteller has a peculiarly directive power over us; by means of the mood he can put us into, he is able to guided the current of our emotions, too dam it up in one direction and make it flow in another, and he often obtains a great variety of effects from the same material.” (840)

Johns suffers from severe repression – due to his guilt complex from his infancy and triggered by the death of the real Dr. Edwards.  He has blocked out what happened to his brother so severely, that he has blocked out his own identity.  Objects are, at once, both strange and familiar.  With the cigarette case, he finds that it is an object “that frightens me, though I don’t know why it should.”  He has repressed how he burned his hand, represses words that are “in the corner of my head.”  This displacement helps him to squash down emotion.  Trying to help him cope with this disillusionment from reality, Constance reassures him that he can “remain sane by forgetting something too horrible to remember.” He seems to re-trigger the uncanny, arousing his own dread and horror, as he encounters a number of things that frighten him that shouldn’t.  As Freud would say: “What is uncanny is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.” (826)  Something as simple and seemingly non-threatening as repeating fork lines in white fabric, a pattern on a robe, or tracks in snow throughout the film become an object of terror wherein our protagonist loses his grip n reality.  And in this case, the dream becomes the reality.  It is, as Baudry would say, more real than real.  It goes as far as to even convince John of his own guilt without an evidence or memory of having done something wrong.   He seems to be, as one character comments, “bumping head against reality and saying that it wasn’t there.”  It’s a “desire to desire” to find the truth.

But it is in this very quest that reality blurs once again.  Freud surmises that uncertainty emerges in the not knowing if we are in the real world or a made up one inside the story.  As John experiences this phenomenon, so can we, as the audience.  When writing about the uncanny, Freud says that man can become somewhat of a doll when he is worked upon; the very thing that John is experiencing.  He further clarifies: “If psycho-analytic theory is correct in maintaining that every effect belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs.” (833)  Freud states that in a well designed story of the uncanny, many things are not clear. And we as the audience, often together with the character, are not sure of what is real.

If film is really a shadow of something, the question must then pose: what level of reality are we experiencing when we encounter a film?  We can, as Baudry suggests, get up and walk away from a film.  We are not tied down as were the prisoners in Plato’s essay.  Though we experience omniscience in seeing everything from the camera’s point of view, including holding the gun and firing it, we are still removed from it, becoming prey to our illusions.  Yet, we get into a darkened theatre, or room around a conference table, eating a bowl of delicious chili, and loose ourselves in the story, in the dream.  It becomes our reality for a time.  And in this strange environment, we can experience the uncanny.