Film Form Chapter 1’s analyses of scenes from Juno and the Star Wars series provided us with a small taste of how the various elements of movies work. We saw how the filmmakers coordinated performance, composition, sound, and editing to create meaning and tell a story. All of these elements were carefully chosen and controlled by the filmmakers to produce each movie’s form. If we’ve learned nothing else so far, we can at least now say with confidence that very little in any movie is left to chance. Each of the multiple systems that together become the “complex synthesis” that we know as a movie is highly organized and deliberately assembled and sculpted by filmmakers. For example, mise-en-scène, one elemental system of film, comprises design elements such as lighting, setting, props, costumes, and makeup within individual shots. Sound, another elemental system, is organized into a series of dialogue, music, ambience, and effects tracks. Narrative is structured into acts that establish, develop, and resolve character conflict. Editing juxtaposes individual shots to create sequences (a series of shots unified by theme or purpose), arranges these sequences into scenes (complete units of plot action), and from these scenes builds a movie. The synthesis of all of these elemental systems (and others not mentioned above) constitutes the overall form that the movie takes. We’ll spend some time with each of these elemental formal systems in later chapters, but first let’s take a closer look at the concept of form itself, beginning with the correlation between form and the content it shapes and communicate Form and Content The terms form and content crop up in almost any scholarly discussion of the arts, but what do they mean, and why are they so often paired? To start with, we can define content as the subject of an artwork (what the work is about) and form as the means by which that subject is expressed and experienced. The two terms are often paired because works of art need them both. Content provides something to express; form supplies the methods and techniques necessary to present it to the audience. And form doesn’t just allow us to see the subject/content; it lets us see that content in a particular way. Form enables the artist to shape our particular experience and interpretation of that content. In the world of movies, form is cinematic language: the tools and techniques that filmmakers use to convey meaning and mood to the viewer, including lighting, mise-en-scène, cinematography, performance, editing, and sound—in other words, the content of most of this textbook. If we consider the Juno scene analyzed in Chapter 1, the content is: Juno in the waiting room. We could be more specific and say that the content is Juno thinking about fingernails and changing her mind. The form used to express that subject and meaning includes decor, patterns, implied proximity, point of view, moving camera, and sound. The relationship between form and content is central not just to our study of movies; it is an underlying concern in all art. An understanding of the two intersecting concepts can help us to distinguish one work of art from another or to compare the styles and visions of different artists approaching the same subject. If we look at three sculptures of a male figure, for example—by Praxiteles, Alberto Giacometti, and Keith Haring, artists spanning history from ancient Greece to the present—we can see crucial differences in vision, style, and meaning (see the illustrations on p. 34). Each sculpture can be said to express the same subject, the male body, but they clearly differ in form. Of the three, Praxiteles’s sculpture, Hermes Carrying the Infant Dionysus, comes closest to resembling a flesh-and-blood body. Giacometti’s Walking Man II (1960) elongates and exaggerates anatomical features, but the figure remains recognizable as a male human. Haring’s Self Portrait (1989) smooths out and simplifies the contours of the human body to create an even more abstract rendering. Once we recognize the formal differences and similarities among these three sculptures, we can ask questions about how the respective forms shape our emotional and intellectual responses to the subject matter. Look again at the ancient Greek sculpture. Although there might once have been a living man whose body looked like this, very few bodies do. The sculpture is an idealization—less a matter of recording the way a particular man actually looked than of visually describing an ideal male form. As such, it is as much an interpretation of the subject matter as—and thus no more “real” than—the other two page34sculptures. Giacometti’s version, because of its exaggerated form, conveys a sense of isolation and nervousness, perhaps even anguish. Haring’s sculpture, relying on stylized and almost cartoon-like form, seems more playful and mischievous than the other two. Suddenly, because of the different form each sculpture takes, we realize that the content of each has changed: they are no longer about the same subject. Praxiteles’s sculpture is somehow about defining an ideal; Giacometti’s page35seems to reach for something that lies beneath the surface of human life and the human form; and Haring’s appears to celebrate the body as a source of joy. As we become more attentive to their formal differences, these sculptures become more unlike each other in their content, too. Thus form and content—rather than being separate things that come together to produce art—are instead two aspects of the entire formal system of a work of art. They are interrelated, interdependent, and interactive. Movies Manipulate Space and Time in Unique Ways Some of the arts, such as architecture, are concerned mostly with space; others, such as music, are related mainly to time. But movies manipulate space and time equally well, so they are both a spatial and a temporal art form. Movies can move seamlessly from one space to another (say, from a room to a landscape to outer space), or make space move (as when the camera turns around or away from its subject, changing the physical, psychological, or emotional relationship between the viewer and the subject), or fragment time in many different ways. Only movies can record real time in its chronological passing as well as subjective versions of time passing—slow motion, for example, or extreme compression of vast swaths of time. On the movie screen, space and time are relative to each other, and we can’t separate them or perceive one without the other. The movies give time to space and space to time, a phenomenon that art historian and film theorist Erwin Panofsky describes as the dynamization of space and the spatialization of time.1 To understand this principle of “co-expressibility,” compare your experiences of space when you watch a play and when you watch a movie. As a spectator at a play in the theater, your relationship to the stage, the settings, and the actors is fixed. Your perspective on these things is determined by the location of your seat, and everything on the stage remains the same size in relation to the entire stage. Sets may change between scenes, but within scenes the set remains, for the most part, in place. No matter how skillfully constructed and painted the set is, you know (because of the clear boundaries between the set and the rest of the theater) that it is not real and that when actors go through doors in the set’s walls, they go backstage or into the wings at the side of the stage, not into a continuation of the world portrayed on the stage. Camera as Mediator interactive: Film By contrast, when you watch a movie, your relationship to the space portrayed on-screen can be flexible. You still sit in a fixed seat, but the screen images move: the spatial relationships on the screen may constantly change, and the film directs your gaze. Suppose, for example, that during a scene in which two characters meet at a bar, the action suddenly flashes forward to their later rendezvous at an apartment, then flashes back to the conversation at the bar, and so on; or a close-up focuses your attention on one character’s (or both characters’) lips. A live theater performance can attempt versions of such spatial and temporal effects, but a play can’t do so as seamlessly, immediately, persuasively, or intensely as a movie can. If one of the two actors in that bar scene were to back away from the other and thus disappear from the screen, you would perceive her as moving to another part of the bar; that is, into a continuation of the space already established in the scene. You can easily imagine this movement due to the fluidity of movie space, more of which is necessarily suggested than is shown. The motion-picture camera doesn’t simply record the space in front of it: it deliberately determines and controls our perception of cinematic space. In the hands of expressive filmmakers, the camera selects what space we see and uses framing, lenses, and movement to determine exactly how we see that space. This process, by which an agent transfers something from one place to another (in this case, the camera transferring aspects of space to the viewer) is known as mediation. When we watch a movie, especially under ideal conditions with a large screen in a darkened room, we identify with the lens. In other words, viewers exchange the viewpoint of their own eyes for the mediated viewpoint of the camera. The camera captures space differently than do the eyes, which have peripheral vision and can only move through space (and time) along with the rest of the body. The camera’s viewpoint is limited only by the edges of the frame. It fragments space into multiple edited images that can jump instantaneously between different angles and positions, looking through variable lenses that present depth and perspective in a number of ways. And yet, because of our natural tendency to use visual information to understand the space around us, the brain is able to automatically accept and process the camera’s different way of seeing and use that mediated information to comprehend cinematic space. Cinema’s ability to mediate space is illustrated in Charles Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925). This brilliant comedy portrays the adventures of two prospectors: the “Little Fellow” (Chaplin) and his partner, Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain). After many twists and turns of the plot, the two find themselves sharing an isolated cabin. At night, the winds of a fierce storm blow the cabin to the edge of a cliff, leaving it precariously balanced on the brink of an abyss. Waking and walking about, the Little Fellow slides toward the door (and almost certain death). The danger is established by our first seeing the sharp precipice on which the cabin is located and then by seeing the Little Fellow sliding toward the door that opens out over the chasm. Subsequently, we see him and Big Jim engaged in a struggle for survival that requires them to maintain the balance of the cabin on the edge of the cliff. The suspense exists because individual shots—one made outdoors, the other safely in a studio—have been edited together to create the illusion that they form part of a complete space. As we watch the cabin sway and teeter on the cliff’s edge, we imagine the hapless adventurers inside; when the action cuts to the interior of the cabin and we see the floor pitching back and forth, we imagine the cabin perched precariously on the edge. The experience of these shots as a continuous record of action occurring in a complete (and realistic) space is an illusion that no other art form can convey as effectively as movies can. Fundamentals of Film Form The remaining chapters in this book describe the major formal aspects of film—narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, acting, editing, sound—to provide you with a beginning vocabulary for talking about film form more specifically. Before we study these individual formal elements, however, let’s briefly discuss three fundamental principles of film form: Invisibility and Cinematic Language The moving aspect of moving pictures is one reason for this invisibility. Movies simply move too fast for even the most diligent viewers to consciously consider everything they’ve seen. When we read a book, we can pause to ponder the meaning or significance of any word, sentence, or passage. Our eyes often flit back to review something we’ve already read in order to further comprehend its meaning or to place a new passage in context. Similarly, we can stand and study a painting or sculpture or photograph for as long as we require to absorb whatever meaning we need or want from it. But until very recently, the moviegoer’s relationship with every cinematic composition has been transitory. We experience a movie shot, which is capable of delivering multiple layers of visual and auditory information, for the briefest of moments before it is taken away and replaced with another moving image and another and another. If you are watching a movie the way it is designed to be experienced, there is little time to contemplate the various potential meanings of any single movie moment. Recognizing a viewer’s tendency (especially when sitting in a dark theater, staring at a large screen) to identify subconsciously with the camera’s viewpoint, early filmmaking pioneers created a film grammar (or cinematic language) that draws upon the way we automatically interpret visual information in our real lives, thus allowing audiences to absorb movie meaning intuitively—and instantly. The fade-out/fade-in is one of the most straightforward examples of this phenomenon. When such a transition is meant to convey a passage of time between scenes, the last shot of a scene grows gradually darker (fades out) until the screen is rendered black for a moment. The first shot of the subsequent scene then fades in out of the darkness. Viewers don’t have to think about what this means; our daily experience of time’s passage marked by the setting and rising of the sun lets us understand intuitively that significant story time has elapsed over that very brief moment of screen darkness. A low-angle shot communicates in a similarly hidden fashion. When, near the end of Juno (2007; director Jason Reitman), we see the title character happily transformed back into a “normal” teenager, our sense of her newfound empowerment is heightened by the low angle from which this (and the next) shot is captured. Viewers’ shared experience of literally looking up at powerful figures—people on stages, at podiums, memorialized in statues, or simply bigger than them—sparks an automatic interpretation of movie subjects seen from page9this angle. Depending on context, we see these figures as strong, noble, or threatening. Cinematic invisibility: low angle When it views a subject from a low camera angle, cinematic language taps our instinctive associat ion of figures who we must literally “look up to” with figurative or literal power. In this case, the p enultimate scene in Juno emphasizes the newfound freedom and resultant empowerment the titl e character feels by presenting her from a low angle for the first time in the film. This is all very well; the immediacy of cinematic language is what makes movies one of the most visceral experiences that art has to offer. The problem is that it also makes it all too easy to take movie meaning for granted. The relatively seamless presentation of visual and narrative information found in most movies can also cloud our search for movie meaning. To exploit cinema’s capacity for transporting audiences into the world of the story, the commercial filmmaking process stresses polished continuity of lighting, performance, costume, makeup, and movement to smooth transitions between shots and scenes, thus minimizing any distractions that might remind viewers that they’re watching a highly manipulated, and manipulative, artificial reality. Cutting on action is one of the most common editing techniques designed to hide the instantaneous and potentially jarring shift from one camera viewpoint to another. When connecting one shot to the next, a film editor often ends the first shot in the middle of a continuing action and starts the connecting shot at some point in the same action. As a result, the action flows so continuously over the cut between different moving images that most viewers fail to register the switch. As with all things cinematic, invisibility has its exceptions. From the earliest days of moviemaking, innovative filmmakers have rebelled against the notion of hidden structures and meaning. The pioneering Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein believed that every edit, far from being invisible, should be very noticeable—a clash or collision of contiguous shots, rather than a seamless transition from one shot to the next. Filmmakers whose work is labeled “experimental”—inspired by Eisenstein and other predecessors—embrace self-reflexive styles that confront and confound conventional notions of continuity. Even some commercial films use techniques that undermine invisibility: in The Limey (1999), for example, Hollywood filmmaker Steven Soderbergh deliberately jumbles spatial and chronological continuity, forcing viewers to actively scrutinize the cinematic structures on-screen in order to assemble, and thus comprehend, the story. But most scenes in most films that most of us watch rely heavily on largely invisible techniques that convey meaning intuitively. It’s not that cinematic language is impossible to spot; you simply have to know what you’re looking for. And soon, you will. The rest of this book is dedicated to helping you identify and appreciate each of the many different secret ingredients that movies blend to convey meaning. Luckily for you, motion pictures have been liberated from the imposed impermanence that helped create all this cinematic invisibility in the first place. Thanks to DVDs, Blu-rays, digital files, and streaming video, you can now watch a movie in much the same way you read a book: pausing to scrutinize, ponder, or review as necessary. This relatively new relationship between movies and viewers will surely spark new approaches to cinematic language and attitudes toward invisibility. That’s for future filmmakers, maybe including you, to decide. page10For now, these viewing technologies allow students of film like yourself to study movies with a lucidity and precision that was impossible for your predecessors. But not even repeated viewings can reveal those movie messages hidden by our own preconceptions and belief systems. Before we can detect and interpret these meanings, we must first be aware of the ways that expectations and cultural traditions obscure what movies have to say. Cultural Invisibility The same commercial instinct that inspires filmmakers to use seamless continuity also compels them to favor stories and themes that reinforce viewers’ shared belief systems. After all, the film industry, for the most part, seeks to entertain, not to provoke, its customers. A key to entertaining the customers is to give them what they want—to tap into and reinforce their most fundamental desires and beliefs. Even movies deemed controversial or provocative can be popular if they trigger emotional responses from their viewers that reinforce yearnings or beliefs that lie deep within. And because so much of this occurs on an unconscious, emotional level, the casual viewer may be blind to the implied political, cultural, and ideological messages that help make the movie so appealing. Of course, this cultural invisibility is not always a calculated decision by the filmmakers. Directors, screenwriters, and producers are, after all, products of the same society inhabited by their intended audience. Frequently, the people making the movies may be just as oblivious of the cultural attitudes shaping their cinematic stories as the people who watch them. Juno’s filmmakers are certainly aware that their film, which addresses issues of abortion and pregnancy, page11diverges from the ways that movies traditionally represent family structures and teenage girls. In this sense, the movie might be seen as resisting common cultural values. But these filmmakers may not be as conscious of the way their protagonist (main character) reinforces our culture’s celebration of the individual. Her promiscuous, forceful, and charming persona is familiar because it displays traits we often associate with Hollywood’s male-dominant view of the rogue hero. Like Sam Spade, the Ringo Kid, Dirty Harry, and countless other classic American characters, Juno rejects convention yet ultimately upholds the very institutions she seemingly scorns. Yes, she’s a smart-ass who cheats on homework, sleeps with her best friend, and pukes in her stepmother’s decorative urn, yet in the end she does everything in her power to create the traditional nuclear family she never had. So even as the movie seems to call into question some of contemporary America’s attitudes about family, its appeal to an arguably more fundamental American value (namely, robust individualism) explains in part why, despite its controversial subject matter, Juno was so popular with audiences. Implicit and Explicit Meaning As you attempt to become more skilled at looking at movies, try to be alert to the cultural values, shared ideals, and other ideas that lie just below the surface of the movie you’re looking at. Being more alert to these things will make you sensitive to, and appreciative of, the many layers of meaning that any single movie contains. Of course, all this talk of layers and the notion that much of page12a movie’s meaning lies below the surface may make the entire process of looking at movies seem unnecessarily complex and intimidating. But you’ll find that the process of observing, identifying, and interpreting movie meaning will become considerably less mysterious and complicated once you grow accustomed to actively looking at movies rather than just watching them. It might help to keep in mind that, no matter how many different layers of meaning a movie may have, each layer is either implicit or explicit. Cultural invisibility in Juno An unrepentant former stripper (Diablo Cody) writes a script about an unrepentantly pregnant sixteen-year-old, her blithely accepting parents, and the dysfunctional couple to whom she relinquishes her newborn child. The resulting film goes on to become one of the biggest critical and box-office hits of 2007, attracting viewers from virtually every consumer demographic. How did a movie based on such seemingly provocative subject matter appeal to such a broad audience? One reason is that, beneath its veneer of controversy, Juno repeatedly reinforces mainstream, even conservative, societal attitudes toward pregnancy, family, and marriage. Although Juno initially decides to abort the pregnancy, she quickly changes her mind. Her parents may seem relatively complacent when she confesses her condition, but they support, protect, and advise her throughout her pregnancy. When we first meet Mark and Vanessa, the prosperous young couple Juno has chosen to adopt her baby, it is with the youthful Mark [1] that we (and Juno) initially sympathize. He plays guitar and appreciates alternative music and vintage slasher movies. Vanessa, in comparison, comes off as a shallow and judgmental yuppie. But ultimately, both the movie and its protagonist side with the traditional values of motherhood and responsibility embodied by Vanessa [2] and reject Mark’s rock-star ambitions as immature and self-centered. An implicit meaning, which lies below the surface of a movie’s story and presentation, is closest to our everyday sense of the word meaning. It is an association, connection, or inference that a viewer makes on the basis of the explicit meanings available on the surface of the movie. To get a sense of the difference between these two levels of meaning, let’s look at two statements about Juno. First, let’s imagine that a friend who hasn’t seen the movie asks you what the film is about. Your friend doesn’t want a detailed plot summary; she simply wants to know what she’ll see if she decides to attend the movie. In other words, she is asking for a statement about Juno’s explicit meaning. You might respond to her question by explaining: The movie’s about a rebellious but smart sixteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant and resolves to tackle the problem head-on. At first, she decides to get an abortion; but after she backs off that choice, she gets the idea to find a couple to adopt the kid after it’s born. She spends the rest of the movie dealing with the implications of that choice. It’s not that this is the only explicit meaning in the film, but we can see that it is a fairly accurate statement about one meaning that the movie explicitly conveys to viewers, right there on its surface. Now what if your friend hears this statement of explicit meaning and asks, “Okay, sure, but what do you think the movie is trying to say? What does it mean?” In a case like this, when someone is asking in general about an entire film, he or she is seeking something like an overall message or a point. In essence, your friend is asking you to interpret the movie—to say something arguable about it—not simply to make a statement of obvious surface meaning that everyone can agree on, as we did page13when we presented its explicit meaning. In other words, she is asking for your sense of the movie’s implicit meaning. Here is one possible response: “A teenager faced with a difficult decision makes a bold leap toward adulthood but, in doing so, discovers that the world of adults is no less uncertain or overwhelming than adolescence.” At first glance, this statement might seem to have a lot in common with your summary of the movie’s explicit meaning, as, of course, it does—after all, even though a meaning is under the surface, it still has to relate to the surface, and your interpretation needs to be grounded in the explicitly presented details of that surface. But if you compare the two statements more closely, you can see that the second one is more interpretive than the first, more concerned with what the movie means. Explicit and implicit meanings need not pertain to the movie as a whole, and not all implicit meaning is tied to broad messages or themes. Movies convey and imply smaller, more specific doses of both kinds of meaning in virtually every scene. Juno’s application of lipstick before she visits the adoptive father, Mark, is explicit information. The implications of this action—that her admiration for Mark is beginning to develop into something approaching a crush—are implicit. Later, Mark’s announcement that he is leaving his wife and does not want to be a father sends Juno into a panicked retreat. On her drive home, a crying jag forces the disillusioned Juno to pull off the highway. She skids to a stop beside a rotting boat abandoned in the ditch. The discarded boat’s decayed condition and the incongruity of a watercraft adrift in an expanse of grass are explicit details that convey implicit meaning about Juno’s isolation and alienation. Now what if your friend hears this statement of explicit meaning and asks, “Okay, sure, but what do you think the movie is trying to say? What does it mean?” In a case like this, when someone is asking in general about an entire film, he or she is seeking something like an overall message or a point. In essence, your friend is asking you to interpret the movie—to say something arguable about it—not simply to make a statement of obvious surface meaning that everyone can agree on, as we did page13when we presented its explicit meaning. In other words, she is asking for your sense of the movie’s implicit meaning. Here is one possible response: “A teenager faced with a difficult decision makes a bold leap toward adulthood but, in doing so, discovers that the world of adults is no less uncertain or overwhelming than adolescence.” At first glance, this statement might seem to have a lot in common with your summary of the movie’s explicit meaning, as, of course, it does—after all, even though a meaning is under the surface, it still has to relate to the surface, and your interpretation needs to be grounded in the explicitly presented details of that surface. But if you compare the two statements more closely, you can see that the second one is more interpretive than the first, more concerned with what the movie means. Explicit and implicit meanings need not pertain to the movie as a whole, and not all implicit meaning is tied to broad messages or themes. Movies convey and imply smaller, more specific doses of both kinds of meaning in virtually every scene. Juno’s application of lipstick before she visits the adoptive father, Mark, is explicit information. The implications of this action—that her admiration for Mark is beginning to develop into something approaching a crush—are implicit. Later, Mark’s announcement that he is leaving his wife and does not want to be a father sends Juno into a panicked retreat. On her drive home, a crying jag forces the disillusioned Juno to pull off the highway. She skids to a stop beside a rotting boat abandoned in the ditch. The discarded boat’s decayed condition and the incongruity of a watercraft adrift in an expanse of grass are explicit details that convey implicit meaning about Juno’s isolation and alienation. Explicit detail and implied meaning in Juno Vanessa is the earnest yuppie mommy-wannabe to whom Juno has pro mised her baby. In contrast to the formal business attire she usually spo rts, Vanessa wears an Alice in Chains T-shirt to paint the nursery. This s mall explicit detail conveys important implicit meaning about her relation ship with her husband, Mark, a middle-aged man reluctant to let go of hi s rock-band youth. The paint-spattered condition of the old shirt implies that she no longer values this symbol of the 1990s grunge-rock scene a nd, by extension, her past association with it. It’s easy to accept that recognizing and interpreting implicit meaning requires some extra effort, but keep in mind that explicit meaning cannot be taken for granted simply because it is by definition obvious. Although explicit meaning is on the surface of a film for all to observe, viewers or writers likely will not remember and acknowledge every part of that meaning. Because movies are rich in plot detail, a good analysis must begin by taking into account the breadth and diversity of what has been explicitly presented. For example, we cannot fully appreciate the significance of Juno’s defiant dumping of a blue slushy into her stepmother’s beloved urn unless we have noticed and noted her dishonest denial when accused earlier of vomiting a similar substance into the same precious vessel. Our ability to discern a movie’s explicit meanings directly depends on our ability to notice such associations and relationships. Viewer Expectations The discerning analyst must also be aware of the role expectations play in how movies are made, marketed, and received. Our experience of nearly every movie we see is shaped by what we have been told about that movie beforehand by previews, commercials, reviews, interviews, and word of mouth. After hearing your friends rave endlessly about Juno, you may have been underwhelmed by the actual movie. Or you might have been surprised and charmed by a film you entered with low expectations, based on the inevitable backlash that followed the movie’s surprise success. Even the most general knowledge affects how we react to any given film. We go to see blockbusters because we crave an elaborate special effects extravaganza. We can still appreciate a summer movie’s relatively simpleminded storytelling, as long as it delivers the promised spectacle. On the other hand, you might revile a high-quality tragedy if you bought your ticket expecting a lighthearted comedy. Of course, the influence of expectation extends beyond the kind of anticipation generated by a movie’s promotion. As we discussed earlier, we all harbor essential expectations concerning a film’s form and organization. page14And most filmmakers give us what we expect: a relatively standardized cinematic language, seamless continuity, and a narrative organized like virtually every other fiction film we’ve ever seen. For example, years of watching movies has taught us to expect a clearly motivated protagonist to pursue a goal, confronting obstacles and antagonists along the way toward a clear (and usually satisfying) resolution. Sure enough, that’s what we get in most commercial films. Expectations and character in Juno Audience reactions to Michael Cera’s characterization of Juno’s sort-of boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker, are colored by expectations that are based on the actor’s perpetually embarrassed persona established in previous rol es in the television series Arrested Development and films like Superba d [1]. We don’t need the movie to tell us much of anything about Paulie —we form an almost instant affection for the character based on our fa miliarity with Cera’s earlier performances. But while the character Paulie meets our expectations of Michael Cera, he defies our expectations of his character type. Repeated portrayals of high-school jocks as vain bull ies, such as Thomas F. Wilson’s iconic Biff in Robert Zemeckis’s Back t o the Future (1985) [2], have conditioned viewers to expect such characters to look and beh ave very differently than Paulie Bleeker. We’ll delve more deeply into narrative in the chapters that follow. For now, what’s important is that you understand how your experience—and thus your interpretation—of any movie is affected by how the particular film manipulates these expected patterns. An analysis might note a film’s failure to successfully exploit the standard structures or another movie’s masterful subversion of expectations to surprise or mislead its audience. A more experimental approach might deliberately confound our presumption of continuity or narrative. Viewers must be aware of the expected patterns in order to fully appreciate the significance of that deviation. Expectations specific to a particular performer or filmmaker can also alter the way we perceive a movie. For example, any fan of actor Michael Cera’s previous performances as an endearingly awkward adolescent in the film Superbad (2007; director Greg Mottola) and television series Arrested Development (2003–2006) will watch Juno with a built-in affection for Paulie Bleeker, Juno’s sort-of boyfriend. This predetermined fondness does more than help us like the movie; it dramatically changes the way we approach a character type (the high-school athlete who impregnates his teenage classmate) that our expectations might otherwise lead us to distrust. Ironically, audience expectations of Cera’s sweetness may have contributed to the disappointing box-office performance of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010; director Edgar Wright). Some critics proposed that viewers were uncomfortable seeing Cera play the somewhat vain and self-centered title character. Viewers who know director Guillermo del Toro’s commercial action/horror movies Mimic (1997), Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), Pacific Rim (2013), and Crimson Peak (2015) might be surprised by the sophisticated political and philosophical metaphor of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), and The Shape of Water (2017). Yet all eight films feature fantastic and macabre creatures as well as social commentary. An active awareness of an audience’s various expectations of del Toro’s films would inform an analysis of the elements common to the filmmaker’s seemingly schizophrenic body of work. Such an analysis could focus on his visual style in terms of production design, lighting, or special effects, or it might instead examine recurring themes page15such as oppression, childhood trauma, or the role of the outcast. As you can see, cinematic invisibility is not necessarily an impediment; once you know enough to acknowledge their existence, these potential blind spots also offer opportunities for insight and analysis. There are many ways to look at movies and many possible types of film analysis. We’ll spend the rest of this chapter discussing the most common analytical approaches to movies. Because this book considers an understanding of how film grammar conveys meaning, mood, and information as the essential foundation for any further study of cinema, we’ll turn now to formal analysis—that analytical approach primarily concerned with film form, or the means by which a subject is expressed. Don’t worry if you don’t fully understand the function of the techniques discussed; that’s what the rest of this book is for. Formal Analysis Formal analysis dissects the complex synthesis of cinematography, sound, composition, design, movement, performance, and editing orchestrated by creative artists such as screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, actors, editors, sound designers, and art directors as well as the many craftspeople who implement their vision. The movie meaning expressed through form ranges from narrative information as straightforward as where and when a particular scene takes place to more subtle implied meaning, such as mood, tone, significance, or what a character is thinking or feeling. While the overeager analyst certainly can read more meaning into a particular visual or audio component than the filmmaker intended, you should realize that cinematic storytellers exploit every tool at their disposal and that, therefore, every element in every frame is there for a reason. It’s the analyst’s job to carefully consider the narrative intent of the moment, scene, or sequence before attempting any interpretation of the formal elements used to communicate that intended meaning to the spectator. For example, the simple awareness that Juno’s opening shot [1] is the first image of the movie informs us of the moment’s most basic and explicit intent: to convey setting (contemporary middle-class suburbia) and time of day (dawn). But only after we have determined that the story opens with its title character overwhelmed by the prospect of her own teenage pregnancy are we prepared to deduce how this implicit meaning (her state of mind) is conveyed by the composition: Juno is at the far left of the frame and is tiny in relationship to the rest of the wide-angle composition. In fact, we may be well into the 4-second shot before we even spot her. Her vulnerability is conveyed by the fact that she is dwarfed by her surroundings. Even when the scene cuts to a closer viewpoint [2], she, as the subject of a movie composition, is much smaller in frame than we are used to seeing, especially in the first shots used to introduce a protagonist. She is standing in a front yard contemplating an empty stuffed chair from a safe distance, as if the inanimate object might attack at any moment. Her pose adds to our implicit impression of Juno as alienated or off-balance. Our command of the film’s explicit details alerts us to another function of the scene: to introduce the recurring theme (or motif) of the empty chair that frames—and in some ways defines—the story. In this opening scene, accompanied by Juno’s voice-over explanation, “It started with a chair,” the empty, displaced object represents page16Juno’s status and emotional state and foreshadows the unconventional setting for the sexual act that got her into this mess. By the story’s conclusion, when Juno announces, “It ended with a chair,” the motif—in the form of an adoptive mother’s rocking chair—has been transformed, like Juno herself, to embody hope and potential. All that meaning was packed into two shots spanning about 12 seconds of screen time. Let’s see what we can learn from a formal analysis of a more extended sequence from the same film: Juno’s visit to the Women Now clinic. To do so, we’ll first want to consider what information the filmmaker needs this scene to communicate for viewers to understand and appreciate this pivotal piece of the movie’s story in relation to the rest of the narrative. As we delve into material that deals with Juno’s sensitive subject matter, keep in mind that you don’t have to agree with the meaning or values projected by the object of your analysis; you can learn even from a movie you dislike. Personal values and beliefs will undoubtedly influence your analysis of any movie. And personal views provide a legitimate perspective, as long as we recognize and acknowledge how they may color our interpretation. Throughout Juno’s previous 18 minutes, all information concerning its protagonist’s attitude toward her condition has explicitly enforced our expectation that she will end her unplanned pregnancy with an abortion. She pantomimes suicide once she’s forced to admit her condition; she calmly discusses abortion facilities with her friend Leah; she displays no ambivalence when scheduling the procedure. As she approaches the clinic, Juno’s nonchalant reaction to the comically morose pro-life demonstrator Su-Chin reinforces our expectations. Juno treats Su-Chin’s assertion that the fetus has fingernails as more of an interesting bit of trivia than a concept worthy of serious consideration. The subsequent waiting-room sequence is about Juno making an unexpected decision that propels the story in an entirely new direction. A formal analysis will tell us how the filmmakers orchestrated multiple formal elements, including sound, composition, moving camera, and editing, to convey in 13 shots and 30 seconds of screen time how the seemingly insignificant fingernail factoid infiltrates Juno’s thoughts and ultimately drives her from the clinic. By the time you have completed your course (and have read the book), you should be prepared to apply this same sort of formal analysis to any scene you choose. The waiting-room sequence’s opening shot [1] dollies in (the camera moves slowly toward the subject), which gradually enlarges Juno in frame, increasing her visual significance as she fills out the clinic admittance form on the clipboard in her hand [2]. The shot reestablishes her casual acceptance of the impending procedure, providing context for the events to come. Its relatively long 10-second duration sets up a relaxed rhythm that will shift later along with her state of mind. As the camera reaches its closest point, a loud sound invades the low hum of the previously hushed waiting room. This obtrusive drumming sound motivates a somewhat startling cut to a new shot that plunges our viewpoint right up into Juno’s face [3]. The sudden spatial shift gives the moment resonance and conveys Juno’s thought process as she instantly shifts her concentration from the admittance form to this strange new sound. She turns her head in search of the sound’s source, and the camera adjusts to adopt her point of view of a mother and daughter sitting beside her [4]. The mother’s fingernails drumming on her own clipboard is revealed as the source of the tapping sound. The sound’s abnormally loud level signals the audience that we’re not hearing at a natural volume level—we’ve begun to experience Juno’s psychological perceptions. The little girl’s stare into Juno’s (and our) eyes helps to establish the association between the fingernail sound and Juno’s latent guilt. The sequence cuts back to the already troubled-looking Juno [5]. The juxtaposition connects her anxious expression to both the drumming mother and the little girl’s gaze. The camera creeps in on her again. This time, the resulting enlargement initiates our intuitive association of this gradual intensification with a character’s moment of realization. Within half a second, another noise joins the mix, and Juno’s head turns in response [6]. The juxtaposition marks the next shot as Juno’s point of view, but it is much too close to be her literal point of view. Like the unusually loud sound, the unrealistically close viewpoint of a woman picking her thumbnail reflects not an actual spatial relationship but the sight’s significance to Juno [7]. When we cut back to Juno about a second later, the camera continues to close in on her, and her gaze shifts again to follow yet another sound as it joins the rising clamor [8]. A new shot of another set of hands, again from a close-up, psychological point of view, shows a woman applying fingernail polish [9]. What would normally be a silent action emits a distinct, abrasive sound. When we cut back to Juno half a second later, she is much larger in the frame than the last few times we saw her [10]. This break in pattern conveys a sudden intensification; this is really starting to get to her. Editing often establishes patterns and rhythms, only to break them for dramatic impact. Our appreciation of Juno’s situation is enhanced by the way editing connects her reactions to the altered sights and sounds around her, as well as by her implied isolation—she appears to be the only one who notices the increasingly boisterous symphony of fingernails. Of course, Juno’s not entirely alone—the audience is with her. At this point in the sequence, we have begun to associate the waiting-room fingernails with Su-Chin’s attempt to humanize Juno’s condition. Juno’s head jerks as yet another, even more invasive sound enters the fray [11]. We cut to another close-up page19point-of-view shot, this time of a young man scratching his arm [12]. At this point, another pattern is broken, initiating the scene’s formal and dramatic climax. Up until now, the sequence alternated between shots of Juno and shots of the fingernails as they caught her attention. Each juxtaposition caused us to identify with both Juno’s reaction and her point of view. But now, the sequence shifts gears; instead of the expected switch back to Juno, we are subjected to an accelerating succession of fingernail shots, each one shorter and louder than the last. A woman bites her fingernails [13]; another files her nails [14]; a woman’s hand drums her fingernails nervously [15]; a man scratches his neck [16]. With every new shot, another noise is added to the sound mix. This pattern is itself broken in several ways by the scene’s final shot. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing Juno look around every time we see her, but this time, she stares blankly ahead, immersed in thought [17]. A cacophony of fingernail sounds rings in her (and our) ears as the camera glides toward her for 3½ very long page20seconds—a duration six times longer than any of the previous nine shots. These pattern shifts signal the scene’s climax, which is further emphasized by the moving camera’s enlargement of Juno’s figure [18], a visual action that cinematic language has trained viewers to associate with a subject’s moment of realization or decision. But the shot doesn’t show us Juno acting on that decision. We don’t see her cover her ears, throw down her clipboard, or jump up from the waiting-room banquette. Instead, we are ripped prematurely from this final waiting-room image and plunged into a shot that drops us into a different space and at least several moments ahead in time—back to Su-Chin chanting in the parking lot [19]. This jarring spatial, temporal, and visual shift helps us feel Juno’s own instability at this crucial narrative moment. Before we can get our bearings, the camera has pivoted right to reveal Juno bursting out of the clinic door in the background [20]. She races past Su-Chin without a word. She does not have to say anything. Cinematic language—film form—has already told us what she decided and why. Anyone watching this scene would sense the narrative and emotional meaning revealed by this analysis, but only a viewer actively analyzing the film form used to construct it can fully comprehend how the sophisticated machinery of cinematic language shapes and conveys that meaning. Formal analysis is fundamental to all approaches to understanding and engaging cinema—whether you’re making, studying, or simply appreciating movies—which is why the elements and grammar of film form are the primary focus of Looking at Movies. Alternative Approaches to Analysis Although we’ll be looking at movies primarily to learn the forms they take and the nuts and bolts they are constructed from, any serious student of film should be aware that there are many other legitimate frameworks for analysis. These alternative approaches analyze movies more as cultural artifacts than as traditional works of art. They search beneath a movie’s form and content to expose implicit and hidden meanings that inform our understanding of cinema’s function within popular culture as well as the influence of popular culture on the movies. The preceding formal analysis demonstrated how Juno used cinematic language to convey meaning and tell a story. Given the right interpretive scrutiny, our case study film may also speak eloquently about social conditions and attitudes. For example, considering that the protagonist is the daughter of an air-conditioner repairman and a manicurist, and that the couple she selects to adopt her baby are white-collar professionals living in an oversized McMansion, a cultural analysis of Juno could explore the movie’s treatment of class. An analysis from a feminist perspective could concentrate on, among other elements, the movie’s depiction of women and childbirth, not to mention Juno’s father, the father of her baby, and the prospective adoptive father. Such an analysis might also consider the creative and ideological contributions of the movie’s female screenwriter, Diablo Cody, an outspoken former stripper and sex blogger. A linguistic analysis might explore the historical, cultural, or imaginary origins of the highly stylized slang spouted by Juno, her friends, even the mini-mart clerk who sells her a pregnancy test. A thesis could be (and probably has been) written about the implications of the T-shirt messages displayed by the film’s characters or the implicit meaning of the movie’s track-team motif. page21 Some analyses place movies within the stylistic or political context of a director’s career. Juno’s director, Jason Reitman, has made only five other feature films. But even that relatively short filmography provides opportunity for comparative analysis: most of Reitman’s movies take provocative political stances, gradually generate empathy for initially unsympathetic characters, and favor fast-paced expositional montages featuring expressive juxtapositions, graphic compositions, and first-person voice-over narration. Labor Day (2013), his first film to diverge from that established style, disappointed expectations and failed with critics and audiences. Another comparative analysis could investigate society’s evolving (or perhaps fixed) attitudes toward “illegitimate” pregnancy by placing Juno in context with the long history of films about the subject. These movies range from D. W. Griffith’s 1920 silent drama Way Down East, which banished its unwed mother and drove her to attempted suicide, to Preston Sturges’s irreverent 1944 comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and its mysteriously pregnant protagonist, Trudy Kockenlocker (whose character name alone says a great deal about its era’s attitudes toward women), to another mysterious but ultimately far more terrifying pregnancy in Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby. Juno is only one in a small stampede of recent popular films dealing with this ever-timely issue. A cultural analysis might compare and contrast Juno with its American contemporaries Knocked Up (2007; director Judd Apatow) and Waitress (2007; director Adrienne Shelly). Both movies share Juno’s blend of comedy and drama as well as a pronounced ambivalence concerning abortion but depict decidedly different characters, settings, and stories. What might such an analysis of these movies (and their critical and popular success) tell us about that particular era’s attitudes toward women, pregnancy, and motherhood? Seven years later, in 2014, Obvious Child was initially marketed as an “abortion comedy.” When the protagonist Donna finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand, her decision to get an abortion is immediate and matter of fact. Unlike all of its 2007 predecessors, Obvious Child does not deliver a baby in the end. Was director Gillian Robespierre reacting to those earlier films, influenced by evolving attitudes, or simply offering her own perspective on the subject? Knocked Up was written and directed by a man, Juno was written by a woman and directed by a man, and Waitress and Obvious Child were written and directed by women. Does the relative gender of each film’s creator affect stance and story? If this comparative analysis incorporated Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu’s stark abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) or Mike Leigh’s nuanced portrayal of an abortionist, Vera Drake (2004), the result might inform a deeper understanding of the differences between European and American sensibilities. An unwanted pregnancy is a potentially controversial subject for any film, especially when the central character is a teenager. Any extensive analysis focused on Juno’s cultural meaning would have to address what this particular film’s content implies about the hot-button issue of abortion. To illustrate, let’s return to the clinic waiting room. An analysis that asserts Juno espouses a “pro-life” (i.e., antiabortion) message could point to several explicit details in this sequence and to those preceding and following it. In contrast to the relatively welcoming suburban settings that dominate the rest of the story, the ironically named Women Now abortion clinic is an unattractive stone structure squatting at one end of an urban asphalt parking lot. Juno is confronted by clearly stated and compelling arguments against abortion via Su-Chin’s dialogue: the “baby” has a beating heart, can feel pain, . . . and has fingernails. The clinic receptionist, the sole on-screen representative of the pro-choice alternative, is a sneering cynic with multiple piercings and a declared taste for fruit-flavored condoms. The idea of the fetus as a human being, stressed by Su-Chin’s earnest admonishments, is driven home by the scene’s formal presentation analyzed earlier. On the other hand, a counterargument maintaining that Juno implies a pro-choice stance could state that the lone on-screen representation of the pro-life position is portrayed just as negatively (and extremely) as the clinic receptionist. Su-Chin is presented as an infantile simpleton who wields a homemade sign stating, rather clumsily, “No Babies Like Murdering,” shouts “All babies want to get borned!” and is bundled in an oversized stocking cap and pink quilted coat as if dressed by an overprotective mother. Juno’s choice can hardly be labeled a righteous conversion. Even after fleeing the clinic, the clearly ambivalent mother-to-be struggles to rationalize her decision, which she announces not as “I’m having this baby” but as “I’m staying pregnant.” Some analysts may conclude that the filmmakers, mindful of audience demographics, were trying to have it both ways. Others could argue that the movie is understandably more concerned with narrative considerations than a precise political stance. The negative aspects of every alternative are consistent with a story world that offers its young protagonist little comfort and no easy choices. Comparative cultural analysis A comparison of Juno’s treatment of unwanted pregnancy with other fil ms featuring the same subject matter is but one of many analytical appr oaches that could be used to explore cinema’s function within culture, a s well as the influence of culture on the movies. Such an analysis could compare Juno with American films produced in earlier eras, from D. W. Griffith’s dramatic Way Down East (1920) [1] to Preston Sturges’s 1944 screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan’ s Creek [2] to Roman Polanski’s paranoid horror film Rosemary’s Baby ( 1968) [3]. An alternate analysis might compare Juno with the other American fi lms released in 2007 that approached the subject with a similar blend of comedy and drama: Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up [4] and Adrienne Shell y’s Waitress [5]. A comparative analysis of the independent film Obvious Child (2014; director Gillian Robespierre) [6] might reveal evolving cultural attitudes toward abortion 7 years after Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress all concluded with a birth scene. Cultural and Formal Analysis in the Star Wars Series When the film Star Wars (director George Lucas) was released in 1977, few—including the actors and technicians who helped make it—expected it to reach large audiences. To almost everyone’s surprise, Star Wars quickly became what was then the highest grossing film in history. The unexpected hit launched a franchise consisting of (so far) four sequels and five prequels that together have earned well over $8 billion in worldwide box office. That staggering figure doesn’t adjust decades-old receipts for inflation or include the additional exposure and revenue generated by DVD and Blu-ray sales, digital downloads, video on demand, and television broadcasts. The $247 million opening weekend earnings posted by Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015; director J. J. Abrams) were the biggest in American history. Its successor, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017; director Rian Johnson), is second in that all-time ranking, with opening weekend earnings topping $220 million.3 Clearly, the Star Wars series was, is, and continues to be an influential and important cultural phenomenon. But how can we even begin to explain its popularity? To start with, the sheer scope of the series provides viewers a particular brand of narrative development unavailable in most other movies or film series. Most people enjoy recognizing and tracking progression; this tendency is largely responsible for the sequential nature of traditional storytelling. The Star Wars films offer the rare opportunity to experience familiar characters’ physical and emotional development over an extended period of time; the stories chronicled in the multiple episodes span generations, as do the release dates of the films themselves. If we stop to consider other well-known film series, few (with the notable exception of Harry Potter) feature any significant figurative or literal character growth. Although they accomplish extraordinary feats in spectacular adventures, Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings, Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games all act and look much the same from the first movie to the final installment. In contrast, the young, inexperienced upstarts in the original Star Wars trilogy have now evolved into grizzled leaders and mentors for the next fresh wave of adventurous protagonists. Old Luke is the grumpy new Yoda who reluctantly trains his Jedi-prodigy replacement, Rey. The gray-haired Han Solo (briefly) mentors Rey and Finn, and he and Princess Leia are the divorced parents of Rey’s nemesis/soulmate Kylo Ren, an aspiring Darth Vader. Familiarity and progression The extraordinary longevity of the Star Wars series offers the rare oppor tunity to experience familiar characters’ physical and emotional develop ment over an extended period of time. For fans who grew up knowing L uke Skywalker as an awkward and earnest apprentice [1], his return as a world-weary cynic [2]—and his old master versus young upstart show down with Kylo Ren—was especially meaningful. The longevity of the series ensures that most of us have been (at least periodically) immersed in its universe since childhood. We know the players, the politics, and the rules of engagement. The character types, page24story formulas, settings, and themes are repeated from episode to episode in ways that fulfill most expectations but surprise others. This satisfying combination of the comfortably predictable and the thrillingly unexpected is the same formula that keeps viewers returning to similarly convention-driven film genres such as horror and science fiction. A scholarly analysis might explore if and how the Star Wars films engage genre—or even if they constitute their own genre. What genre is Star Wars? How a narrative film applies character types, story formulas, settings, an d themes can place it in a particular genre. It seems logical to assume t he Star Wars films belong in the science-fiction genre because they all t ake place across multiple planets in a universe filled with aliens, spaces hips, robots, and other futuristic technology. But science-fiction films are speculative; their stories explore the implications of unfettered science and technology that may threaten as much as enable humanity. In contr ast, Star Wars is made up of multiple references to past cultures and tra ditions—it doesn’t presume to forecast our future. After all, the stories ta ke place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The series does hav e its clone armies and death stars, but the films’ conflicts and themes ar e more concerned with human nature and spirituality than with science or technology. One could argue that the films blend multiple genres, just as they blend other cultural elements. For example, the story of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) is structured like a plot from an old-fashi oned war movie. But the stories at the heart of Star Wars are more deeply rooted in our culture than those of any single film genre. The quests led by the series’ chosen ones—first Luke Skywalker, and now Rey—have their narrative origins in a basic pattern found in the folktales, myths, and religions of multiple cultures. In his influential book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell called this fundamental story structure the “monomyth” or “hero’s journey.” Like the archetypal hero in the ancient myths and folktales Campbell describes, Luke and Rey start out as seemingly ordinary people in their own normal worlds who receive an unexpected call to adventure, which they initially resist. Eventually, events compel them to heed the call, which leads them to cross into an unknown world. They each meet mentors, gather allies, receive supernatural aid, and are given a talisman (notably, in each case, that talisman is the same lightsaber). Rey and Luke undergo training and are initiated with a series of increasingly dangerous challenges that reveal previously hidden strengths or powers. The heroes each ultimately win a decisive victory over a seemingly invincible opponent, then return from the mysterious journey with the power to bestow boons to his (or her) fellow man.4 Of course, the precise application of this ancient formula differs from character to character and trilogy to trilogy, and our current heroes’ journey is not yet completed. A narrative analysis of the Star Wars films and their resonance with audiences might explore the different (and similar) ways each protagonist’s story fits this classical storytelling tradition. Other cultural sources that influenced the Star Wars universe might also provide insight into the franchise’s international popularity. Indeed, the franchise seems page25to have been engineered for universal appeal. George Lucas, the filmmaker who wrote and directed the prototypical 1977 Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope) and remained the dominant creative force behind the first six films, drew upon a number of world religions and philosophies for the spirituality (including the interdependence of positive and negative forces) that underlies and informs the action-packed stories. For the Jedi knights, Lucas blended the traditions of knighthood and chivalry found in medieval Europe with those of the Japanese samurai. He borrowed other stylistic, character, and narrative elements from disparate twentieth-century sources: swashbuckler films beginning in the silent era (e.g., boisterous swordplay and roguish protagonists); space-based action-adventure comics and serialized movies of the 1930s; and The Hidden Fortress, Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 adventure film set in feudal Japan. All these different influences resulted in a sort of timeless cultural collage that may help explain the enduring international appeal of the Star Wars movies. The helmets and layered armor worn by villains such as Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, and Captain Phasma evoke both samurai and medieval warriors. The Jedis may be knights, but their flowing outfits look more like a mix of traditional Japanese garments and the humble robes worn by self-denying monks found in multiple world religions. Other characters dress (and act) like cowboys, or gangsters, or World War II fighter pilots, or decadent European aristocrats. All of these people fly around with robots in spaceships, but many of them live in adobe or stone dwellings, and some of them fight with swords. In fact, the lightsaber—a powerful laser used exclusively for hand-to-hand combat—might be the ultimate demonstration of Star Wars’ successful marriage between the futuristic and the classical. Viewers don’t just recognize the cultural ingredients of the Star Wars universe: we see ourselves reflected in the archetypical conflicts and characters the stories present. The Resistance is courageous, resourceful, and resilient, but also overmatched. The Empire and the First Order that seek to squash the righteous rebels are both overwhelmingly powerful, greedy, heartless—and seemingly indestructible. This binary good-versus-evil struggle allows working-class and middle-class ticket buyers to vicariously identify with plucky protagonists who endure crushing odds in a never-ending struggle against an overwhelming force. The First Order serves as a symbolic stand-in for any number of oppressive overlords, from international enemies to one’s own government or opposing political party. The well-equipped tyrannical organization may even be equated with the kind of modern mega-corporation that makes and markets Star Wars itself. Of course, representations of oppression and resistance have deep roots in our culture. The imagery and actions of the Empire and First Order also reference authoritarian movements bent on world domination that shaped recent world history, including and especially the infamous Nazis that launched World War II. A meaningful weapon This blue laser blade [1, 2] used by the successive Jedi protagonists in every Star Wars trilogy serves the film franchise in a number of importa nt ways. As a high-tech version of an ancient and universal weapon, the lightsaber epitomizes the amalgam of diverse cultural and historical ref erences that creator George Lucas blended to form the eclectic Star Wa rs universe. The lightsaber also functions as a talisman (a special item t hat serves heroes on a quest), which is central to the films’ application o f the universal story structure known as the monomyth. Its blue blade si gnals it as a force for good in a binary good versus evil conflict in which the villains wield red—until the lightsaber is literally torn between the lig ht side and the dark side in The Last Jedi (2017). The latest wave of Star Wars films is decidedly forward looking in one significant way. The cast portraying “the good guys” is multiethnic—and not even necessarily “guys.” The primary protagonists in The Last Jedi include a white woman, a black man, a Latino man, and a woman of Asian descent. Even one of the seemingly cruel masked antagonists is female. page26The 2016 prequel spin-off Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (director Gareth Edwards) also features a female protagonist fighting alongside a band of Latino, Asian, and African American fellow-revolutionaries. These casts, and the characters they play, represent a departure from the previous films, which were dominated by white, male characters. Perhaps the biggest change—one that upset some Star Wars traditionalists—was making the latest and greatest Jedi hero a woman. In fact, one could argue that Rey and the other female characters in The Last Jedi are rational leaders saddled with male counterparts who are incapable of facing their own emotions or learning from their mistakes. While these new Star Wars women understand the power of self-examination and strategic restraint, their male counterparts either run away from their problems or charge into conflict without considering the inevitable consequences. As Leia—the former mostly helpless princess who has risen to the position of general leading the Resistance—says to the swashbuckling pilot Poe: “Not every problem can be solved by jumping in an X-wing and blowing stuff up.” The new faces of Star Wars The directors of the most recent Star Wars films have approached casti ng and character in ways that break with expectations established in the previous trilogies. Finn (John Boyega) is not just the franchise’s first bla ck major character, he’s also a charismatic and free-thinking Stormtroop er. Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) is similarly a common worker who prov es capable of greatness. Costume and hairstyle help this first non-princ ess female supporting character transcend the usual standards of beaut y assigned to women in Hollywood blockbusters. In another reversal of action movie expectations, Rose saves Finn from needlessly sacrificing himself and then declares, “We’re going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving wh at we love.” Star Wars may have changed the world, but it appears that the world is changing Star Wars, too. Perhaps motivated by these changes, some of the same female viewers that drove the success of The Hunger Games series may have contributed to the popularity of The Last Jedi. According to Box Office Mojo, the website that tracks movie industry ticket sales, women made up 43 percent of the movie’s audience over opening weekend, a significant showing in what is typically a male-dominated market. A cultural analysis of the most recent Star Wars films might ask if the saga’s heroine and fan base qualify the movies as feminist. Unlike a surprising number of Hollywood movies, these Star Wars films do seem to pass the Bechdel test. This test is an evaluative tool—credited to feminist cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel—that qualifies films as woman-friendly only if they (a) have at least two women characters who (b) talk to each other (c) about something besides a man. Rey doesn’t get many chances to talk to other women at all in The Force Awakens; the closest she gets is a quick exchange with the female alien Maz Kanata, and much (but not all) of that conversation is about Luke and his lightsaber. Later in the same film, Rey comes face to face with Leia, but their communication is nonverbal. Instead, the women share an emotional embrace that may be more meaningful than any conversation, regardless of the topic. Near the end of the film, Leia’s “may the page27force be with you,” spoken as Rey prepares to board the Millennium Falcon in search of Luke, are the only words exchanged between these two principal characters. The Last Jedi adds several additional female characters, but because they are all paired with male partners and/or adversaries, they almost never get to talk to one another. The touching final farewell between Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo, the two women leading what’s left of the Resistance, provides a rare opportunity. Once again, the opening topic is a man (the impulsive fighter pilot Poe this time), but the discussion quickly turns more personal, and Bechdel-worthy, when the old friends reconcile Holdo’s looming sacrifice and exchange the traditional Star Wars force-be-with-you farewell. A critical analysis may ask if brief exchanges like these are enough to pass the Bechdel test or if the test is a fair indicator of feminist intent in films featuring multiple strong, active female characters pursuing goals once reserved for male protagonists. One could at least argue that the series has progressed in terms of Bechdel’s feminist standard. The original Star Wars saga featured a female character who was just as brave, and arguably smarter, than her male counterparts, but she had very little company. In those first three films, only four women have any lines at all, and they never speak to one another at all. As you read the preceding paragraphs, you probably thought of still more ways you might examine the Star Wars phenomenon. The examples presented in our brief analysis illustrate only a few of the virtually limitless page28approaches available to advanced students and scholars interested in interpreting the relationship between culture and cinema. But before we can effectively interpret a movie as a cultural artifact, we must first understand how that artifact functions. To begin that process, let’s return our focus to the building blocks of film form, starting with the tutorial film analyzing some of the cinematic language used in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In the next chapter, we’ll expand the exploration of the principles of film form that is begun here. An evolved and empathetic Jedi heroine Any examination of the evolution and reception of Star Wars must include Rey, the character at the center of the most recent trilogy. The differences between her and her Jedi protagonist predecessors are significant. The abandoned daughter of common paupers, Rey is neither of (secret) royal birth like Luke Skywalker nor a prophesied messiah like Luke’s father, Anakin (the future Darth Vader), who was birthed by a mortal but conceived by the force itself. Rey tries to understand and redeem her enemy, Kylo Ren, not destroy him; she seeks balance and reconciliation, not glory or vengeance. This approach is reflected in her no-nonsense wardrobe. Instead of the brooding browns and blacks favored by Anakin in the prequel trilogy or Luke’s good-guy white from the original installments, Rey’s modest outfit is made up of neutral grays. What Is Narrative? We’ve already gotten a good start on exploring the question “What is narrative?” in Chapters 1 and 3. As we begin this chapter dedicated to the subject, we have already learned the following things about narrative: A narrative is a story. Narrative movies are fiction films, as opposed to other movie modes, such as documentary or experimental. At the broadest conceptual level, narrative is a cinematic structure in which the filmmakers have selected and arranged events in a cause-and-effect sequence occurring over time. When we think of it that way, almost all movies, even documentaries and experimental films, employ some level of narrative. In fact, narrative permeates more than just the world of movies—it infuses our culture and our lives. Whether we’re describing a sporting event, relating a dream, recalling a memory, or telling a joke, we humans tend to order events so they will convey meaning and engage the recipient. Because story and storytelling are so ingrained in our everyday lives, including the movies we watch, it’s all too easy to take narrative for granted. What Is Narrative? We’ve already gotten a good start on exploring the question “What is narrative?” in Chapters 1 and 3. As we begin this chapter dedicated to the subject, we have already learned the following things about narrative: A narrative is a story. Narrative movies are fiction films, as opposed to other movie modes, such as documentary or experimental. At the broadest conceptual level, narrative is a cinematic structure in which the filmmakers have selected and arranged events in a cause-and-effect sequence occurring over time. When we think of it that way, almost all movies, even documentaries and experimental films, employ some level of narrative. In fact, narrative permeates more than just the world of movies—it infuses our culture and our lives. Whether we’re describing a sporting event, relating a dream, recalling a memory, or telling a joke, we humans tend to order events so they will convey meaning and engage the recipient. Because story and storytelling are so ingrained in our everyday lives, including the movies we watch, it’s all too easy to take narrative for granted. And, of course, other cinematic elements contribute to the narration. The lighting, set design, makeup, and performances in each shot, as well as the associations achieved through the juxtaposition of images, all contribute to our engagement with the narrative. Maybe it would be more accurate to state that in every movie, the filmmakers and their creative techniques constitute the primary narrator. Nonetheless, it is a little more streamlined to think of all that as “the camera.” And the camera isn’t always a movie’s only narrator. Some movies use more than one narrator to deliver the narration. This narration can be in the form of a character’s particular perspective on the narrative’s events. A first-person narrator is a character in the narrative who typically imparts information in the form of voice-over narration, which is when we hear a character’s voice over the picture without actually seeing the character speak the words. This technique of a character speaking to the audience allows us to hear one narration—from the first-person character narrator—while simultaneously watching the narration provided by our narrator camera. The combination of these narrator partners may be relatively straightforward, such as in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996), when the first-person voice-over primer to heroin addiction delivered by Renton plays over the opening sequences depicting the lives of the addicts that populate the story. A richer, more complex experience of the narrative is possible when the first-person narration contrasts somehow with what we see on-screen. The first-person narrators of writer/director Terrence Malick’s first two films (Badlands, 1973, and Days of Heaven, 1978) are naive and sometimes deluded young women who attempt to rationalize and even romanticize events and actions we can see for ourselves. The conflict between what the camera is telling us and the perspective provided by the first-person narrator can expand our relationship with the narrative beyond anything a camera alone can deliver. And some movies push this relationship even further. These films don’t limit the first-person narrative to voice-over narration. Instead, the first-person narrator character interrupts the narrative to deliver direct address narration directly to the audience, thus breaking the “fourth wall” that traditionally separates the viewer from the two-dimensional fiction on-screen. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986; director John Hughes) features a charismatic slacker who seduces his fellow characters as well as his audience. Ferris frequently pauses the on-screen action to gaze into our eyes and charm us with his own personal take on the story he inhabits. Ferris Bueller follows in the footsteps of other smooth-talking scoundrels who break the fourth wall, most notably Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963) and Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie (1966). Other direct address narration is more confrontational. Michel Haneke’s Funny Games (2007) challenges the viewer to endure a brutal game of cat and mouse played by a pair of psychotic young men. After they take a young family hostage, the attackers goad their victims to wager on their own survival. When their prey try to refuse the bet, one of the attackers turns to confront the audience with a string page119of questions: “I mean, what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? You’re on their side, aren’t you? Who are you betting on, huh?” By breaking the fourth wall in this way, Haneke forces the audience to acknowledge our participation in the violence. The filmmaker implies that, in watching this senseless cruelty, we’re complicit in it. Sometimes the voice-over narrator isn’t even someone in the movie. Voice-over narration can also be expressed by a voice imposed from outside of the narrative. Standing at a remove from the action allows this third-person narrator to provide information not accessible to a narrator who is also a participant in the story. Like the author of the story, the third-person narrator knows all and can thus provide objective context to any situation. Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) opens with a third-person voice-over relating the history of a family of eccentric geniuses delivered in the dispassionate tone of a documentary reporter. But even this seemingly remote narrator provides more than just information. The deadpan delivery layers a sort of literary seriousness over an extended series of comic scenes detailing the family’s brilliant successes and staggering failures. Later, the third-person narrator interjects to let us into a character’s head at a crucial narrative moment. Royal Tenenbaum, a manipulative con man, has wormed his way back into his estranged family by pretending to be dying of cancer. When he is caught in the lie, his non-apology is predictably slick: “Look, I know I’m going to be the bad guy on this one, but I just want to say that the last six days have been the best six days of probably my whole life.” As the words leave his lips, he pauses as if momentarily confused. The third-person narrator speaks up to illuminate the situation: “Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true.” All this goes to show that movies can use a number of possible narrators—even combinations of narrators. Likewise, movies employ more than one approach to narration. Narration can be omniscient, meaning it knows all and can tell us whatever it wants us to know. Omniscient narration has unrestricted access to all aspects of the narrative. It can provide any character’s experiences and perceptions, as well as information that no character knows. An omniscient camera shows the audience whatever it needs to in order to best tell the story. An espionage thriller like Notorious involves deception, double crosses, and mixed motives. To fully exploit the intrigue, the camera narrator must show us what is going on with multiple characters and situations. We watch Alicia uncover evidence in the wine cellar proving her husband’s Nazi plotting while he hosts a party in oblivious bliss upstairs. We see him plot her death after he learns she’s an American spy. We writhe with page120frustration watching her fellow agent (and love interest) blame her disheveled appearance on a hangover, when we know that all she’s been drinking is poisoned coffee. A large part of the pleasure in experiencing such a story comes from knowing more than the characters and anticipating what will happen if and when they learn the whole truth. Characters Whether it’s a pregnant teenager trying to find suitable parents to adopt her baby or a hobbit seeking to destroy an all-powerful ring, virtually every film narrative depends on two essential elements: a character pursuing a goal. The nature of that pursuit depends on the character’s background, position, personality, attitudes, and beliefs. These traits govern how the character reacts to opportunities and problems, makes decisions, acts upon those decisions, and deals with the consequences of those actions. The allies and adversaries (all of whom have traits of their own) that the character attracts are influenced by these traits, as are all interactions between these other various characters. And that pursuit, and all the decisions, actions, consequences, relationships, and interactions that intersect and influence it, is the story. Imagine how different the story of The Hunger Games series would have been if Katniss Everdeen had been cautious, confident, and privileged instead of the insecure, irreverent, and angry young woman who impulsively volunteers to take her little sister’s place at the reaping. Or in the case of the Harry Potter series, what if Ron Weasley, the insecure and unrefined product of a large rambunctious wizard family, had been the boy who lived, instead of the instinctive and strong-willed page121neglected orphan Harry Potter? Better still, what if the earnest, intelligent, overachieving child-of-muggles Hermione was the girl who lived? Even if the goal remained the same in each of these hypothetical narratives, the character’s traits would inspire choices and behavior that would lead them to a different path, and thus tell a different story. The primary character who pursues the goal is known as the protagonist. The protagonist is sometimes referred to as the hero (or heroine), but this term can be misleading, since engaging narratives do not necessarily depend on worthy goals or brave and sympathetic characters. As Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen can attest, it’s certainly not a liability if the audience happens to like or admire the protagonist. But as long as the protagonist actively pursues the goal in an interesting way, the viewer cannot help becoming invested in that pursuit and, by extension, the story. Seemingly unsympathetic protagonists chasing less than noble goals are sometimes called antiheroes: Walter Neff is a cocky insurance agent whose quest is to murder his lover’s husband so he can have her body—and her inheritance—all to himself. Walter’s no Boy Scout, but when watching Double Indemnity (1944; director Billy Wilder), it’s tough not to root for him to get away with murder. Jordan Belfort doesn’t kill anyone, but he does manipulate markets, cheat investors, and break innumerable laws to make outrageous profits (which he uses to fuel an aggressively excessive lifestyle). However, while watching The Wolf of Wall Street (2013; director Martin Scorsese), we take some pleasure in Belfort’s triumphs and can’t help pitying him when his empire collapses. page123 In fact, impeccable characters are rare in modern movies. Narrative craves imperfect characters because those imperfections provide obstacles, another essential building block of storytelling. We’ll discuss obstacles in the section on narrative structure. For now, simply consider that a romance about a shy, awkward boy in love with the head cheerleader is likely to be much more interesting than a love story between the two most beautiful and popular kids in school. Character imperfections and flaws also give characters room to grow. As the previous discussion of round and flat characters indicated, character development is central to many movie narratives. Elements of Narrative Narrative theory (sometimes called narratology) has a long history, starting with Aristotle and continuing with great vigor today. Aristotle said that a good story should have three sequential parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end—a concept that has influenced the history of playwriting and screenwriting. French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, who helped revolutionize cinematic style in the 1950s, agreed that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end—but, he added, “not necessarily in that order.” Given the cinema’s extraordinary freedom and flexibility in handling time (especially compared to the limited ways the theater can handle time), the directors of some of the most challenging movies ever made—including many contemporary examples—would seem to agree with Godard. The complexities of narratology are beyond the scope of this book, but we can begin our study by distinguishing between two fundamental elements: story and plot. Story and Plot Although in everyday conversation we might use the words story and plot interchangeably, they mean different things when we write and speak about movies. A movie’s story consists of (1) all the narrative events that are explicitly presented on-screen plus (2) all the events that are implicit or that we infer to have happened page130but are not explicitly presented. The total world of the story—the events, characters, objects, settings, and sounds that form the world in which the story occurs—is called its diegesis, and the elements that make up the diegesis are called diegetic elements. In the first scene of The Social Network (2010; director David Fincher), we see actors portraying Mark Zuckerberg and Erica Albright sitting together in a crowded bar. They are having a heated conversation—at least it’s heated on one side. Mark is chattering a rapid-fire monologue involving SAT scores in China and rowing crew; Erica is struggling to clarify what exactly he’s talking about. Everything we experience in this scene is part of the movie’s diegesis, including the other bar patrons and the muffled dissonance of the crowd’s chatter mixed with the White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit” playing on an unseen jukebox. Of course, we pay special attention to what the featured characters say and how they look saying it. From this explicitly presented information, we are able to infer still more story information that we have not witnessed on-screen. They’ve been here a while—their beers are half empty, and they’re in the middle of an ongoing conversation—and they’re a couple. Watching their interaction, we can even guess the nature and duration of Mark and Erica’s relationship. As the conversation intensifies, we can pick up on still more implicit information. Mark is obsessed with getting into a prestigious student club—his intensity implies that he is page131not exactly popular with the elite crowd. We learn Mark is going to Harvard and that he looks down on Erica for merely attending lowly (in his eyes) Boston University. The tone of her angry retort about Mark’s Long Island roots lets us imagine a relatively humble upbringing that might be fueling his need for prestige. The story includes everything in the diegesis, every event and action we’ve seen on-screen, as well as everything we can infer from watching those events. The plot consists of the specific actions and events that the filmmakers select and the order in which they arrange those events to effectively convey the narrative to the viewer. In this scene, what the characters do on-screen is part of the plot, including when Erica breaks up with Mark and stalks off, but the other information we infer from their exchange belongs exclusively to the story. The distinction between plot and story is complicated because in every movie, the two concepts overlap and interact with one another. Let’s continue exploring the subject by following the jilted Mark as he slinks out of the bar and makes his way back to his dorm. In this sequence, we hear the diegetic sounds of evening traffic, the tread of Mark’s sneakers, and the muted chatter of his fellow pedestrians. We watch Mark trudge past the pub, trot across a busy street and down a crowded sidewalk, and jog across campus. As we can see in Figure 4.2, these explicitly presented events, and every image and sound they produce, are included in the intersection of story and plot. But remember that story also incorporates those events implied by what we see (and hear) on-screen. In this particular sequence, implied events might involve the portions of Mark’s journey that were not captured in any of the shots used to portray his journey. In addition, everything we infer from these images and sounds, from the supremacy of the great university to the sophistication of the young scholars strolling its campus, is strictly story. The plot concerns only those portions of his journey necessary to effectively convey the Ivy League setting and the narrative idea of Mark’s hurrying faster and faster the closer he gets to the sanctuary of his dorm room. But the plot supplies more than simply this particular arrangement of these specific events. Plot also includes nondiegetic elements: those things we see and hear on the screen that come from outside the world of the story, such as score music (music not originating from the world of the story), titles and credits (words superimposed on the images on-screen), and voice-over comments from a third-person voice-over narrator. For example, back in the bar, moments after Erica storms out, music begins to play over the shot of Mark alone at the table. This music is not the White Stripes song we heard in the background earlier in the scene. Whereas that diegetic music came from a jukebox from within the world of the story, this new music is nondiegetic score music that the filmmakers have imposed onto the movie to add narrative meaning to the sequence. The music begins as lilting piano notes that help convey the sadness Mark feels after getting unexpectedly dumped. Deeper, darker notes join the score as the music continues over Mark’s journey home, allowing us to sense the thoughts of vengeance intruding on Mark’s hurt feelings. As he trots up the steps to his dorm, a title page132announces the time and place of our story: Harvard University Fall 2003. These nondiegetic elements—score music and titles—are not part of the story. But they are an important piece of the plot: the deliberate selection and arrangement of specific events and elements the filmmakers employ to deliver the narrative. Order Bringing order to the plot events is one of the most fundamental decisions that filmmakers make about relaying story information through the plot. Most narrative film plots are structured in chronological order. But, unlike story order, which necessarily flows chronologically (as does life), plot order can be manipulated so that events are presented in nonchronological sequences that emphasize importance or meaning or that establish desired expectations in audiences. Citizen Kane (1941; director Orson Welles) presents the biography of Charles Foster Kane, a fictional character inspired by media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Welles and his co-screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz, adopted an approach to plot order so radical for its time that it actually bewildered many viewers. The movie’s plot consists of nine sequences, five of which are flashbacks. The film opens with Kane’s death, followed by a newsreel that summarizes the major events of Kane’s life in more or less chronological order. A third sequence introduces us to Mr. Thompson, a reporter assigned to get additional page135information about Kane’s life— primarily about the meaning of his last word: “ Rosebud. ” Thompson ’ s subsequent investigation is a kind of detective story; each of the five sources he interviews or examines reveals a different perspective on different periods in Kane’s life. The order of these sequences is determined not by chronology, but by the order of Thompson’s investigation and the memory of his interview subjects. Just as Thompson tries to assemble clues about Kane’s life, the audience must assemble the jumbled chronology in which it is presented. The viewer participation required makes watching Citizen Kane an engaging, if sometimes disorienting, participatory experience. What’s more, once freed from strict chronological order, Welles and Mankiewicz were able to juxtapose events in a way that provided additional context and meaning. For example, having just watched Kane die alone, we comprehend the significance of his leaving home at age eight on a level that would not have been possible if that earlier incident had been presented first. Likewise, our enjoyment of seeing Kane’s exuberant idealism when he buys his first newspaper in 1892 is tempered by having previously watched him lose control of his media empire after the 1929 stock market crash. However challenging it was for its time, the plot structure of Citizen Kane has been so influential that it is now considered conventional. One of the many movies that it influenced is Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). The plot of Pulp Fiction, which is full of surprises, is constructed in a nonlinear way and fragments the passing of time. We might have to see the movie several times before being able to say, for instance, at what point—in the plot and in the story—the central character Vincent Vega dies. Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) and Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible (2002) take manipulation of plot order to the extreme by presenting the events in their respective narratives in reverse chronological order. Each film opens with the story’s concluding event, then works its way backward to the occurrence that initiated the cause-and-effect chain. By inverting the sequence in which the audience is accustomed to experiencing events—in life as well as in movies— Memento and Irreversible essentially challenge viewers to relearn how to align expectation and decipher narrative context. We experience each presented event not in light of the string of actions and reactions that led up to it; our understanding comes only from what happened after the action we’re currently watching. We start with resolution and work our way toward the inciting incident. In the case of Memento, our ignorance of previous events helps us identify with the limited perspective of the movie’s protagonist, Leonard—a man incapable of forming new memories. Events In any plot, events have a logical order, as we’ve discussed, as well as a logical hierarchy. Some events are more important than others, and we infer their relative significance through the director’s selection and arrangement of details of action, character, or setting. This hierarchy consists of (1) the events that seem crucial to the plot (and thus to the underlying story) and (2) the events that play a less crucial or even subordinate role. The first category includes those major events or branching points in the plot structure that force characters to choose between or among alternate paths. Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014) tells the story of Andrew, a talented young drummer who struggles to earn the approval of his demanding and abusive teacher, Terence Fletcher. Andrew’s performance in first-year band practice impresses Fletcher, who offers him a coveted spot in his studio band. Later, Fletcher humiliates Andrew for his inability to keep time on a challenging piece, so Andrew practices until his fingers bleed. Each following stage in the plot turns on such events, which force Andrew to take action and make consequential choices. The second category includes those minor plot events that add texture and complexity to characters and actions but are not essential elements within the narrative. Andrew ’ s relationships with people outside the competitive world of jazz performance create subordinate events. His submissive father, the antithesis of the domineering Fletcher, takes Andrew to old movies. Brimming with newfound confidence after a successful rehearsal, Andrew asks Nicole, the young woman working the concession stand, on a date. Later, And...
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