The second aspect of film language we turn to now is narrative. In the required reading, Bordwell and Thompson (2013, p. 73) define narrative as “a chain of events linked by cause and effect relationships and occurring in time and space”. This topic will cover these elements referred to by Bordwell and Thompson and how they work with film form to create film meaning and subtext. The specific aspects of narrative we will be focusing on throughout this lesson are:

• Story

• Plot

• Cause and effect

• Time

• Space

One purpose of looking at what makes up a film’s narrative is to understand how filmmakers communicate the message or meaning of their stories to audiences. As viewers of film too, we can also look at narrative elements and make up our own minds as to what we think the film is about; the subtext of the narrative. In the final part of this lesson, we look at elements of subtext and meaning in order to enrich our experiences of films and, on a practical note, assist with the subtext assessment.

By the end of this lesson you should be able to:

• Identify, describe and apply film narrative elements

• Understand how symbols, metaphors and metonyms work to produce subtext

• Combine narrative elements with film form to analyse meaning

• Analyse the subtext of a scene

What is film narrative?

Using the definition of film narrative from Bordwell and Thompson above, we can already gain a sense of the essential elements needed to tell stories in cinema. There must be a connection between the events in a film and this may be through the characters, actions, time or space that helps the viewer understand how the events are connected. These elements, however, can be arranged in multiple ways for certain effects but will always maintain a cause and effect relationship (i.e. events are not randomly strung together). For example, classical narration is typical of early Hollywood cinema and generally presents plot events in chronological or linear order. There are also other ways to present events that are considered non-linear and manipulate the sense of time the events take place in. Sometimes the non-linear arrangement of events is called post-classical narration. For instance, the use of the flashback, which was an element we looked at in the previous topic in relation to editing. We will look at the manipulation of time and events with examples later in this topic.

For the moment, consider what is needed in a typical narrative. What do we as audiences expect when we see a film? Or if we are writing a film script, what do we need to engage our target audience in the story?

Generally, we need:

• Characters — e.g. protagonists and antagonists

• Action

• Events/incidents connected in various ways (cause and effect)

• Problems/conflicts

• Resolution

Resolution to the narrative may be one element that filmmakers and screenwriters do not always include. For instance, Italian Neorealist filmmakers, like Vittorio De Sica, chose not to provide resolution. Instead, the purpose was to simply end what we see at a point to illustrate that life does not always have a resolution; there are always uncertainties.

Hopefully, this topic can help you begin to reflect on what you can include in your own stories and start thinking about the mechanisms of how to tell them. Now let’s start breaking these elements down further.

Film Narrative Elements

Story versus plot

Sometimes the word ‘story’ can be substituted for ‘narrative’. This is not incorrect, but in the context of understanding the different elements that makeup film narrative, we can define the story in more specific terms. This is because when we speak about narrative, we may need to differentiate between events or actions that are implied in the narrative and what we events we physically see. Also, from a screenwriting perspective, we use the difference in the terms story and plot in the process of forming character types and their behaviours and motivations that will impact the events in the film (the effects of specific causes — see below).

This brief table from Bordwell and Thompson (2001, pg. 62) distinguishes the difference between story and plot, as well as the overlapping characteristic of explicitly presented events.

You can see here that story includes what we see visually presented to us and the implied events we don’t see, such as a character’s backstory perhaps mentioned at some point. The plot does not contain this latter element, rather it includes the non-diegetic material within a film (i.e. anything that does not take place in the story world or diegesis). Diegetic refers to anything that is within or related to the story world and non-diegetic materials refers to the other elements not present within the story world, such as credit sequences, musical score or soundtrack (although sometimes music is diegetic, such as music from a radio), or subtitles.

Consider this synopsis of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005):

The film takes place in a small town in Indiana and focuses on a man named Tom Stall, a café owner and family man. One evening two robbers threaten a waitress at the café while attempting to rob it, which causes Tom to swiftly kill them. This action makes Tom a town celebrity where he is interviewed on the news. A gangster, Carl Fogerty, sees Tom’s news report and is convinced that Tom is actually a gangster named Joey Cusack who escaped the Philadelphia mob years earlier. Carl confronts Tom, who adamantly denies being Joey, however, Carl’s visit to the town turns Tom’s life upside down, creating tension and alienation within his family until he finally confesses to his wife that he is indeed Joey. Tom/Joey’s brother Ritchie demands his return to Philadelphia, to which Tom complies. The film ends with Tom killing his brother and returning home to Indiana to rebuild his relationship with his family.

This synopsis describes the diegesis or story and some of the events we see in the plot. The implication of Tom’s past as Joey exemplifies elements of story, but cannot be considered plot as we don’t ever see Tom’s past — there are no flashbacks to when he was Joey and in the mob. This difference also highlights the importance of creating character backstories in the initial processes of screenplay development, as their backstories will create major narrative conflicts and events, as well as justify a character’s behaviour and actions. What we can also see in the A History of Violence synopsis the chain of causes and their effects that leads Tom to confront his past in order to be free to move forward with his new life.

Cause and effect

An integral element in film narrative is cause and effect. Without it, there would be no logical structure to the story or a character’s behaviour. The chain of cause and effect is normally produced through the actions and motivations of the characters themselves. For example, their psychological makeup and who they are as people will dictate their actions and reactions to events that will motivate the narrative forward. Aspects of character that we can consider as motivation within the cause and effect chain can also include their skills, attitudes and value systems, habits, and appearance.

Filmmakers can also manipulate the cause and effect chain by sometimes withholding the effect of a particular cause or vice versa. These instances can produce audience intrigue, drawing the viewer into the narrative by rousing their curiosity as to what caused the effect. Certain genres play on this idea, such as horrors, thrillers and mysteries, where we don’t know who the killer may be, but we witness the body count rising throughout the film.

Finally, some causes are not established through the main characters. It could be a natural or supernatural cause, such as a natural disaster (volcanoes erupting; tidal waves; radioactive monsters). However, these disasters are always enabling the characters to react in certain ways that become a part of the cause and effect chain.

Before we move onto time and space in narrative, let’s look at an example of cause and effect in action. This sequence from Back to the Future II (1989) shows the beginning of a cause and effect chain based on Biff’s journey towards being one of the wealthiest men in town.

In this clip, the Almanac acts as a causal motivation for the young Biff to become rich and powerful in the future. The cause is old Biff giving the Almanac to the young Biff, and the effect of this is Biff accumulating wealth as he uses it to bet on guaranteed sporting winners.

Time (temporality)

The next step in narrative is looking at how the cause and effect chain function in time. As we saw with editing in Topic 1, the events we see in film are placed in either a linear or non-linear sequence. This also relates to how time is perceived and structured. Linear narrative tends to present their events in a chronological timeline, while non-linear narratives manipulate the time by changing the order of events as we see them to when they actually occurred in the story world. This is what is referred to as temporal order. This is one of the three ways in which we consider time in film and its relationship to the events in the narrative. The other two are temporal duration and temporal frequency.

Temporal order

As stated above, this element refers to the order of events as they unfold within the narrative. Does the narrative use flashbacks or flashforwards, therefore presenting time as non-chronological? The narrative can shift between the past and the present throughout. Films can also structure their order of events as episodes that take place at various moments in time (there may not be a sense of chronology), but ultimately cross paths towards the end. Examples of this are Pulp Fiction (1994), Short Cuts (1993) or Sin City (2005).

There are numerous examples of films that play with temporal order to emphasise particularly narrative and thematic traits, such as Memento (2002) or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Each of these films is built on the notion of memory and therefore relies on flashbacks to tell their stories.

Temporal duration

This element of time can be broken up into three different approaches;

• Screen duration — how long it takes to watch the film (90mins, 120mins, 3hrs, etc.)

• Plot duration — the length of time we see presented in the events in the film

• Story duration — the plot duration plus the implied and inferred time

If we think back to the A History of Violence example, the plot duration would be the amount of time from the introduction of Tom in the opening scene in Indiana to Tom coming home after the final showdown in Philadelphia. While not explicitly stated, we can assume from what we see that these events took place over around a week. So the plot duration is a week.

The story duration, therefore, also includes the implied time of Tom’s past as Joey back in Philadelphia. The story duration encompasses the many years prior plus the week of events that we see.

Temporal frequency

This refers to how many times we see an event occur. For instance, films like Run Lola Run (1998) or Vantage Point (2008) show the same integral event multiple times.

We see Lola get the phone call from her boyfriend three separate times, which begins a chain of cause and effect that ends slightly differently each time.

Vantage Point shows the attempted assassination of the US president from different character’s perspectives, but we see the same attempt each time.

In these examples, the temporal frequency of showing a key event more than once in both films is crucial to each story.

Can you think of any other films that use temporary frequency in this way?

Remember that the manipulation of time in various ways can produce a more interesting narrative structure. Consider if the films you want to make would be better as linear or non-linear in their presentation of events.

Space

The understanding of film space can straddle both film form and narrative, as cinematography, mise-en-scéne and editing techniques are used to establish location and setting (types of space). There are two ways we can think about how space is used; on screen space (space within the frame) and off screen space (space outside the frame). We can also consider story space as a kind of off screen space if we wish (space referred to in the film, but never seen).

Narrative patterns and ranges of knowledge

Some final narrative techniques to consider that you can implement into your own screenwriting practice are narrative patterns and ranges of knowledge. What kind of story do you want to tell? Is it a crime or mystery? Does the main protagonist go on a journey and is that journey physical or metaphysical/psychological? These kinds of questions will dictate the narrative pattern you would choose to follow. Your character may be goal oriented, which necessitates a plot that sees him or her working through various steps to achieve that goal. Other things to consider here are how your film will open, what order the events will be presented in line with the appropriate narrative pattern, what and where will the climax be, and how the film will end. Watching films of a similar style or genre can help you identify how these patterns are constructed.

Ranges of knowledge refers to how much we as an audience know about the plot as opposed to how much the protagonist knows. Unrestricted knowledge means that the audience knows more than the protagonists. In a mystery or crime film, we may discover who the killer is before the detective does, for instance. However, if we are discovering information about the killer at the same time the detective is, this is what is known as restricted knowledge. Once again, filmmakers can manipulate and play with their viewers in terms of how much information is presented. Alfred Hitchcock was a master at this, so it may be good to watch some of his films to see how he does this and how we are supposed to relate the narrative and characters.

As a filmmaker, think about why you would play with un/restricted knowledge in your films. For what purpose and to what effect? Perhaps this has to do with how the viewer is supposed to feel, or maybe how they relate to the protagonist.

Subtext and meaning

So why are we needing to get our heads around all these terms and ways to talk about films? One reason is, of course, to assist us in our own filmmaking practice by being able to ‘talk the talk’. As discussed in topic 1, another important reason is to understand the techniques that other filmmakers have used to create their work. A third reason is to enrich our own viewing experiences by being able to look further into the meanings and messages embedded in films. This section looks at the methods we can employ to analyse films for meanings and subtext. While meaning in film can be approached in various contexts, as we will see throughout the rest of the unit’s topics, we will begin with subtext only, which will assist you with your second assessment.

Film scholar B.K. Dick (2010, pg. 200–201) defines subtext as, “a complex structure beneath the narrative consisting of the various associations the narrative evokes. In other words, there is a surface meaning and a deeper meaning”. The surface meaning in this definition refers to the plot, while the deeper meaning is the subtext and it is discovered through understanding the relationship formed between the formal and narrative elements of the film.

Films can contain multiple subtexts as well, at the level of a shot, within an individual scene, or drawn from the film in its entirety. For example, we can read multiple subtexts from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now (1979). The surface story or plot can be described as the following:

Set during the Vietnam War, Captain Willard, a U.S. Army special operative, is given a mission to assassinate a renegade U.S. officer, Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Willard joins a crew on a PBR (patrol boat, river) down the Nung River to a remote jungle where the now insane Kurtz has taken command of indigenous troops. Along the way, he and the crew encounter battles until they reach the jungle where various violent attacks ensue. Willard eventually completes his mission, killing Kurtz, before leaving on the boat.

As you can hopefully see, this plot synopsis only describes events and actions seen in the film, the surface story. However, there are a couple of different subtexts (and probably more) we can identify. Here is an initial suggestion:

Subtext 1

“The events that Willard and the boat’s crew face on their journey show the ridiculousness of war and it’s waste of young lives.”

This is particularly evident if we know anything about the history of the Vietnam War and the anti-war sentiment felt during this era.

Subtext 2

“The film shows one man’s journey to test how ‘bad’ he can be without going insane. Can a man be pushed to his limit without going insane and losing what it means to be human?”

This subtext focuses more specifically on the journey that Willard takes, both physically and mentally. We see him slowly unravel throughout the film, almost becoming as insane as Kurtz does. Once again, this could be related to the ravages of war and the toll it takes on the human psyche. This is something that Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst theorised in the 1920s. He believed that our psyche is made up of what he called ‘archetypes’, including one he labelled the ‘shadow’. The shadow represents the darker part of our psyches and personalities, perhaps those elements that we repress. For Willard, his shadow is slowly revealed as his journey continues, something we can see illustrated through certain lighting choices, for instance. In this topic’s section of Campus Online, there is a clip from the film that demonstrates this interpretation.

In this subtext reading, a theoretical framework has been applied to further assist in its interpretation, but they don’t always need to be. Looking at how the techniques and conventions of film language are being used can be enough to understand the subtext. Now let’s look at some other elements that can help in discovering subtext.

Metaphor and metonym

Metaphors and metonyms are two central ways of communicating subtext. They are concepts that were initially and perhaps more commonly used in relation to literature and linguistics but are incredibly useful in a film context as well.

Metaphor

Metaphor “communicates the unknown by transferring it into terms of the known” (Hayward, 229) or, in other words, when one thing is suggested to be analagous to another thing. In film, it is evident in the sequencing of multiple shots, the first relating to the next and where we then compare the second shot to the first. Here Charlie Chaplin, not known known for his subtlety in social commentary, edits footage to suggest that commuters are like livestock: 

Sometimes film metaphors turn into film clichés, as the sequencing of images in a particular order commonly imply the same thing each time they are used. Have a look at this closing scene from North by Northwest (1959) and consider what is being implied, but can’t be shown (because it's 1959...), in this sequencing of images:

Metonyms

Metonyms can replace or represent something that they are associated with, for example, an object that represents a time in a character’s life. This is the scenario in Citizen Kane (1941), where Kane’s childhood sled, Rosebud, is a metonym for a time in his life that was more innocent before he became wealthy and lonely. Initially, it is not known what Rosebud actually is except that is was the last word Kane spoke before he died. Therefore, the search to find out what Rosebud means adds to the mystery of who he is as a person. Because we have seen Kane with the sled as a happy child we associate it with that time in the character's life. 

References

Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (2013). “Narrative Form”. Film Art: An Introduction (10th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 72–110.

Corrigan, T & White, P. (2012). “Writing a film essay: Observations, arguments, research, and analysis.” The Film Experience: An Introduction. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Pg. 435–467.

Dick, B.K. (2010). “Film subtext”. The Anatomy of Film. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian Distributor.

Hayward, S. (2000). “Metonymy/Metaphor”. Cinema studies: the key concepts. 2nd ed. London:Routledge. Pg. 228–230.