PAN’S LABYRINTH (WARNER BROS., 2006)
The faun comforts Ofelia after the death of her mother and promises her she can enter the safety of the Underground Realm if she performs a final task. Del Toro’s extraordinary film explores the role fantasy plays in a world of darkness and cruelty. Frame enlargement.
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Modes of Screen Reality
world, a fate that befalls all people. But her parents
death, and the experiences with the faun pre-
believed always that her spirit would return and live
sented as a flashback at the moment of her death.
forever in the Underground Realm.
As a narrator explains the legend of Princess
The faun tells Ofelia she is the princess and that
Moanna, a close-up of Ofelia’s lifeless face shows
she must perform three tasks to prove herself worthy
time moving backward, her blood flowing back
of returning. Del Toro intercuts this plot line with
into her body rather than out of it.
Vidal’s harsh treatment of Carmen and his brutal
Del Toro thus poses a question about the
interrogations of captured guerillas. Carmen’s preg-
Underground Realm—is it real? Does Ofelia find an
nancy goes bad, and she dies while giving birth.
immortality with her lost parents that is denied ordi-
Fearing for the life of her infant brother, and on
nary people, each of whom is fated to die and van-
the faun’s instructions, Ofelia abducts him from
ish from the earth? Are the faun and the mythical
Vidal’s quarters and rushes into the maze, pursued
kingdom true? Or are they a psychological fantasy
by Vidal. He seizes the child and callously shoots
that provides Ofelia with some comfort in the final
Ofelia with his pistol before the anti-fascist guerillas
moments of her life but has no authenticity beyond
capture and execute him. Mercedes, Vidal’s house-
this function?
keeper who became friends with Ofelia, finds her
Del Toro shows that Ofelia’s fantasy is a response
body and weeps beside it.
to unbearable cruelty in a world of pain and violence
As she dies, and in a colorful sequence
that overwhelms her. The Underground Realm pro-
with glowing imagery, Ofelia appears in the
vides her with a safe and protected space. Is this the
Underground Realm where she is joyously
role that fantasy plays in human life—by creating
welcomed home by her parents and by the faun.
imaginary worlds as alternatives to the real one, does
Del Toro has counterpointed the film’s two narrative
it make life less unbearable?
lines. Ofelia’s adventures with the faun and her visit
The film’s power lies in its ambiguity. Del
to the underworld kingdom have been entwined
Toro leaves open both possibilities—that the
with the brutal political drama of Captain Vidal’s
Underground Realm is real and, alternatively, that
efforts to torture and kill the anti-fascist resistance
it represents the final flicker of consciousness in a
fighters. They’ve been entwined as well with Ofelia’s
dying mind. The ambiguity gives the film its poetic
experiences of violence, cruelty, and loss.
force and its haunting power. In Pan’s Labyrinth, Del
Furthermore, the film begins with imagery
Toro constructs a beautiful but scary parable about
of Ofelia bleeding and dying from the gunshot
fantasy and the human longing for an escape from
wound, with the visit to Vidal’s post, her mother’s
pain and mortality. ■
CINEMATIC SELF-REFLEXIVITY
However unusual or fantastic their settings and design, the other modes of screen reality aim to persuade the viewer that the world depicted on screen is real, that it is, for the purposes of the narrative, a valid world whose premises are not questioned within the body of the film. The fantasy world that George Lucas creates in the Star Wars films is, taken on its own terms, a self-enclosed and internally valid one.
By contrast, the self-reflexive mode makes no pretense that the world represented on screen is anything other than a filmic construction. Films in this mode remind viewers that what they are watching is, after all, a movie. Self-reflexive films tell the viewer that the reality on screen is a movie reality. These acknowledgments take a variety of forms. Typically, they fall into two categories. They tend to be either comic or made with didactic intent.
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Modes of Screen Reality
ANNIE HALL (UNITED ARTISTS, 1977)
Woody Allen, as Alvy Singer, turns toward the camera and speaks to the film’s viewers in this scene from Annie Hall . Allen breaks the illusion of make-believe in a moment of comic self-reflexivity. In popular films, self-reflexivity is quite common in comedy but rare in drama. Frame enlargement.
Case Study AUSTIN POWERS AND KILL BILL
Contemporary screen comedy often makes use of a
A secret agent from the 1960s, Austin Powers is
self-reflexive style. Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 , for ex-based on the many screen spies who had popular film
ample, play with the viewer’s familiarity with the horror
series in that era. These include James Bond, Derek
movie conventions that are being satirized. Like Woody
Flint, and Matt Helm. Myers weaves numerous refer-
Allen, Mike Myers has made playing to the camera an in-
ences to those movies into his own. Austin Powers in
tegral part of his ironic comic persona. His Austin Powers
Goldmember (2002), for example, costars Michael Caine
films (1997, 1999, 2002) include numerous moments
as Powers’s father. Caine is an actor closely identified
of self-conscious comedy, in which Myers jokes with the
with the sixties spy craze, having played secret agent
camera, making humor by acknowledging its presence.
Harry Palmer in several pictures (including The Ipcress
He winks at it, grins broadly to it, and uses it to make a
File , 1966). His presence in Goldmember evokes this his-
formal introduction of key scenes, such as when he leans
tory. Furthermore, Goldmember plays with the title and
forward, smiles, and says into the camera, “Ladies and
character of one of the most famous James Bond films,
gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach,” introducing cameo
Goldfinger (1964).
appearances by the composer, who then performs se-
While not a laugh-out-loud comedy like the Austin
lections from his songs. Bacharach’s songs were very
Powers films, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill , released in
popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and their catchy melo-
two parts (2003, 2004), contains a lot of dark humor
dies are major emblems of the popular culture of those
and outrageous wit. Veering from one mode of screen
periods. Myers’s introductions of Bacharach, then, are
reality to another, the films have a flashy, in-your-face
moments of nostalgia and affection, and his use of a self-
style that makes reference to many of Tarantino’s favor-
reflexive camera emphasizes them.
ite films.
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362
Modes o
f Screen Reality
AUSTIN POWERS
(NEW LINE, 1997)
Austin Powers (Mike
Myers), the interna-
tional man of mystery,
jokes and confides
with the camera and
viewers, thereby ac-
knowledging the pres-
ence of each. Here, he
offers an affectionate
introduction to a
cameo appearance
by composer Burt
Bacharach. Frame
enlargement.
He audaciously switches from color to black-and-
many visual and musical references to Sergio Leone’s spa-
white for a climactic sword fight (this also helped the
ghetti Westerns, especially The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
film keep its R rating) and, without warning, goes
(1966), to the Shaw Brothers martial arts movies of the
from live action to an extended animé sequence for a
1970s, and to Japan’s Streetfighter film series. The star of
flashback showing a character’s childhood.
those films, Sonny Chiba, has a major role in Kill Bill , as the
With swordfights and graphic blood spurts, the story
master swordsman who makes the heroine’s sword.
focuses on a female assassin seeking revenge on those
The pleasures of Kill Bill , then, lie in its self- reflexive
who betrayed her. It is derived from (and it makes refer-
style, as Tarantino calls the viewer’s attention to his
ence to) Lady Snowblood (1973), a Japanese film that is
playful movie in-jokes and to his audacious manipula-
one of Tarantino’s favorites. Along the way, he also makes
tions of picture and sound.
KILL BILL (MIRAMAX, 2003, 2004)
Like all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, Kill Bill is very self-conscious about its relationship to other movies. Tarantino references his favorite films and filmmakers, and he playfully manipulates picture and sound in striking, attention-grabbing ways. Frame enlargement.
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Modes of Screen Reality
GRINDHOUSE (DIMENSION FILMS, 2007)
Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to evoke the style of 1970s exploitation pictures. Their film is a double feature composed of Deathproof (Tarantino directed) and Planet Terror (Rodriquez directed) and includes fake trailers directed by other filmmakers including Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. Throughout, the footage is scratched and torn and has frames missing to evoke the experience of watching an old print that has been run many times through a projector. The entire project is an extended wink at the audience. Here, villain Kurt Russell pauses to grin at the camera just before he does something really nasty. Frame enlargement.
The self-reflexive mode works extremely well for
The comic possibilities of the self-reflexive mode
comedy because it promotes the intimate relationship
assume that the viewer will understand the social
with an audience that is integral to effective humor.
norms, movies, and movie characters that are being
Austin Powers and Kill Bill invite the audience to play
referenced. Only viewers who “get” the references
along and be as hip as they are by enjoying the jokes.
will enjoy the humor these films offer. ■
Comic Self-Reflexivity
The tradition of self-reflexivity most commonly found in popular mass-market movies employs a comic design. Throughout Annie Hall (1977), director and star Woody Allen continually interrupts the narrative with a series of humorous asides and confessions made to the camera. By speaking to the camera, of course, he speaks directly to the film’s audience. Looking at the camera lens, he looks directly at the eyes of the viewer. During one scene, when Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) quarrel over whether she said going to psychoanalysis will change her life or change her wife, Alvy breaks off the argument, turns to the camera, and reminds the film’s viewers that they know what was said because they have been there all along, listening to the quarrel. Likewise, in a subtle way, the tradition established by director Alfred Hitchcock of making guest appearances inside his films reminds viewers of his controlling presence as director and, therefore, of the film’s status as a film.
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Modes of Screen Reality
Didactic Self-Reflexivity
The second category of self-reflexive film style is used for didactic purposes and falls within the aesthetic tradition identified with the theater of playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht was an active playwright and poet from the 1920s until his death in 1956, and his plays include such classics as The Threepenny Opera, Galileo , and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. As a Marxist, Brecht sought in his art to have a direct impact on his social world and historical period, and to do so, he developed a unique and very influential approach to drama.
Impatient with the conventions of the theater of his day, Brecht created his own theatrical forms that he termed epic and that tried to break down the barriers that separated spectators from the play they were watching. Brecht considered the illusion of naturalism or realism, as created in theater or film, to be an obstacle preventing playgoers or film viewers from reflecting on the connections between their own lives and the events depicted on stage or screen.
Case Study THE BRECHTIAN LEGACY IN FILM: WEEKEND
Brecht’s work in the theater continues to exert an
Throughout the film, title cards serve to (1) intro-
enormously powerful influence on filmmakers. French
duce and set off a given scene from the surrounding
director Jean-Luc Godard is probably the most famous
context of the narrative, (2) tell viewers what it is they
Brechtian filmmaker currently working. Godard’s films
are about to see, (3) remind viewers of the filmmaker’s
offer a virtual catalogue of Brechtian cinematic tech-
intrusion on the narrative, and (4) emphasize the way
niques, that is, techniques that break the illusion that
the filmmaker has chosen to shape and organize the
the spectator is watching a real, authentic world on
structure of the film. By calling attention to the film’s
screen rather than a movie. These techniques enable
methods of constructing its images and narrative, each
Godard to speak directly to his audience as author
of these functions is consistent with the Brechtian goal
rather than indirectly through the characters and ac-
of breaking the illusion of reality exerted by the screen
tion of a film. Weekend (1967), Godard’s savage satire
world.
of modern consumer society, employs three kinds of
The title card “Totem and Taboo” prefaces the
didactic, self-reflexive techniques. These are the use of
film’s most horrific sequence, dealing with the can-
printed titles, nontraditional camera techniques, and
nibalism and mutilation of English tourists at the hands
the incorporation of imaginary characters and mo-
of a guerrilla army based in the countryside. This title
ments of performance self-disclosure.
derives from a famous book by Sigmund Freud dealing
with primitive social organization and behavioral taboos
Titles
in human ancestry. Here, the self-reflexive qualities are
Title cards break up the narrative action of Weekend ,
multiple. In addition to the four functions described
which follows the comic and violent misadventures of a
above, the title card tel
ls the viewer that the scenes that
middle-class couple journeying across France on holiday.
follow will contain shocking and taboo imagery, as in-
The printed titles offer ironic and poetic commentaries on
deed they do, and for viewers who know the reference,
the narrative. During the opening credits of the film, two
this acknowledgment positions the scenes in relation to
title cards proclaim, with some irony, that this is “a film
Freud’s famous work.
adrift in the cosmos” and “a film found on a dump.” A
long musical sequence in the middle of the film, during
Nontraditional Camera Techniques
which a pianist performs a Mozart sonata as the camera
These are a second method used by Godard to create
tracks three times around the perimeter of a farmyard,
self-reflexive style in Weekend. Two sequences stand out
is introduced by flash-cut inserts of the title “Musical
for their use of radical camerawork. The tracking shot
Action.”
along the row of stalled cars and the circular tracking
365
Modes of Screen Reality
movements around the farmyard during the musical
sciences, prompting Roland to mutter that the film they
interlude extend the length of these shots and scenes
are in (and the viewer is watching) must be rotten—it’s
to a point many viewers find unbearable, especially
full of crazy people. His remark is a moment of perfor-
because no new narrative information is being dis-
mance self-disclosure in which the actor steps out of
closed. However, the tracking shots go on for so long
character to evaluate the quality of the film in which he
that the visual device—camera movement—becomes
appears. Of course, Godard does not believe he’s mak-
the subject of the shots. By elaborating camera move-
ing a rotten film and so the evaluation is ironic.
ment at such length, the style becomes self-reflexive
For the Brechtian tradition, this is precisely the at-
by making the viewer acutely aware of the visual
titude to be combated, and it is what motivates the use
design. As in comic uses, however, self-reflexiveness
of self-reflexive techniques. By breaking the spell of re-
depends on the viewer’s knowledge of the norm that
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 55