Film Studies- An Introduction

by Warren Buckland

  Meanwhile Merrick, a former medical student, gives up his playboy lifestyle and returns to medical school, eventually setting up his own hospital. Finally, Joyce telephones Merrick to tell him that Helen is living in New Mexico and is extremely ill. Merrick visits her and performs an operation on her eyes.

  When she awakes, she regains her sight. They are then united as a couple.

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  We shall look at how omniscient narration structures the first 15 minutes of the film. Once Merrick is revived after his accident, the police take the resuscitator back to Dr Phillips.

  The film then follows the trauma of the Phillips family as they discover that Dr Phillips has died while his resuscitator was being used by Merrick. The film is therefore shifted from one story (that of Merrick) to another (that of the Phillips family).

  The following scene takes place in the hospital, where Merrick is recovering. A discrepancy of knowledge exists in this scene because, unlike the spectator and the other characters, Merrick does not know that Dr Phillips has died, nor does he know he was the cause of his death. In the middle of the scene he is eventually told about Dr Phillips’s death, thus reducing some of the discrepancy in knowledge. But crucially, he does not know how Dr Phillips died.

  Merrick leaves the hospital and begins to walk home. He

  is picked up by Helen as she drives from the hospital. The discrepancy in knowledge at work in this scene is more

  pronounced than in the scene in the hospital. At first, Helen and Merrick do not know one another, whereas the spectator knows both of them. As soon as she tells him who she is and how her husband died, we see Merrick in a close-up shot, as he reacts to what the spectator already knows. The discrepancy of knowledge between Merrick and the spectator is overcome as he now shares the same amount of narrative information as the spectator.

  However, Helen still does not know the identity of the man she has picked up. After he collapses, she takes him back to the hospital, where she is told that he is Merrick. The discrepancy in knowledge between Helen and the spectator is finally overcome.

  The scenes in the hospital and in the car (as well as many subsequent scenes in the film) are based on omniscient

  narration. The scene in the car creates dramatic suspense as the spectator waits to see how the characters will react to one another once they discover each other’s identity. Merrick collapses when he finds out Helen’s identity and, later, Helen is shocked when she finally discovers that she drove Merrick to the hospital. Later in the film, after Helen is blinded, this 54

  discrepancy in knowledge is revived when Merrick visits Helen but pretends to be someone else. The spectator, of course, knows his real identity, whereas Helen does not initially know who he is, thus leading to additional scenes of dramatic suspense.

  narratIvechronologyIn pulp ficTioN

  One of the dominant characteristics of Pulp Fiction in terms of narrative is the non-linear ordering of its events. In this respect it is similar to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and, more recently, David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) in the way it radically alters the sequence in which the events are presented.

  Spotlight

  Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000) is a very good example of what we can call a ‘puzzle film’. It is a puzzle because its narration tells its story in a complex way – backwards! ‘Because the film moves backward’, writes Stefano Ghislotti, ‘the viewer is progressively obliged to put the scenes into the right order: but it is really difficult to follow the flow of events while simultaneously recalling the events already seen, and putting everything into a coherent sequence. These difficulties involve a more general question: is it possible to understand a narration in which time and causality are reversed?’ (Stefano Ghislotti, in Buckland (ed.), 2009, p. 88).

  In the following analysis I shall attempt to discern the exact chronology of the events in Pulp Fiction.

  Firstly, the events rendered chronologically (not how they appear in the film) are:

  1 Captain Koons (Christopher Walken) presents a gold watch to the young Butch Coolidge; the watch is a gift from Butch’s father, who died in a prisoner-of-war camp. This sequence, coded as Butch’s memory, occurs about 20 years prior to all the other events that take place in the film.

  2 (a) Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), two hit men, carry out a job for mobster

  2 Film structure: narrative and narration 55

  Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). They retrieve a valuable case from four ‘business partners’ who tried to double-cross Marsellus. Two of the partners are shot.

  (b) After shooting the two partners, Vincent and Jules escape injury when another one of the partners rushes into the

  room and shoots at them. Vincent and Jules shoot him

  and take the fourth partner (Marvin) with them.

  3 In the car, Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin and both Vincent and Jules have to clean up both the car and themselves.

  4 (a) In a restaurant, Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) and Pumpkin (Tim Roth) talk about their previous heist jobs.

  They decide to hold up the restaurant they are occupying.

  (b) Vincent and Jules enter the restaurant, before it is held up, and Jules talks about quitting his job. As Honey

  Bunny and Pumpkin rob the restaurant, there is a stand-

  off between them and Vincent and Jules. Vincent and

  Jules convince Honey Bunny and Pumpkin to leave the

  restaurant. Vincent and Jules then leave the restaurant

  with the case.

  5 The boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is seen talking to Marsellus in Marsellus’s bar. Marsellus pays Butch to throw a boxing match. Vincent and Jules enter the bar with the case. Vincent buys some drugs, then takes out Marsellus’s wife Mia (Uma Thurman) for the evening (at Marsellus’s

  request). She takes Vincent’s drugs and becomes ill. Vincent is able to revive her.

  6 Butch is in his dressing room, thinking about his father’s watch (scene 1). He decides not to throw the fight and, after winning, escapes from the city. However, he has to return to his apartment the next day to retrieve his watch. Vincent is waiting inside but Butch kills him. Butch then, literally, runs into Marsellus. After a chase, both are trapped in a basement by two deviant homosexuals. Butch manages to escape, sets Marsellus free and therefore cancels their debt.

  Secondly, these events are presented in Pulp Fiction in the following order:

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  4 a) The pre-credit sequence where Honey Bunny and Pumpkin talk about their previous heist jobs; the

  scene ends with both of them pulling out their guns in

  preparation to rob the restaurant; credit sequence

  2 a) Vincent and Jules go to retrieve the case for Marsellus 5 Butch and Marsellus; Vincent and Jules enter

  1 Butch receiving his father’s watch

  6 Butch winning the fight, killing Vincent, gets even with Marsellus

  2 b) The end of segment 2, of Vincent and Jules retrieving the case

  3 Vincent kills Marvin

  4 b) Vincent and Jules in the restaurant held up by Honey Bunny and Pumpkin.

  The causal relation between the pre-credit sequence and 2a) remains unexplained until the end of the film. Furthermore, the spectator does not realize that the film has moved backwards in time from the pre-credit sequence to 2a) because, in the pre-credit sequence, Vincent and Jules are also in the restaurant after retrieving the case, although we do not see them in the restaurant until the end of the film.

  There does not seem to be a major ellipsis between 2a) and 5. The only sign that suggests that Vincent and Jules have not come directly from the apartment is their change of clothes.

  This remains unexplained but does not appear to be significant.

  Segment 5 begins with Butch (talking to Marsellus) and so do segments 1 and 6. Segment 1 is retrospe
ctively coded as Butch’s memory, as he prepares (beginning of segment 6) for the fight that Marsellus has paid him to throw. After Butch has escaped from the basement, it is not evident that this is the last action that takes place in the film’s chronology.

  When the film returns to the apartment where Vincent and Jules retrieve the case, the transition is quite marked, not least because we saw Butch kill Vincent in the previous segment, and we thought that the events in the apartment had been resolved.

  But instead, we come to realize that the path from Vincent 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 57

  and Jules retrieving the case to them returning it to Marsellus was far from straight. The intervening events explain both the change in clothes and link up the Honey Bunny and Pumpkin story with the Vincent and Jules story, therefore finally placing the pre-credit sequence within the film’s cause–effect logic.

  We also come to realize that the pre-credit sequence and the sequence with Vincent and Jules in the restaurant talking to one another take place at the same time, even though they are shown at different times in the film.

  Moreover, there is a systematic structure to the film’s non-linearity. The film begins with events in segment 4; it jumps back to segment 2; jumps forward again to 5; it then jumps right back to 1 before jumping to the end events in 6. Finally, it jumps back to events in segment 2, picks up where it left off and then progresses chronologically to segment 4, where it began.

  The film’s chronology therefore begins and ends with events that take place in the middle (segment 4). It then jumps backwards and forwards, in wider and wider arcs until it returns to 2

  and moves along to the events it began with. That the film jumps backwards and forwards in wider and wider arcs can be illustrated with a series of diagrams:

  1 2 3 4 5 6

  start

  1 2 3 4 5 6

  As you can see from these two diagrams, the movement between one segment and another is equal, but the movement in the second diagram is more encompassing. From 2 to 5, the film 58

  then moves back to the events before 2 and then moves forward to the events after 5 (1 and 6). From 6, the film then returns to 2

  and ends where it began, at 4.

  Although the chronology of Pulp Fiction is an extreme example, its complexity evidently did not detract from

  the film’s huge popularity. However, whatever we make of Pulp Fiction, I hope to have shown that it is not structured randomly, but according to a definite pattern. By concentrating on the chronology and cause-and-effect logic of Pulp Fiction, we can begin to understand that films do not need to represent the cause-and-effect logic of a film in chronological order.

  Returning to Psycho, it would after all have been perfectly logical for Marion to steal the $40,000 first before any exposition or causes were given.

  thenarratIveanDnarratIonof MulhollAND DR.

  We shall end by applying what we have learnt about narrative and narration in this chapter to David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr.

  (2001), a complex and mysterious film that pushes narrative and narration to – and beyond – their limits. This film gained immediate critical success on its release. Lynch won the Best Director category at the Cannes Film Festival, and he received an Oscar nomination for Best Director. He was also voted Best Director by four Film Critics Associations: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto. The film itself received the Best Film award from the Chicago and New York Film Critics,

  and in France it also won a César for best foreign picture. The following analysis assumes you have already viewed the film, and mixes a description of the plot (which is often difficult to untangle) with narrative analysis.

  Mulholland Dr. is divided into two main sections: the first, which can plausibly be coded as a dream (1 hour 56 minutes), and the final 25 minutes. These two sections are separated by a perplexing set of incidents. Important events in the first (the dream) section are repeated in the final section. However, these are repetitions with differences: different characters repeat the same actions, and these different characters are played by the same actors. Furthermore, the important events in the dream sequence seem to be mysterious, but there is a 2 Film structure: narrative and narration 59

  more mundane repetition of them in the second section. So, if something appears significant but mysterious in the first section of the film, one way to make sense of it is to look for a more ordinary representation of it in the second section. As well as summarizing the film’s plot and analysing its narrative, we shall examine the repetition of events. We shall see that repetition replaces the logic of cause and effect as a way of creating textual coherence across the film. For although Mulholland Dr.

  may seem mysterious, it is structured according to an internally consistent logic.

  The most noticeable repetitions focus on the two lead actresses.

  Actress Naomi Watts plays Betty in the first section of the film, Diane in the second section. Actress Laura Harring plays the

  ‘dark-haired woman’ (later named ‘Rita’) in the first section, Camilla Rhodes in the second. Other repetitions involve the recurrence of the same action, event or piece of dialogue, but in a different context. The spectator needs to link up these repetitions to make sense of them, to work out their meaning. It is only when an event is repeated much later in the film that its first appearance makes sense. When watching Mulholland Dr. , events that appear meaningless at the beginning gradually make sense as we continue watching. We therefore revise our initial experiences according to what happens later in the film.

  The film begins with a jitterbug dance contest. This dancing is not filmed in a straightforward manner. Instead, it consists of a series of superimposed images of dancers. Over these images are superimposed a further set of images, of Betty accompanied by what we can assume are her parents. Additionally, these images of Betty and her parents are overexposed and out of focus, and have been filmed with a jittery camera. The film therefore begins with heavily stylized images.

  Only later do we discover the significance of this opening scene.

  Similar images of Betty and her parents are repeated later in the film, when Betty arrives at Los Angeles Airport. And much later, in the second section of the film, we discover that Diane won a jitterbug contest, which led to acting in Hollywood. The spectator therefore eventually receives the back story behind and motivation for these opening shots.

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  The first section of the film, Diane’s dream, begins with a point-of-view shot of Diane going to sleep, and ends when

  ‘the Cowboy’ tells her to wake up. She dreams of herself in exaggerated terms, as the young, naive, blonde star-struck Betty, and she dreams of her lover, Camilla Rhodes, as a dark mysterious woman called Rita.

  The point-of-view shot is a privileged example of restricted narration, since the narrative is literally filtered through the vision of one character. We share Diane’s vision as she heads towards her bed with red sheets, and we hear her breathing off-screen. Everything except the bed is out of focus. Additional out-of-focus images of Betty and her parents are superimposed over this point-of-view shot, combined with flashes of light and jittery camera movement. These devices (out-of-focus shots, flashing lights, jittery camera, restricted view) can be read as representing a character’s consciousness. What we have seen up to now can therefore be motivated by character psychology. We can guess that the opening jitterbug dance scene is somehow linked to this person whose point of view we share.

  As the camera approaches the pillow, the screen goes black, representing this unseen character’s loss of consciousness. As the film fades up from black, we see a road sign for Mulholland Dr. The sign shimmers as light flashes on and off it, creating occasional overexposure. This shot of the sign is followed by a Cadillac driving along Mulholland Dr. at night with its headlamps on. The headlamps are the cause of the sign’s shimmering; the shimmering is the effect (the effect is therefore motivated). The credits themselves s
himmer, as if light is being shone on them. The film’s proper beginning, its credit sequence, is ‘born from’ the blackness, from the character’s loss of consciousness, or her entry into sleep and dream state. Lynch is equating his film with the dream state of a character in the film.

  The Cadillac seems to float along Mulholland Dr. The

  dark-haired woman is in the back of the Cadillac, and we occasionally share her point-of-view shots of the road ahead.

  This scene is repeated in the film’s second section, but with Diane sitting in the back. The shots are literally filmed in exactly the same way, creating an uncanny echo.

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  The Cadillac driver stops the car. The dark-haired woman says: ‘What are you doing? We don’t stop here.’ He then orders her out of the car. There is a sudden moment of omniscient narration, as the director gives us more information than any of the characters knows: two cars are drag racing along Mulholland Dr. The drag racers do not know that the Cadillac is ahead, and the people in the Cadillac do not know that the drag racers are heading towards them. Only the spectator knows about both events.

  The driver turns around and points a gun at the dark-haired woman. This gesture (and the dark-haired woman’s line) are repeated in the film’s second section, except that Diane is in the back of the car, and the driver has no gun. As the dark-haired woman is ordered out of the car, the drag racers’ headlamps shine onto her face, overexposing the image. One of the drag racing cars collides with the Cadillac. After the cars have crashed, smoke gradually fills the space. The image of smoke filling the screen is repeated in the Silencio club and at the film’s end, after Diane shoots herself.