Film Appreciation
Narrative
What is Narrative（敍事）
• A movie’s narrative is the telling of its story; (Barsam, 2007)
• Films are great storytelling devices, many audiences go out to
the movies for a great story, with powerful characters and
complex plot twists;
• We make sense of a narrative by identifying its events and
linking them together by cause and effect, time and space;
• Narrative is a chain of events in cause-effect relationship
occurring in time and space. (Bordwell)
Why Narrative?
• Expectations will be aroused as audience actively
participate in creation of the film’s form.
• Films will summon up curiosity, suspense, and
surprise.
• The ending has the task of satisfying or cheating the
expectations prompted by the film as a whole.
Narrative Structure
• Typically, a narrative begins with one situation; a
series of changes occurs according to a pattern of
cause and effect; finally, a new situation arises that
brings about the end of the narrative.
• Narrative structure is mainly about two things:
a) the CONTENT of a story (i.e. what a story is about)
b) the FORM used to tell a story (i.e. how a story is told /
the design).
Diegesis （敍事體、故事世界）
• the total world of the story action is called film’s diegesis
(the Greek word for “recounted story”)
• the story is told or recounted, as opposed to shown or
enacted
• Diegetic and nondiegetic （故事體與非故事體）
• whether it is in- or outside of the story
Story and Plot
Distinction between Story and Plot:
Story: Chronological order of events
Plot: The order in which the story is told
STORY
Presumed and Explicitly presented Added nondiegetic
inferred events events material
PLOT
Three Important Aspects of Narrative
Causality（因果關係）
➢ Cause/Effect Relationship
Time
Space
Causality (Cause & Effect)
• Most stories are organized around actions and their
consequences.
• What is the causal relationship between two actions, i.e.
if a certain action occurs, will another particular action
occur as a result of the previous action.
• We seek to connect events by way of cause and effect -
we look for Causal Motivation.
• Common agents of cause and effect are characters.
Time
• Causes and effects take place in time.
• Storytellers have enormous power to shape our
experience of time.
Examples:
• Change the ordering of events;
• Draw out or compress the duration of events;
• Repeated actions;
• Bring audience back to the same point multiple
times - Run Lola Run (1998).
Temporal Strategy
• A common strategy for creating a compelling narrative
experience is to motivate the unfolding of story time by
linking it to the protagonist's goals and desires.
• The most typical devices for doing this is to establish a
deadline (by which a certain action must be completed)
or an appointment (a future assignation between the
protagonist and another character.)
Space
• where the actions take place (locale, sometimes involve
setting);
• plot can lead us to infer other story spaces than those
presented to us;
• a narrative may ask us to imagine spaces and actions that
are never shown;
• onscreen space (the visible space within the frame) and
offscreen space
Narrative Structures
• The same story can be structured in a variety of ways—it
can be chronological, or it can be told in flashback framed
by the present.
• It can be fragmented with little explanation of what is past
and what is present. There is meaning inherent in the way a
narrative is structured.
Different Narrative Structure
• Linear Chronology – most common
• A linear narrative starts at the beginning and reveals each detail as it
each occurs in space and time.
• A happened, then B, then C, and finally D.
• Deadline structure e.g. Run Lola Run (Dir: Tom Tykwer ,1998)
• Non-linear: don’t follow rules of space and time. They can start and
end at anytime in the trajectory of the plotline.
C is described first, followed by A, B, and then D.
Examples:
● Slumdog Millionaire (Dir: Danny Boyle, 2008)
● Memento (Dir: Christopher Nolan, 2000)
Memento (2000, Dir: Christopher Nolan)
● a mystery and thriller genre film
● revolves a man Leonard Shelby
(Guy Pearce) as the
protagonist, suffering from
short-term memory loss, who
uses aids e.g. Polaroids, notes
and extensive tattoos to hunt for
the man he thinks killed his wife
• Source: [Link]
Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) Leonard (Guy Pearce)
•femme fatale •Film Noir protagonist
•seductive,
mysterious, •anti-hero
independent •delusional, paranoid, insecure
•with short-term memory loss
Source: [Link]
10th-anniversary-screening/
Memento (2000, Dir: Christopher Nolan)
● unique, fragmented, non-linear narrative structure
● every few minutes, the reverse order sequence is cut by a
chronological sequence.
● to remain comprehensive, Nolan used relational editing and
connected two scenes of the reverse order plot by repeating
the first few seconds of a scene in the conclusion of a scene
that appears later in the film
● through this structure, audience become detectives
themselves
● to create a “coherent narrative out of all the pieces” (Fuchs
2001) they confront
Narrator
Narration may employ a narrator – some specific agent who
purports to be telling us the story, to reveal thoughts, dreams,
fantasies or fears.
•Character narrator (first person narration) – narrator’s voice
is from an actual character in the movie;
Examples:
●Chungking Express (重慶森林 Dir: Wong Ka Wai, 1994),
multiple characters narration
• Non-character Narrator
• Voice-over narration, usually in documentary- narrator who is
not a character in the film
• Unreliable Narrator
● Rashômon (羅⽣⾨,1950, Dir: Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明)
● In the Heat of the Sun (陽光燦爛的⽇⼦, 1994, Dir: Jiang Wen
姜⽂)
"Change has wiped out my memories. I can't tell what's imagined from
what's real."
• Source: [Link]
Classical Hollywood Narrative
• A narrative’s use of causality, time, and space usually
involves a change from an initial situation to a final
situation.
• Most stories are structured around the goals of a core
protagonist or protagonists. Their goals and desires are
established early in the story and serve to motivate
subsequent actions.
• The resolution of the story comes when the protagonist
has met their goals, where-as many elements in the story
can be understood as either advancing or retarding the
movement of the protagonist towards the fulfillment of
their goals.
Keys for Classical Hollywood Narrative
➢ individual characters as casual agents; character-centered
action
➢ motivation strives to be clear and complete
➢ strong source of cause and effect: desire-goal-
opposition(conflict)-resolution
➢ linearity and continuity (plot arrangement provides the
coherence and duration of the story): cause-effect; continuity
editing
➢ strong indication of time and space
➢ narration: objective story reality; omniscient (knowing
everything) and unrestricted narration
➢ high degree of closure
THREE ACT NARRATIVE
Act I: The Setup
•We are introduced to the main characters in the story, their
goals, and the obstacles they are likely to face to achieve
their objectives;
•The main conflict in the story is introduced, as well as the
major antagonist (the villain) who will stand in the way of
the protagonists (the hero’s) objectives.
THREE ACT NARRATIVE
Act II: The Development
•An increasing sense of urgency is created when the main
characters encounter obstacles that stand in the way of their
journey.
•Oftenincludes a false resolution to the main conflict set up
in Act I.
•Cause-effect relationships involve actions that force a
reaction on the part of some character, leading to a new
action and reaction, and so on.
THREE ACT NARRATIVE
Act III: The Resolution
•Theresults of the story’s main conflict come to
dramatic confrontation – Climax.
•Key struggles are waged and an eventual victor is
determined-the eventual victor is usually our hero.
•Closure is introduced into the story: all the major
conflicts, issues, or ideas in the story are resolved-
Hollywood ending.
Always think….
• What films have you seen that structure the narrative in
interesting ways?
• What meaning does the film convey by doing this?
• Interesting examples:
• Source: [Link]
Run Lola Run (1998, Dir: Tom Tykwer)
• German thriller film
• A young German woman named
Lola, whom has 20 minutes to get
100,000 Deutschmarks to her
boyfriend before he robs a
supermarket.
• Source: [Link]
Cause and Effect
CAUSE EFFECT
Lola went into a shop to get Lola was not there to pick up
cigarettes, leaving her moped Mani at the designated point.
outside and it got stolen.
Mani took the train but panic Mani left the bag of money
when the guards got on-board. on the train
The tramp took the money. Mani has to find $100,000
within 20 minutes when he
is meant to meet his boss.