Films have developed out of dramatic and narrative tradition in which storytelling is used as a central concern. The filmmakers have challenged the manipulative and seductive power of narratives by using playful resistance to the convention of narratives, or by exploring other forms of medium. For example, filmmakers have used the interplays of gesture and rhythm, sound and image rather than relying on character psychology and plot mechanics. However, non-narrative film has a smaller audience than narrative films. A good example is aircraft passengers watching the direction of the nearest exit pointed out by flight attendants, which reminds the audience the fun of watching frisson of disaster. However, these films show the audience that there is a need to believe the likelihood of experiencing a happy ending. In this essay, we shall discuss how and why directors and movie creators use ambiguity in their movies. The essay will also discuss the thematic significace of ambiguity in five individual films, which are Storie We Tell, Taxi Driver, Sunset Blvd, Five Easy Pieces and External Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The essay will also discuss the specific ways in which the audience is alerted to the possibility of what they seem to be hearing or what they see not being the whole truth.
Stories we tell
The Stories we tell is the seventh film by Sarah Polley, who happens to be the writer and director of the film. It is impossible to outline the main events of the film closely without spoiling it for the intended audience. However, the ambiguity of the story does not reveal much that the story focuses much on her mother, who died when she was just eleven. The narrative of the film is gradually shown from the many perspectives that Diane Polley gets through family interviews. However, the narrative in the story is also revealed from some genuine footage. The ambiguity of the story means that it cannot be placed in any category. For instance, it is hard for the audience to tell whether the film is a family drama, documentary, memoir or detective story. The film was set between an experimental film and a documentary. In doing this, the director makes it hard and interesting to see how people categorize the movie. Some people see it as a documentary while others do not see it as a documentary.
In the creation of the movie, the writer and director tried to be close as original as she could get. The director used this ambiguity to make the theme of the story. The ambiguity and the revelatory and intensely personal nature of the story made it hard for her to make the film. Making the movie was an agonizing moment for her. However, it is remarkable that the director persisted with the thought of making the movie despite having many doubts about how valid the project was.
A key theme that the director uses in the film is how, when it comes to narrative in family lives, each member had their perspectives of what happened and why it happened. The idea of storytelling in the movie developed different versions of the same story. For example, Polley did not have a clear memory of her mother, mainly because she was young when her mother died. However, rather than establishing a good description that could be used to define her mother, she makes it easy for every member of her family to have their interpretation of their mother. The writer makes it possible for people to recreate a character through different images of that character.
The style of this film enhances the vision of the director as the director is able to create supporting characters that are rich enough to create their roles. In creating the casting of the movie, the director is enhanced at producing characters that can bring their part of life in the film, whether as the leading character or not. In this film, the casting was done as a form of documentary that talked about Sarah Polley’s life, mostly about something she learned in her life. The vision of the director is enhanced by setting a mind-blowing part of the characters, which might make a keen viewer question how she came across the approach of telling the story.
Basically, the movie pulls its meaning under the surface of the viewer, which makes the viewer realize that he or she is not watching what he or she is thinking. The main idea behind this move was given to the director by the audience, which had some experience to the experience she had when looking for more details. Some of the ideas that Sarah Polley had conflicted with each other. Hearing more and more information from different people while writing the movie made her have different meanings of the movie. Although the movie is talking about the major cataclysmic and major events of the director’s life, the author never feels about eliciting cheap sympathy in the movie.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
This is a science fiction, drama and comedy, which was produced in 2004. The movie is written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Gondry Michael and is starred by Jim Carrey. The movie is both poignant and funny, which can be attested by its winning of the Best Original Screenplay in the Movie Academy Awards. The setting of the movie is done on a sound-image connections. Although one can understand that the film takes place in a character’s head, the film has multiple points of views, which are not controlled by a single and overarching perspective.
The film has a great narrative structure, which runs outside the main character’s head. The narrative structure of the story keeps taking back the movie to reality, where it gives it a parallel commentary on the themes running in a virtual world. The narrative structure of the movie is important, which gives the audience insightful information that can be used to interpret the inspiration and meanings of Joel’s dreams. The director of the movie makes it a priority of Joel and Clementine to erase their memories. The ambiguity of this priority sets the theme of the film. Clementine and Joel needed to erase the memories they had of their relationships.
However, despite their desire to erase these memories, they still cross paths again, where they discover their selves soon after. The ambiguity of the film is put in such a way that it is okay to interpret the end of the movie in any way. For example, the audience can predict that the two will get back together, where they will try to make it work this time round. On the other hand, one can also predict that the two are hurt, which makes it hard and painful for them to get back together. In the setting of the movie, the film creator makes it possible for one to have these two predictions, which is okay. The writer shows a great character of Joel, who brushes aside the harsh memories of their fighting, the awkward conversations they had about not being ready to get a baby, the flaws they had in their lives, and the silence they had in a restaurant.
What makes the storytelling structure in the movie amazing and staggering is how the film creator uses it to play tricks on the audience, where he does not let the audience know what is going on in the first thirty minutes of the movie. The film creators do not make it clear for the audience to know that they have entered a dream world until one of the characters, Joel, realizes that he was in a dream world. The director sets this as a bizarre and confusing period, making the transitions of scene as a period the audience gets to know what is going on in the film. After the transition period, the setting of the films is made to a point that the audience is completely involved in the movie, understanding what is going on. The film, without referring to talk explanations, is able to disorient and confuse the audience for experiential effect. It then explains itself in a manner that after having the confusing experience, one can easily follow the proceedings of the movie and not get lost, which is done to protect the ego of the writer. The structure of the film is disorienting, which is best for the audience to experience a clear understanding of the movie. In doing this, the writer masterfully orders a balanced movie, which means that the audience will not be lost.
Taxi Driver
The main theme of the film is moral decay. The landscape of the movie acts as a living presence, which shows New York city as a vision of how hell was. The film features meticulous cinematography, which is used to capture the expansive environment of the protagonist. After the release of the movie, some people hailed its ambiguity as a masterpiece while others hailed it as a great deal that could be used in their accolade. The film was set to establish moral and rich ambiguities, where it was meant to slay the audience with irony. The ambiguity used in the movie is brilliant, gritty and depressing. The director uses abnormality in his camera work, which suggest schizophrenia and paranoia. There are several instances of displaced subjectivity in the film, which the audience looks at the length of the character, but not through his eyes.
The ambiguity of the movie provides the audience with a heavy and intellectual variety of the influence that class brings to the community. The influence at the beginning of the movie shows the familiarity that the audience has regarding the issue. The director shows how different rich people live in a modern society, which includes different forms of entertainment. Looking at this film from a technical perspective, the director uses countless shots in the film, which are well filmed to make it easy for the audience to see the Taxi Driver as the backbone of the society.
The director makes the movie Taxi Driver a gritty and disturbing one, describing it as a nightmarish modern film that examines the modern urban society. Analyzing the movie from a post-modernist’s point of view, the film combines the elements of the Western way of life, noir, urban melodrama, and horror. The film uses inarticulate, obsessed and the lonely antihero cab driver to explore the psychological madness of the town. The director makes it tricky for the audience to understand what the meaning of the story, despite the fact that he uses a simple plotline. In this plotline, the Taxi driver, Travis, gets frustrated, where he directs his frustration and anger at a presidential candidate and street dwellers. The director makes his unhinging assault as an aim to rescue the young prostitute from her predatory pimp.
Looking at the movie critically, it was produced ten years after the Vietnam war, the resignation of president Nixon and the Watergate crisis. Five years later, the movie was linked to the pending assassination of presidential candidate John Hinckley. The movie was created as a prima facie evidence, which was used to show violence that was in the real life. Taxi Driver is translated to the actual events in real life. However, critical analysis of the movie also shows that it is used to show how the capitalist systems failed. The cab driver shows how people leading low levels in life are expected to serve people leading a high-class life. The ambiguity of the movie is used to show that in the modern life, people are always respected according to their gender, race, and social-economic class.
Five Easy Pieces
The director of the movie Five Easy Pieces, Jim Jarmusch, is the most popular independent moviemakers in America. His reputation makes him carry a special burden, which makes him produce movies that are hard to evaluate. The director has been identified much with artistic freedom, which makes it hard for one to see how his films can live up to the expectations of the audience. The director uses ambiguity to find drama in his ordinary work. The ambiguity that the director uses in the film Five Easy Pieces shows that the only way one can bring serious attention of the media in an event or place is to set the place on fire.
In setting of the movie, the director uses five sketches, which is an interesting development of the movie. The five sketches moves from one part of LA in dusk to Helsinki at dawn. Death is made a central factor of the movie. As the movie drifts toward daybreak in the eastward, the overall tone of the film becomes darker. The director also uses recurring internal rhymes and motifs in the movie, which are used to suggest songlike refrains. For example, this is shown using the sunglasses that drivers in Los Angeles wear at night and the issue of blindness that affects people in the Parisian episode.
Each sketch of the film start with a couple of shots, which are used to evoke the setting of the urban. The director then introduces the audience to the driver of the taxi, before introducing the audience to the movie. In Los Angeles, the viewers are introduced to a punky driver who ferries two clients to the airport. The director uses the central narrative genre in this episode, which shows a cab driver being requested to appear in the movie. However, the driver rejects the offer, which shows that he was happy with the life he was living. The film shows that the cab driver wanted to be a mechanic just like her brothers, which made her reject the idea of being an actor. The author uses this episode to show the audience that she had been educated by the encounter. The ambiguity in the story is used to show us that when one learns from experience, it is hard for him or her to get back to the situation again.
Sunset Boulevard
The film Sunset Boulevard was directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Charles Brackett. The movie is brilliant, which tells the story of an old Hollywood actress who was once proud, but was now looking to regain her past glory by ending her seclusion. The director uses a narrative structure on the story to the tell the story of a young screenwriter, Joe Gillis, who depended on his luck. His luck helped him, which took him to Desmond’s estate. She meets with the aged actress, Norma, who had written a script that would help her in gaining her former glory. Joe is hired to create the screenplay of her script. She lavishes her affection and wealth on Joe, who shamelessly and freely accepts. However, she falls in love with Joe, shooting him when he fails to love her back. The narrative of the film ends when Norma, well dressed, but mad, descends her staircase to meet the police.
The ambiguity used in the film made it great for commercial, which made it receive eleven nominations for Award Academy, winning three. The ambiguity of the story is shown in the film when the tragic events of the film provided a complex psychological story, which was used to explore unrequited love. The central theme of the film is love, where the author shows the negative psychological events that take place when a person is denied love. The film shows the delusion and deception state that a lover feels when in love, which leads to a feeling of exploitation, manipulation, and betrayal when the love advances are rejected. The theme used in Norma’s script is more sensual and ambiguous, which has an alluring effect on minimalism study.
The director of the moving uses Norma’s to make it hard for the viewers to understand the message of the film. The paucity of the script notes and its brevity resides a potent strength and mystery, which hides the main message of the movie. The director of the movie uses the mood of alienation, egotism, pessimism, ambiguity, evil, disillusionment and moral corruption. The director uses the characteristic of femme fatale and anti-heroisim to create the mood of the movie. The director uses music brilliantly to show the audience of the emotional and psychological torrents of the tragic story narrative, since they cannot be overstated.
Conclusion
The essay has highlighted the thematic significance of ambiguity in five individual films, which are, Storie We Tell, Taxi Driver, Sunset Blvd, Five Easy Pieces and External Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The essay has also discussed the specific ways in which the audience is alerted to the possibility of what they seem to be hearing or what they see not being the whole truth. To understand the relationship between film narratives and storytelling, one needs to go beyond the formal medium and its metaphorical possibilities. Use of narratives and ambiguity in films is usually refracted from how the story moves from script to screen, which is where the narrative is developed, or disappears altogether.
