Analyzing Film
by Kurt Buhanan
What Can I Say About Film?
Film is a very attractive medium for students, but it is also an inherently deceptive one, and these two features are not unrelated. Film’s power to represent life in convincing and compelling ways makes us feel that once we have seen the “movie version” of a particular narrative or historical event, we have gained complete access, sometimes in a way that even crowds out other modes of verbal and visual representation. Film offers a sense of immediacy that can rival normal everyday experience, such that some have objected to film on the grounds that it actually displaces our own world of experience, emptying out real life and replacing it with a stream of images that relieve us of the task of thinking critically about, or even living in, the world. Theodor W. Adorno, author of the influential critique of film as part of the “culture industry,” viewed film as a form of mass deception and famously wrote that every visit to the cinema left him dumber and worse than before (Minima Moralia §5). This very risk of being left “dumb” by film – that is, being left with nothing to say, or perhaps simply not sure of what is worth saying, about film – is what this chapter of the Writer’s Handbook will address.
As with any “text,” the place to begin in writing about film is to do a close reading. This means that in viewing a film, you should be prepared to take careful notes and record any impressions or questions you might have while watching. You might begin by thinking of some of the perspectives that are portrayed in the film, and consider whether these perspectives are tied to specific subject positions of characters within the narrative, and what the use of a particular perspective might mean for the way the viewer’s own position is constructed. This means that you need to be alert to shot angles, scale (close-up, medium shot, etc.), duration and speed, movement (both of figures in the shot and the motion of the camera itself), cuts and transitions, montages, flashbacks, and so on – that is, you need to take into account both what is presented in the filmic image (also not forgetting the importance of sound and its impact on film’s development) and the way that it is presented. Often, on first viewing a film in this careful way, you will find that some things will stand out as odd or in need of explanation. Although most films are carefully crafted to feel very natural and smooth, it is important to remind yourself that this effect is the result of a series of decisions on the part of the filmmaker, in the service of particular rhetorical, political, artistic, and even commercial aims. In this cycle of Humanities Core Course, we are looking at the theme of war, and there has been no shortage of “war films,” but one question that one can ask about such a film is to consider the limits of these representations. You might ask yourself: is there something important that this film does not show, or fails to show effectively? One of the key concepts in debates about representations of war and violence concerns precisely the limits of what can be shown, what can be represented. Ultimately, representations of war center on the unrepresentable image of death. How does the film address this ineluctable problem?
An important aspect of this question is connected to issues of perspective and subject position. Consider, for example, John Walter’s documentary film Theater of War (2008). In this documentary on a contemporary staging of Brecht’s Mother Courage starring Meryl Streep, Walter juxtaposes contemporary images of Berlin with archival footage of the city reduced to rubble, constructing a powerful nexus of nested temporal references; but it is crucial to distinguish between the types of images being deployed. The footage of bombed out buildings is the perspective of the victors, documenting the destruction they have perpetrated on the German people. This is clearly manifest in the aerial view, as this is exactly the position of the gaze connected to the unprecedented destruction of the air war. Tying this set of images to the interview with a German subject who reflectively describes the same scene from the other perspective, of a conquered people walking through the ruins to the Deutsches Theater to see Brecht’s play, should actually be somewhat jarring, because these are incommensurable positions. These verbal and visual images are really saying very different things, but the filmmaker amalgamates them into a single message, and the viewer’s position is then marked by this ambiguity and discordancy. In analyzing film, especially documentary film, it is important to evaluate these issues of perspective and provenance, because any series of images can be spliced together, regardless of the original context, and overlaid with an audio track that frames the presentation in particular ways. There are no footnotes or parenthetical references to help viewers weigh these materials, so it is important to keep a critical eye on how the filmmaker engages with the sources, or, in the case of narrative cinema, how the filmmaker constructs shots, scenes, and transitions. A careful analysis of film attends to the ways in which the manipulation of perspective shapes the message.
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By beginning with a close reading of the film and working from there, you can avoid several common errors, one of the most dangerous being the tendency to make general claims without sufficient evidential support; and accounting for the competing perspectives that the film presents is the first step in considering just what the film has to say. By starting from a careful analysis of what is actually presented in the film, you are working with the details necessary for building a compelling argument. There is, however, another risk in this approach, and that is that you might settle for simply relaying the details from the film. Narrating or summarizing what is presented in the film is both unnecessary and insufficient, because the task is to analyze the film not to re-present it in your own description. Because documentary film is already a kind of argument, dealing with a problem and presenting evidence in support of a particular approach to that problem, it is easy to slip into the logic of the film’s argument without ever calling it into question. You need to build a compelling argument about the film, and the best evidence for this argument will be very specific details from the film itself; but one great way to demonstrate the significance of your argument is to be very clear on exactly what about the film is problematic or in need of explanation. Treating some aspect of the film as a problem will ensure that your analysis will not simply reproduce the logic of the film but will interrogate and question that logic. Focusing on what is problematic about the film in this way makes you a critical viewer, helping you avoid Adorno’s predicament of being dumbfounded by film – instead, you will know just what you can say about film.
Writing About Film
Included in the references below are several links that can help you find more terms for a discussion of film. Terminological precision helps establish your credibility in writing about this medium, but more importantly it helps avoid confusion and lends clarity to the insights you hope to present in your analysis. Additionally, there are some mechanical conventions to adhere to. The first thing to remember is to use what is called the “historical” or “literary present” when discussing the film, or any other literary text. This means we would say, “Kubrick juxtaposes …” instead of “Kubrick juxtaposed …” (and it should be clear that the director functions as author of the film, so refer to the director by last name). Similarly, events depicted in the representational space of the film should be discussed in the present tense, even though the actual historical event may have taken place long ago. Whether you are discussing narrative cinema, documentary film, or postmodern film collage, you need to be careful to distinguish between represented and representation – that is, you need to preserve the distance between what is depicted in the film (e.g. an historical event) and the film itself as a constructed illusion of semblance, even though filmic form is essentially built on the attempt to collapse this distance. Sometimes this issue is further compounded, as in Theater of War, which is a film about a play about an historical event, interspersed with archival images and footage documenting the historical moment in which Brecht’s theatrical production debuted. Holding all of this apart can be challenging; but it is a necessary part of writing about film, and can give rise to very interesting meta-representational questions. Analyzing film with a critical eye on the representational mechanisms that combine to make film the compelling medium that it is will help you to be more aware of the way the filmmaker may be manipulating the viewer. You will find that writing about film from this critical perspective will enable you to think more carefully about what film offers, specifically by attuning yourself to the aspects of film that make it both deceptive and compelling.
Suggested Lesson Activities:
1) Divide into groups and have each group focus on one scene or segment from the film – it may be useful briefly to review the selected scenes by looking at short clips. The groups should begin by breaking down the scene and talking about the filmmaker’s choices in constructing the scene in terms of shots, angles, cuts, etc. Then come up with some concrete alternatives for how the scene could be done. Something as simple as a slow zoom onto a particular region of an archival photograph (the trademark Ken Burns effect) achieves a certain kind of result, but the scene could be done in a variety of other ways. Each group should come up with a description of an alternative scene construction, along with some thoughts about the impact of these changes.
2) Each student identifies a “problem” – some feature or detail of the film that is puzzling, interesting, or in need of explanation – and writes a short response paper describing this aspect of the film. Students then discuss these features of the film in small groups, collaborating to generate a response strong enough to form the basis for an analysis of the film.
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: New Left Books, 1974.
Theater of War. Dir. John Walter. Alive Mind, 2008. Film.
Additional References:
Here’s a good illustration of some of the basics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7KA3bG4RWY
FilmRiot produces some interesting illustrated definitions. Here’s one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYPrtXZ7HVE