Ambiguity and Film Criticism: Reasonable Doubt 9783030629441, 9783030629458

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?
What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous?
Two Senses of Ambiguity
Interpretative “Freedom”
Analytical Challenge
Question and Answer
Why Is It as It Is?
Reason and Doubt
Purview and Practice
Value and Evaluation
References
Part I: Pursuits of Reasons
Chapter 2: Difficulty of Reading
Explanation and Function
The Transcendental
The Cathartic
It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But…
Between Continuity and Discontinuity
Play and Parameters
The Arbitrary
Reading in Detail
The Figurative
Movement and Stasis
Seeing As
Repetitions
Question as Answer
References
Chapter 3: Perplexity of Style
The Speculative Spectator
A Cinema of Question
A Pursuit of Aesthetic Reason
Room for Conjecture
All That Restriction Allows
Limitations and Possibilities
An Aesthetics of Withholding
Showing and Revealing
A Narrative Divided
At a Crossroad
Ripples of Change
Coming Together
An Ethic of Style
Observations on Part and Whole
Unraveling
References
Chapter 4: Depth of Suggestion
The Ambiguity of Gesture
An Opaque Character
Did Dix Kill?
Can Dix Kill?
The Uncertainty of Understanding
Appreciating Film Character
Unsettling Gestures
A Lover’s Embrace?
A Killer’s Kiss?
Moments of Recognition
The Depth of Understanding
References
Part II: Drama of Doubt
Chapter 5: Uncertainty of Viewpoint
“Reconciliation”
Tonal Complexity
An Expansive Viewpoint
Image and Imitation
State of the Union
“Redemption”
A Heroic Rescue?
A Necessary Pretence?
“Reversal”
Downhill’s Resolution
End of the Tunnel?
Studying Film Endings
Ebba’s “Flight”
Inappropriate Identification?
Inappropriate Resolution?
Equilibrium?
Rhetorical Unreliability
References
Chapter 6: Threat of Insignificance
“It All Began the Day I Looked at You …”
A Look That Seems Out of Place
Everything in Its Right Place
Traps for the Mind and Eye
Misleading Narration
Deceptive Appearance
A Look That Is Out of Place?
Who Is Calling?
Who Is In Control?
Intention and Care
The Doubtful Critic
References
Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE CLOSE READINGS IN FILM AND TELEVISION

Ambiguity and Film Criticism Reasonable Doubt Hoi Lun Law

Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television Series Editors John Gibbs Department of Film, Theatre & Television University of Reading Reading, UK Doug Pye Department of Film, Theatre & Television University of Reading Reading, UK

Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television is an innovative series of research monographs and collections of essays dedicated to extending the methods and subjects of detailed criticism. Volumes in the series – written from a variety of standpoints and dealing with diverse topics – are unified by attentiveness to the material decisions made by filmmakers and a commitment to develop analysis and reflection from this foundation. Each volume will be committed to the appreciation of new areas and topics in the field, but also to strengthening and developing the conceptual basis and the methodologies of critical analysis itself. The series is based in the belief that, while a scrupulous attention to the texture of film and television programmes requires the focus of concept and theory, the discoveries that such attention produces become vital in questioning and re-­formulating theory and concept. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14712

Hoi Lun Law

Ambiguity and Film Criticism Reasonable Doubt

Hoi Lun Law Bristol, UK

ISSN 2634-6133     ISSN 2634-6141 (electronic) Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television ISBN 978-3-030-62944-1    ISBN 978-3-030-62945-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock Photo Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

Looking back at the path I’ve travelled, I appreciate all the help and kindness I encountered along the way. My special thanks go to Alex Clayton, who has patiently guided me to rediscover and reflect on what I mean by what I say during my doctoral research. I was told “Alex can teach you things” before commencing the degree. What I learned over the years working with him has made this book possible. My ongoing conversations with Dominic Lash have not only informed the arguments of this volume but also enriched my understanding of film and film aesthetics. Most importantly, we share the acquired taste in sour beers! Catherine Grant has been a great mentor and (later also) a dear friend ever since I came to her office to discuss film theory in late 2010. Her generosity is legendary. And surely, I am not the only one who thinks Katie is a magnificent human being as well as a wonderful educator. Adrian Martin has been extremely supportive of this project since the early stage. Pointing out a notable omission in my arguments, his erudite comments helped refine my claims. Andrew Klevan (who, by the way, made the aforementioned remark about Alex) gave an unpolished draft of Chap. 2 the kind of sustained critical engagement (and critique) that I’ve always wanted for my work. Part of Chap. 6 was presented as a paper at Screen conference 2016 and benefited from Chris Keathley’s keen eye (in this specific case, ear) for detail. Jacob Leigh and Kristian Moen were attentive and discerning as the examiners of my doctoral thesis. Pete Falconer (half-jokingly?) said his role as my second PhD supervisor was to not get in my way. But I knew very well— and he made sure of it—that he was available if I ever needed his aid. v

vi 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Whenever I talk to James MacDowell, not least about ambiguity, I profit from his lucidity of thought. Elliott Logan and Murray Pomerance proffered heartfelt words of encouragement when they were most needed, during that exhilarating yet trying final stretch of writing. I am glad to have John Gibbs and Doug Pye, who are sympathetic to my critical approach and temperament, as the series editors of this title. At Palgrave Macmillan, Emily Wood had provided excellent editorial assistance. It is my pleasure to be friends with Hanna Kubicka (with whom I enjoyed many intellectual and not-so-intellectual conservations), Ali Rasooli-Nejad (whose enthusiasm about “movie masterpieces” is galvanising), and Jordan Schonig (whose perceptiveness never fails to bring clarity and rigour to a discussion). Thank you to Lara Perski for being my travel companion throughout this difficult but rewarding path. I will always remember the time when we had walked such a path and found ourselves “stuck” on a hilltop. The trail down was steep and narrow, frighteningly treacherous. What to do? We braved the adverse uncertainty together. My greatest gratitude goes to my parents and my sister, who are always there for me. This book is for those who are attuned to the teachings of doubt.

Contents

1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?  1 Part I Pursuits of Reasons  23 2 Difficulty of Reading 25 3 Perplexity of Style 49 4 Depth of Suggestion 87 Part II Drama of Doubt 113 5 Uncertainty of Viewpoint115 6 Threat of Insignificance149 7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175 Index183

vii

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3

Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

26 27 28 31 61 62 68 76 89 98 100 101 102 103 104 106 120 124 124 127 133 140 150 151 159

ix

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?

In spite of its wide currency in film scholarship, criticism, and everyday conversation, ambiguity has not been systematically developed as an aesthetic concept for the medium of film. It has received considerable attention in discussions of “art cinema” and “modern cinema”, which often assert the significance of ambiguity in these modes of filmmaking without unpacking its implications (see Armes 1976; Bordwell 2008; Self 1979). And when the concept is studied in detail, it is typically in reference to André Bazin’s phenomenological understanding of cinematic realism (see Andrew 1973; Carruthers 2017). As a result, there is room in critical literature for an exploration of ambiguity across diverse film styles. What would such an account involve? A main task of this book is to offer a useful framework to appreciate the variegated manifestations of ambiguity in movies.

What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous? Perhaps one reason why ambiguity is understudied, habitually taken for granted, has to do with its ironically unambiguous standard definition. Dictionaries define ambiguity as the characteristic of what bears multiple meanings. This is arguably how the term is ordinarily understood too. The straightforward definition seems sufficient in itself, not only detailed enough as a description of what ambiguity entails but also capable of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_1

1

2 

H. L. LAW

covering a variety of instances and situations. It particularly speaks to a kind of ambiguity that prevails in everyday life—the ambiguity of language, meaning that words can possess more than one semantic connotation. The linguistic view has a great purchase on how ambiguity is perceived in the realm of the arts. A Glossary of Literary Terms, for example, refers to ambiguity as “the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feelings” (Abrams and Harpham 2009, 12). And a similar assumption of ambiguity as a matter of sign and signification prompts David Bordwell to proclaim “[w]hat was ‘ambiguity’ in New Criticism could become ‘polysemy’” (1989, 99). It is evident that something is missing, if not amiss, in these views; it feels flattening and schematic to equate ambiguity to the plurality of suggestions. Such an understanding, we want to say, fails to appreciate what makes ambiguity ambiguous. This issue is touched upon in William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity (1961 [1930]), a seminal work of New Criticism that is also the most influential account of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept (specifically in poetry). In his preface to the second edition of the book, Empson suggests that puns would not be typically considered ambiguous, even though they manage to say two things simultaneously, “because there is no room for puzzling”. Instead, they result in “conciseness” (x). Throughout Seven Types, the feeling of puzzlement is frequently cited as something like ambiguity’s defining effect. This crucial point, insisted by Empson, allows us to see why the semiotic notion of polysemy, as “literally, many ‘semes’ or meanings” (Stam et al. 1992, 30), should not be taken as synonymous to ambiguity. In fact, polysemy cannot be more different from how New Critics, especially Empson, understand ambiguity. Not necessarily puzzling, the polysemic harbours aesthetic possibilities that are dissimilar from that of ambiguity. Most importantly, to call something polysemic does not entail an act of evaluation like calling something ambiguous often feels to involve. Indeed, the legacy of Seven Types lies less in the categories it proposes—which are almost impossible to memorise and liable to be mechanistically applied—but in its establishment of ambiguity as a value (as opposed to an “objective” condition). It has become difficult nowadays to talk about ambiguity without also evoking a sense of aesthetic judgement. For Empson, what makes ambiguity ambiguous—what activates our puzzlement—is the relationship between the different interpretations. His typology of ambiguity is a typology of such relationships, which include, for example, conflation (the second type), confusion (the fifth type), and

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

3

contradiction (the seventh type). He likens these diverse relationships between meanings to different “forces” that “hold together a variety of ideas” (1961, 235).1 If the standard definition of ambiguity stresses its condition of multiple readings (as in Abrams and Harpham), Empson reminds us that these readings, however incompatible or clear-cut they may seem, are by definition connected, in the sense that they stem from the same origin; that is, however we define it, ambiguity concerns the possibilities of the many in what is one. To show the nature of an ambiguity, Empson suggests, it is not enough to simply unpack its “ideas”, we further have to work out the relations between these ideas, showing “the nature of the forces which are adequate to hold it together” (ibid.). This study explores ambiguity as an aesthetic concept for film by rethinking its standard definition, seeing it as more than the availability of multiple meanings. Like Empson, I do so by paying attention to the “forces” that hold an ambiguity together, observing what is ambiguous as an interlacing weave of suggestions. But this book will not “translate” his understandings into the context of cinema. Nor am I interested in categorising ambiguity. On the contrary, it is my aim to engage with ambiguity in its specific instances, exploring their singularities. And that should in turn allow me to identify some key or recurring characteristics of the concept. One such important feature, as Empson helpfully points out, is the aesthetic reaction of puzzlement. Throughout this book, I will typically refer to this reaction as uncertainty or doubt, for they better capture the sense of interpretative suspense that my account pivots upon. We shall see how uncertainty and doubt are integral to the aesthetics of ambiguity.

Two Senses of Ambiguity This study is entitled Ambiguity and Film Criticism not because it charts the development of the concept in film criticism. Rather, it probes the relationship between the concept and criticism, exploring the possibilities of ambiguity by examining the challenges it poses to film analysis. As a result, readers will not find an interdisciplinary approach to the concept in the following pages, yet discussions of ambiguity (and its attendant ideas) in other arts will be cited when appropriate (ambiguity in art and photography is discussed in, for example, Elkins 1999; Franklin 2020; and Gamboni 2002). However, my distinct focus is not an assertion of medium specificity. It is instead an effort to flesh out several productive ways of addressing and appreciating ambiguity that are already available in film

4 

H. L. LAW

criticism, worthy of highlighting or rediscovering, even though they may not explicitly concern the concept. One purpose of this book is to re-­ evaluate what film criticism has taught us about how to think and write about ambiguity. (It is worth pointing out that the general framework I develop here—based on the dynamic of “question-and-answer”, as we will see later—can be in fact revised to explore ambiguity in other artistic mediums.) Now, it is useful to survey two prominent senses in which ambiguity is typically understood in relation to film. Interpretative “Freedom” Given ambiguity’s connotations of multiplicity and uncertainty, it seems intuitive to speak of it as a feature of reality. It is therefore not surprising that the concept has been taken as a hallmark of cinematic realism. And this particular view of realist aesthetics is the critical legacy of André Bazin. Situating the critic in his contemporary intellectual milieu, Dudley Andrew takes note of the influence of phenomenology on Bazin’s thoughts: Bazin would be obliged to say that the real exists only as perceived, that situations can be said to exist only when a consciousness is engaged with something other than itself. In this view reality is not a completed sphere the mind encounters, but an “emerging-something” which the mind essentially participates in. Here the notion of ambiguity is a central attribute of the real. (1973, 64)

For Bazin, as Andrew points out, our perception interacts with and completes the world. Ambiguity, therefore, also needs to be understood in light of this situation. Specifically, it means that ambiguity is not an “objective” feature but an attribute of our negotiation with what we perceive as reality. Reality is ambiguous not because it is inherently plural in meaning but because its meaning is equally like an “emerging-something”, only made available through our ongoing exchange with the world. This is also why each of us sees reality differently. We can say that ambiguity is the condition that enables our distinctive understandings. Rather than the recording of unadorned reality, Bazin’s realism involves the reproduction of the condition of ambiguity in movies. And this condition, in the medium of film, becomes an insistence on the viewer’s “autonomy” of reading. This is put into sharp relief by Bazin’s provocative claim: “[e]diting, by its very nature, is fundamentally opposed to ambiguity”

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

5

(2009, 101). Note that by “editing”, Bazin means specifically analytical editing such as the conventions of the shot/reverse-shot and the point-of-­ view shot.2 Dissecting a scene into dramatic units and reassembling them into a chain of actions, this type of edits imposes a specific course of understanding. As a result, there is little leeway for the audience’s perceptual and interpretive exploration. In this way, analytical editing is the opposite of deep focus cinematography, a technique that Bazin famously champions because it “re-­introduces ambiguity into the structure of the image, if not as a necessity […] at least as a possibility” (21). Unlike analytical editing, the use of depth-of-field, by withholding visual emphasis and dramatic priority in a scene, requires us to work out what is significant, to perform our own reading, exercising our prerogative of interpretation. The device is capable of reproducing an involved experience not unlike our perceptual entanglement with reality. And this achieves what the critic considers “a sound definition of realism in art: to force the mind to draw its own conclusions about people and events, instead of manipulating it into accepting someone else’s interpretation” (1997, 123).3 For Bazin, the reproduction of ambiguity is what allows film to fulfil its promises as a realist medium.4 This study does not intend to pursue a realist account of ambiguity or explore further Bazin’s phenomenological understanding. But the interaction between screen and spectator that undergirds the critic’s understanding remains a productive way to think of the concept. And this conception is echoed by other film critics. For example, André S. Labarthe suggests: Traditional cinema had managed to do away with any possibility of ambiguity by building into every scene and shot what the spectator was meant to think of it: i.e. its meaning. Taken to its extreme, this kind of cinema did not need the spectator since he [sic] was already included in the film. (1986, 55)

The remark complements Bazin’s claim about analytical editing, though also pushing it too far: It is doubtful that a total control of meaning, of the viewer’s reading, is achievable in film. Interestingly, while Labarthe’s statement shares Bazin’s assumptions about ambiguity, these assumptions are used against the kind of cinema that the critic argues to be capable of (re) creating ambiguity—it is in the “tradition cinema” of Orson Welles and William Wyler that Bazin discovers illuminating uses of depth-of-field. Labarthe’s remark speaks to ambiguity’s common association with what is “modern” or “unorthodox” (made clear by book titles such as The

6 

H. L. LAW

Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema and Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art). This brings us to the second typical understanding of ambiguity. Analytical Challenge In critical literature, ambiguity often stands for what is unconventional and challenging. And this is reflected by its long-established link to “art cinema”, ever since the emergence of the genre. In an early conceptualisation of ambiguity in film scholarship, which is also one of the first systematic discussions of “art cinema”, David Bordwell (2008 [1979]) defines the genre by its aesthetic deviations from Classical Hollywood Cinema. The unfamiliar stylistic devices and the loose narrative causality in “art films”, Bordwell observes, may be challenging to the viewer, but these anomalies can be understood in reference to the twin poles of “realism” and “authorial expressivity”: Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality, we first seek realistic motivation. (Is a character’s mental state causing the uncertainty? Is life just leaving loose ends?) If we’re thwarted, we next seek authorial motivation. (What is being “said” here? What significance justifies the violation of the norm?) Ideally, the film hesitates, suggesting character subjectivity, life’s untidiness, and author’s vision. Whatever is excessive in one category must belong to another. Uncertainties persist but are understood as such, as obvious uncertainties, so to speak. Put crudely, the slogan of the art cinema might be, “When in doubt, read for maximum ambiguity”. (156)

In Bordwell’s account, ambiguity seems to mean the uncertainty between the two types of motivations. And the “ideal” scenario is where this uncertainty is irresolvable, that the detail or device in question is both driven by artistic and realistic concerns (Chap. 2 will look closely at why explaining ambiguity in terms of motivation is unproductive). On this view, ambiguity is not what calls for analysis and appreciation in “art films”. Instead, as the advised strategy of “read[ing] for maximum ambiguity” implies, it is the “explanation” of “art cinema”. And positing “ambiguity” as the “goal” of analysis, Bordwell’s “reading procedure” amounts to little more than flagging up and re-stating a film’s difficulties. This seems to me not only an unsatisfying account of ambiguity and “art cinema”5 but also an

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

7

unhelpful way to construe an analytical approach to ambiguity. In particular, I maintain that ambiguity is in fact an invitation to our critical account, which further calls for certain appropriate ways of accounting. We read to neither “maximise” nor nullify ambiguity but to come to terms with it, exploring why something is ambiguous in detail and in depth. Other early literature on “art cinema” liken the films to “puzzles”. For Robert Self, “[t]he texts of the art cinema exist quite explicitly as puzzles to be solved by the viewer, but puzzles also constructed to prevent easy solution” (1979, 77). Writing on what would later become the canon of “art cinema”, Norman N.  Holland sees it as innovative that these “puzzling movies” “bus[y] us with solving the riddle” (1963, 19). Recently, this filmas-puzzle analogy is revived by the emerging scholarly interest in “contemporary puzzle film”. Mostly consisting of popular and independent movies from the 1990s, the genre is characterised by its “complex storytelling”, which usually serves as an expressive means to articulate its themes of confusion or serious philosophical concerns such as schizophrenia and epistemological doubt. These films advance an entangled plot that is difficult to understand and sort out (see Buckland 2009, 2014; Kiss and Willemsen 2017). To call films puzzles is to foreground their analytical difficulties. If ambiguity marks what is difficult, then it is not only possible but also productive to explore the concept beyond the genres of “art cinema” and “puzzle film”, and in relation to narrative fiction movies in general, including what Labarthe calls “traditional cinema”, especially due to its exclusion from prevalent considerations of the concept. Attractive as a way of picturing ambiguity, the “puzzle analogy”, however, seems to me problematic as a conceptualisation of its difficult nature. In particular, the analogy envisions the task of criticism, suggested by Self’s and Holland’s remarks, as one that of “solving” a film’s meaning, as though to reassemble and recover a definitive understanding. According to this view, what is difficult, as it were, is not a part of the movie’s expression but a hindrance in need of elimination. A film is ambiguous only because, and as long as, we haven’t found the solution to it. It is questionable that there exists an “ultimate solution” to any film. Moreover, if we are interested in ambiguity as an aesthetic concept, we would want to investigate its possibility as an achievement, and not conceive it merely as an interpretative complication to be overcome. I take the dubious premise of the “puzzle analogy” as symptomatic of an unproductive critical stance that is not uncommon—unfortunately, as we have seen—in both scholarship and criticism. (Just to be clear: my reservation

8 

H. L. LAW

concerns this specific premise and not the phenomenon of the puzzle film, nor is it directed towards any particular study on the subject.) A chief concern of this book is therefore meta-critical (made explicit by the chosen title Ambiguity and Film Criticism, instead of what is expected of a project of this kind: Ambiguity in Film). Throughout the chapters, not only will I explore prominent features of the concept but I will also examine some unhelpful assumptions or approaches with regard to the analysis of ambiguity. These include the Neoformalist category of “motivation”, the critical anxiety about “over-interpretation”, and the much-debated divide between “surface” and “deeper” meanings. Literature on ambiguous movies is abundant (e.g., there is a plethora of anthologies and journal articles on “puzzle films” and those who made them). This is time we attend to our critical practices and methodological procedures. Rising to this challenge, this book reflects on how we could appropriately understand and assess what is ambiguous. And by doing so, I argue, we further gain general insights into the nature and operation of film criticism.

Question and Answer The “puzzle analogy” may be misleading but it has arguably captured an intuitive way to think about ambiguity. This explains its pervasiveness. Specifically, ambiguity seems challenging sometimes indeed because we are not sure how to “answer” it, that its “answer” is unobvious or complex.6 Accordingly, and equally intuitively, we can think of ambiguity as a difficult or demanding question. There is a sense that ambiguity is what invites our questions and answers; it sustains both the acts of questioning and answering. It is not uncommon in everyday life to speak of a film posing questions or providing answers. And a number of critics have further recognised the possibility of the question-and-answer structure as a narrative model, such as Roland Barthes’s theorisation of the “hermeneutic code” (1974) and Noël Carroll’s account of narrative closure (2007).7 My concern here is not to explain how the medium of film is capable of articulating questions and answers (this is, however, a worthy theoretical pursuit).8 Instead, I am interested in the erotetic structure as an exchange between screen and viewer. It is worth noting that however questions and answers are expressed in a movie, they are expressed in ways that are different from how they are conveyed in language. Of course, there are instances where a character appears to expressly say what a film means. But the work’s effective meaning, in the final analysis, pivots upon its organisation of sights and sounds, so accordingly, its questions and answers are suggested by these means.9

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

9

They need to be interpreted. In other words, the erotetic dynamic is a matter of reading. The questions and answers of a movie are also our critical questions and answers. And this makes the structure useful in developing the established idea of ambiguity as a negotiation between an artwork and its audience (besides Bazin, see also Elkins 1999; Gamboni 2002).

Why Is It as It Is? Ambiguity in film, this book proposes, is an invitation to inquire into “why is it as it is”. And this involves elaborating the questions in response to a specific movie, as well as exploring satisfying ways of answering them. “Nothing could be commoner among critics of art”, Stanley Cavell observes, “than to ask why the thing is as it is” (2002, 182). In fact, the “why” question is so prevalent that it arguably captures, in one fundamental sense, the reason we are interested in artworks. But ambiguity, this study suggests, because of its “room for puzzling” and analytical challenges, heightens the urgency of this inquiry, insistently soliciting our answers. In other words, our experience of ambiguity intensifies our critical practice. As Cavell points out, the investigation of “why” “directs [us] into the work” (227). Each individual chapter of this book will delve into one movie or dwell upon some remarkable moments in a film. These close readings will detail, as carefully as possible, the “why” questions that these works invite us to consider.10 By doing so, I also wish to demonstrate that what is ambiguous requires to be understood in its own terms, under its specific contexts, as a special manifestation of the concept. That is, each instance of ambiguity is ambiguous in a distinctive way. This is not to say the concept cannot or should not be systematically categorised like Empson does. Only that this study aims for a more practical understanding; it seeks to inform the practice of criticism. The “why” inquiry not only means to offer a coherent way to conceptualise ambiguity but also to serve as a cogent framework under which to explore its variegated instances. Ambiguity, this study maintains, is something to be clarified and illuminated by reading; it calls for our critical effort, requiring to be accounted for. This point is worth stressing because there is a sense that the word “ambiguity” is prone to be used in advance of reading or as a substitute for critical engagement. As we have seen earlier in the text, ambiguity is a multifarious concept which has been taken to mean, at least, analytical difficulty and interpretative “freedom”. The multiplicity of the term can be

10 

H. L. LAW

useful in criticism; it may be employed to eloquently communicate the complex effects of a movie. But that also abets the possibilities of imprecise and uncritical uses. Or worse still, the term could be abused as a convenient way out for analysis, that is, as an empty expression of puzzlement, ignoring the potent call for reading. All this points to an unreflective reliance on the concept, which expects it to do the work for us, whereas ambiguity, as my account suggests, should be what launches and sustains the work of criticism. This book insists on our critical responsibility to work out what is ambiguous. And by working out the “why” questions in relation to a range of movies, it also delineates a set of characteristics of ambiguity, which in turn complements the framework of “why is it as it is”. Our understanding of the concept is then gradually accrued. Instead of a definitive conception, this study offers the readers a framework to engage with movies that are beyond the scope of the chapters, inviting them to continue the investigation of this book. But what does a specific “why” question typically look like? For instance, it could be most straightforwardly “why is the character upset at this moment?” to the more advanced “why does the camera zoom into her when she is upset?” A few things are already made clear by the sample enquiries. In a narrative movie, it is common that the “why” question takes interest in characters and the dramatic scenario, but it may further comprehend matters of form and style. And it is especially when it does, as in the second example, that the intertwinement of the two aspects is foregrounded. In other words, we cannot productively examine issues of narrative without some consideration of the film’s presentation, and vice versa. The “why” inquiry can be deceptively simple. An account of it usually requires a holistic understanding of a whole host of narrative and stylistic elements. This brings us to an even more important issue: what are we inquiring into when we ask the “why” question? That is, what kind of answer we are looking for? Throughout the book, I will focus on one type of desirable answer which I call aesthetic reason. This term is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s series of lectures on aesthetic appreciation, a subject whose central aim, he claims, is to come to terms with the “aesthetic puzzlements” that works of art have upon us (1972, 28–9). Our aesthetic response then involves, he notes, “giv[ing] reasons, e.g. For having this word rather than that in a particular place in a poem, or for having this musical phrase rather than that in a particular place in a piece of music” (Moore 1955, 19). What Wittgenstein advocates here is indeed what the

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

11

“why” question seeks to probe: the reason for a specific artistic choice. When we ask “why” about an artwork, we want to know what is achieved by this choice instead of otherwise. Aesthetic reason concerns particularities.11 Chapters 2 and 3 will explore in greater detail what aesthetic reason means in the criticism of film. But as the earlier remark on the sample “why” enquiries suggest, the kind of reason we take interest in is the kind that can be discerned or deduced from the work itself. And it broadly concerns the meaning and significance of artistic choices. This concern is particularly instructive towards the appreciation of ambiguity because, as V.F. Perkin observes, it is often by “project[ing] ourselves into the position of the artist and think through the problems which he [sic] confronts in his search for order and meaning” that we become cognisant of how a film “absorbs its tensions” (1993, 131). Note that this critical projection is not the same as the uncovering of the filmmaker’s premeditated aesthetic conception. Instead, it is something like a re-imagination of the process of filmmaking, of the conditions under which one can better contemplate the reasons for, as Wittgenstein would put it, making this choice rather than that in a particular place in a movie. The exploration of ambiguity as an artistic expression—and not an obstacle to meaning as the “puzzle analogy” has it—can similarly benefit from this practice of critical re-imagination. (This practice is a good use of what James Grant [2013] calls “imaginativeness” in criticism, a topic to which I will return in Chap. 3.) What my discussion has been highlighting so far is ambiguity’s intimate link to criticism. It is the principal argument of this study that an account of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept is also an account of its criticism. Indeed, seeing ambiguity as a dynamic process of reading points to a potent way of conceiving its analysis. Particularly, it enables the recognition that our critical task is not only to probe aesthetic reasons but also to acknowledge our uncertainty. A satisfying account of ambiguity successfully engages with both reason and doubt. The search for such an account is the main concern of my close readings of film.

Reason and Doubt These close readings are organised into two sections, which correspond to the study’s dual concerns of reason and doubt. Part I is named “Pursuits of Reasons”. Not only does it develop the idea of aesthetic reason but it also addresses the procedure of our critical

12 

H. L. LAW

pursuit. And by doing so, the section reflects upon a number of prevailing assumptions in film criticism and proposes some practices that would assist our quest for aesthetic reasons. Inspecting several key accounts of the enigmatic shots with the vase in Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949), Chap. 2 delineates the kinds of “answers” that we look for if we are interested in ambiguity as an artistic expression. I suggest that one reason why the moment is so challenging— that it compels a range of differing, sometimes incompatible accounts—is because of our difficulty in recognising the most illuminating questions concerning the moment. The search for a satisfying account equally involves the search for appropriate or penetrating critical questions. Chapter 3 explores how the ambiguous yet apparently simple editing strategy of Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) not only dramatises its central themes of control and deviation but also deepens its political significance. My discussion draws a link between ambiguity and complexity by showing how entangled the film’s critical questions are. Moreover, the chapter investigates the place of speculation in film criticism, and further takes that as an opportunity to elaborate on the idea of aesthetic reason, by juxtaposing it with what can be called non-aesthetic reason. In Chap. 4, I consider a set of character gestures in In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950). Suggesting both tenderness and violence, these gestures indicate the character’s self-opacity, encouraging us to inquire deeper into his thoughts and feelings. This investigation of “deeper reasons” offers a way to rethink the conventional opposition between “surface” and “deep” meanings in criticism. While ambiguity is typically associated with the multiplicity of meaning, I argue for the benefit of also seeing it as the depth of suggestion. In Part II “Drama of Doubt”, we will look at two films whose drama hinges upon matters of doubt or (mis)belief. But most importantly, both films, in their own ways, activate a strong sense of interpretative uncertainty. As a result, our practice of reading is also something like an enactment of an internal drama of doubt. Chapter 5 analyses the final three scenes of Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014). On the one hand, I explore what ambiguity means in relation to each scene. On the other hand, I draw attention to how these scenes—taken together and seen in succession—feel puzzling as a conclusion of what comes before. Specifically, there is a sense that the movie has, against our expectations, drastically changed its moral stance towards the main character during its final moments. This switch of perspective leaves us uncertain about what an appropriate analytical standpoint should be.

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

13

Here, some of the film’s ambiguous choices will be illuminated by a comparison with its recent Hollywood remake Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, 2020). Chapter 6 explores ambiguity as more than a query about meaning but also as a form of scepticism towards whether something is really meaningful. I reflect on my own experience of this kind of scepticism—as something like a struggle between reason and doubt in my mind—with regard to a performer’s seemingly inadvertent direct look at the camera in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956). The fact that I am able to offer a reading of the detail, to unpack its suggestion, doesn’t stop me from worrying about its insignificance. This allows me to address the relationship between ambiguity and “overreading”. And finally, by fleshing out how a satisfying account of ambiguity animates the dynamics between reason and doubt, “Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt” ponders what the concept can teach us about criticism, particularly regarding its appreciative aspect and communal nature. Reason and doubt can— and should—work hand in hand in our practice of reading; the study of ambiguity enriches our understanding of film analysis.

Purview and Practice My discussion of ambiguity, as the aforementioned chapter outline makes clear, consists of a mix of familiar and unobvious choices of film. A study of an aesthetic concept such as this one is never expected to examine all possible variants and every individual instance. But I could imagine, for some, my account can only be compromised because of its notable, seemingly regrettable neglect of certain films. More specifically, my choices do not include movies that we would intuitively think of as “highly ambiguous”, works which most people would ordinarily find very puzzling. Such ambiguous films can come in different forms and styles. But there are two prominent manifestations of them which are worth singling out for inspection.12 To “read for maximum ambiguity”, as suggested earlier, is an unhelpful critical practice. However, there exists films that indeed appear to seek “maximum ambiguity”. In such a film, ambiguity ostensibly drives and permeates its every aspect, including the plot (i.e., what is going on?), matters of tone (e.g., ironic or not?), and the status of the audio and the visual tracks (e.g., is it reality or is it fantasy?). A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926), Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961), and Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) are salient examples. And some “puzzles

14 

H. L. LAW

films” (e.g., Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] and Mulholland Drive [David Lynch, 2001]) also belong to this mode of filmmaking. This study doesn’t examine such movies. But the critical framework that I propose— the inquiry into “why is it as it is?” as well as the various strategies of formulating questions and answering these questions—should equally afford an effective way of approaching them. It is because—and this is vital to point out—these works do not actually constitute a distinct kind of ambiguous film. Instead, they can be more usefully understood as movies that contain an unusual amount of ambiguous features. That is, they raise more “why” questions than most films, perhaps also more acutely so. That doesn’t mean these films are by default “more” ambiguous though. They are usually more critically challenging, certainly. But how ambiguous a film is is not directly proportional to the number of “why” questions it raises. For example, at the centre of In a Lonely Place lies the question of Dix’s loving-but-violent gestures. And our recognition of this aspect can already prompt us to see many moments in the narrative anew, seeing the film as “highly ambiguous”. Moreover, there is a sense that instances of ambiguity cannot be adequately compared in terms of degree. Saying “this film is more ambiguous than that film” is not only hardly revealing but in fact obscures what is really at stake: even though cases of ambiguity can be similar or analogous, they are ambiguous in necessarily different and specific ways. It is the singularity of an individual ambiguity that deserves assessment and appreciation. And this is why this book foregrounds the fleshing out a film’s unique “why” questions as a productive way of exploring its ambiguities. (Accordingly, the comparison between individual instances of ambiguity is perhaps most beneficial when it juxtaposes the different effects and meanings of similar or analogous scenarios. Readers are invited to perform such a comparison between two respective moments that this book will discuss at length: the shots with the vase in Late Spring and the driver’s point-of-view shot in Ten. Both achieve ambiguity by exploiting an editing convention and the expectations that creates.) The second variant of “highly ambiguous” film is the ones that simultaneously welcome or accommodate incompatible readings. And these readings often specifically exemplify opposite, irresolvable moral values or ideological systems. Most recent examples are Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) and The Hunt (Craig Zobel, 2020). The latter, as Adrian Martin (2020) observes, is “a film that cheekily preys on contemporary anxieties and

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

15

anti-­social fantasies on every side of the political border; while, at the same time, giving itself the get-out-of-jail-free card of silliness and (icky) poetic license”. Such works, in a way, attempt to exercise polysemy in the medium of film. And this “polysemy”, by virtue of its political or ethical nature, may lead to audience frustration or even infuriation. Refusing to take a side when the act of side-taking seems urgent, this kind of films appears to happily tolerate what may be disagreeable or indefensible beliefs to viewers across the ideological divide. As a result, the conundrum of interpretation takes on an ethical dimension; now, not only the suggestion of the film— what it is “about”—is of moral significance, one also becomes inclined to question the “tactic” of the film and view its stance in moral terms: is it being “opportunistic” (wanting to “have the cake and eat it”)? Is it being “insincere” (not articulating what it really means)? Is it a “cop-out” (a failure of commitment)?13 This kind of questions not only highlights how these “polysemic” films forcefully conjoins aesthetic and moral assessments, but it also reveals the site of their ambiguity. Simply put, the ambiguity of these films does not exactly stem from their possibility of conflicting readings; rather, what makes them ambiguous is their uncertainty of viewpoint, that we can’t be sure where their approval or allegiance lies. Our key question towards these films is then along the line of “why don’t they pick a side?” or “what position are they inviting me to take?”. We wish to understand the meaning and effect of such a strategy. Controversial “polysemic films” do not make an appearance in this study. But the strategy of rhetorical instability, in a less controversial yet no less morally fraught form, will be explored in relation to Force Majeure, as outlined in the chapter summary. While the answer to why a film avoids side-taking, why it beholds incompatible views, is liable to be conveniently explained in terms of an intellectual challenge (“the film wants us to provoke us [sometimes for the sake of it]”) or a “democratic” appeal to individual judgement (“it wants us to make up our own mind”), then perhaps what warrants accounting for—what is really interesting to examine—is how such a film achieves this avoidance or this act of dual-beholding. In other words, a productive way of analysing said film would be to reflect upon its construction, not in order to settle its interpretative quandary but to appreciate the way the moral or ideological double-bind is established and secured. Chapter 5 considers how Force Majeure’s rhetorical uncertainty succeeds to implicate us in its overarching moral drama, forcing us to participate in its ethical investigation.

16 

H. L. LAW

In any case, my omission of the two families of “highly ambiguous” films is strategic. These films tend to attract or have already received sustained critical attention. My account therefore turns to works that do not straightforwardly lend themselves to the analysis of ambiguity. My selection of movies, as suggested earlier, nevertheless allows me to develop a framework to address the two variants of ambiguous films and probe some of their pertinent issues. Most importantly, the examples that I examine in this book open up fresh ways of exploring both the concept of ambiguity and the practice of film criticism.

Value and Evaluation Perhaps the greatest mystery about ambiguity is that while it is typically considered an impediment in everyday life, especially over communication, it tends to be esteemed and celebrated in the realm of art. Why is it so? This vast question is way beyond the purview of this book. But my intuition is that the answer would have as much to do with the nature of art as to do with the possibility of ambiguity. And we would also need to have an understanding of the purposes of communication and how communication is different from art to recognise why certain things are shunned in one arena but valued in the other. But it should be noted that this question of why ambiguity is valuable is related to but, importantly, distinct from the question of why some instances of ambiguity are artistic achievements. Why ambiguity might be good in general is not the same as why a particular ambiguity is good. Earlier, I have identified interpretative “freedom” and analytical difficulty as the two common understandings of ambiguity. It seems to me they further stand for two conceptions of why ambiguity is valuable. While the former speaks to the prevailing belief in the “openness” of artworks, the latter corresponds to the concomitant view of the experience of art as an experience of active engagement. Indeed, critics do sometimes explain instances of ambiguity with these assumptions  in mind. For examples, remarking on the unresolved endings of “art films”, David Bordwell suggests: “ambiguity […] must not halt at the film’s close” because “life lacks the neatness of art and art knows it” (2008, 156). And it is also easy to imagine a critic justifying his or her interpretative struggle by asserting it as a result of artistic originality and innovativeness.

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

17

Reasonable, perhaps, such justifications of ambiguity are nevertheless unsatisfying. Lacking specificities, they are applicable to a wide range of instances. While each ambiguity, as I suggest, is ambiguous in a different way, its success and achievement should be therefore gauged in light of the work in which it appears. What is ambiguous needs to be judged on a case-­ by-­case basis. There is no substitute for careful close analysis. In this sense, the “why” question facilitates the assessment of ambiguity. It is by inquiring into the point of an ambiguity that we also recognise its form and degree of achievement. (The appreciation of art is not a two-­ step process in which we can establish the point of a work before we move on to its assessment; instead, we cannot see its point without also seeing its achievement in some sense. The difference between the “some sense” that we see in different artworks is their difference in successfulness.) But our recognition of achievement is complicated in the case of ambiguity. Since it is often the point of an ambiguity that we feel strongly uncertain about, its success is consequently also in question. And to say that uncertainty is precisely the point of ambiguity—which might be what we intuitively want to say about it—would not be helpful either but send us back to square one: figuring out the point of uncertainty is comparable to figuring out the point of ambiguity. In other words, by clarifying the construction of an ambiguity, close reading may at the same time magnify its puzzling features. It is possible that the harder we look at what is ambiguous, the more it leaves us perplexed, confused about its meaning, significance, and merit (as we will see in Chaps. 5 and 6). So, how might our evaluation proceed? The assessment of ambiguity, this book suggests, may benefit from referring to other aesthetic categories. But these other categories should not be employed as the “explanations”, like how “openness” is often used as the justification of what is ambiguous. Rather, they arise from our close reading and in turn inform our close reading. Throughout this study, ambiguity will be considered in conjunction with or in light of a series of other concepts, such as coherence, complexity, uncertainty, and opacity. And these joint considerations are indeed vital to the understanding of what is at stake in the instances we inspect. Ambiguity is always recognised and prized as the plurality of meanings. On my account, however, what is exciting about it is instead the way it meaningfully recalls a multitude of aesthetic concepts. As we shall see, ambiguity and these other concepts indeed illuminate each other. And this has profound consequences for evaluation. Most notably, it would be no longer appropriate to prioritise the identification of “good” and “bad”

18 

H. L. LAW

ambiguities. Instead, artistic assessment becomes a matter of exploring how an ambiguity works with other aesthetic categories to eloquent, interesting, or rewarding ends. This more liberating view of evaluation—focusing on gauging merits instead of passing judgements—is the kind of evaluation that this book will practice. This is a form of evaluation that emphasises appreciation, specifically the appreciation of the “why” in “why is it as it is”.

Notes 1. The remainder of the passage highlights the difficulty of analysing ambiguity: people “feel they know about the forces, if they have analysed the ideas; many forces, indeed, are covertly included within ideas; and so of the two elements, each of which defines the other, it is much easier to find words for the ideas than for the forces”. It is easier to identify the multiple meanings of an ambiguity than to explore and articulate their links. 2. Elsewhere, Bazin writes: “analytical découpage tends to suppress the immanent ambiguity of reality” (2009, 54). But the critic also sees the possibility of the convention to achieve the opposite. For example, speaking about Alfred Hitchcock’s uses of the close-up, Bazin observes how they could “suggest the ambiguity of an event” (69). There is a sense that the critic sometimes writes dogmatically for rhetorical purposes. His analyses are not reducible to, often more nuanced than, the inflated critical assertions that he declares. 3. Bazin’s emphasis on the viewer’s participation—a democratic vision of the medium—suggests that his film aesthetics is undivorceable from matters of ethics. 4. For a discussion of Bazinian ambiguity that revolves around issues of temporality, see Carruthers (2017). 5. Bordwell’s account of “art cinema” appears circular. He proposes realism and authorial expressivity as the defining features of this particular “mode of filmmaking” and then goes on to “explain” the films in these terms. 6. George M. Wilson notes: “Nothing in the idea of the explanatory coherence of a narrative requires that the material that is responsive to the dramatically significant questions of the film has to be deployed in a familiar or easily discernible way” (1986, 44). 7. See Robin Wood’s “Notes for a Reading of I Walked with a Zombie” for an attempt to apply Barthes’ five narrative codes to film analysis (2006, 303–38). 8. This seems to me linked to the philosophical question of how a film means. I have in mind V.F. Perkins’s suggestive remark that the meanings made

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

19

clear in a film are meanings that are “filmed” (1990, 4). Here, the very activity of the medium (filming) also serves as an eloquent, intuitive way of saying how meanings are achieved in its instances. It is as though how the camera articulates meanings remains something of a mystery to us. But to understand “how filming means”, what we need is not a general theory of the nature of the medium but appreciations of the aesthetic possibilities of individual acts of filming. Or, at least, the theorization cannot be done in advance of detailed analyses of film. 9. One benefit of conceiving movies in terms of question-and-answer is that it presents a more dynamic understanding of the fictional world than the prevalent preoccupation with narrative causality in film studies. Notably, it allows us to see narrative ambiguity as far more complicated than the disruption or complication of cause-of-effect. In a similar vein, Alex Clayton (2011) has discussed how the cause-and-effect model distorts issues of character choice and agency in film. 10. This book’s emphasis on the “why” inquiry is indicative of its larger interest in the valuable lessons of Cavell’s writings on art and art criticism. Indeed, this volume is inspired and guided by these lessons, that is, not in the sense that I’ve applied Cavell’s “methods” of analysing movies and approaching ambiguity—the application of methods is in fact alien to Cavell’s critical sensibility. The philosopher’s ideas will no doubt frequently crop up throughout this book. But what my account really takes up from Cavell and pays homage to is his unique insights into the operation of criticism. For instance, his commitment to reflecting on our experience of film, to the teachings of film. My “Cavellian” position will be fleshed out in “Concluding Remarks”. Recent volumes which draw attention to Cavell’s critical lessons include Moi (2017) and Ray (2020). 11. What about when someone asks “why is this unambiguous?” Would that be a case of ambiguity? I think there are two occasions from which this remark may arise. In the first, it stems from genuine puzzlement. This is a case of ambiguity, albeit expressed in an unusual form. But it remains possible to reformulate the question so that it is directed to the source of uncertainty. In the second scenario—equally unusual—the remark is a veiled judgement; it points to an expectation of the detail to be ambiguous in some way. The question is therefore close to a rhetorical question. It is likely that the speaker speaks out of critical conviction rather than puzzlement. If so, he or she doesn’t really think of the creative choice as ambiguous. 12. I am indebted to Adrian Martin for pointing out these two pervasive variants of ambiguous films to me. 13. See Chap. 5 for more about “cop-out” and “tacked-on” film endings.

20 

H. L. LAW

References Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. 2009. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Andrew, Dudley. 1973. André Bazin. Film Comment (March/April): 64–68. Armes, Roy. 1976. The Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema. London: Secker and Warburg. Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell. Bazin, André. 1997. Bazin at Work: Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties. Translated by Bert Cardullo. New York: Routledge. ———. 2009. What Is Cinema?. Translated by Timothy Barnard. Montreal: Caboose. Bordwell, David. 1989. Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York; London: Routledge. Buckland, Warren. 2009. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York and London: Routledge. Carroll, Noël. 2007. Narrative Closure. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 135 (1, Aug.): 1–15. Carruthers, Lee. 2017. Doing Time: Temporality, Hermeneutics, and Contemporary Cinema. New York: State University of New York. Cavell, Stanley. 2002. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays. Updated edition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Clayton, Alex. 2011. Coming to Terms. In The Language and Style of Film Criticism, ed. Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan, 27–37. Oxford: Routledge. Elkins, James. 1999. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity. New York: Routledge. Empson, William. 1961 [1930]. Seven Types of Ambiguity. Middlesex: Pelican Book. Franklin, Stuart. 2020. Ambiguity Revisited: Communicating with Pictures. Hanover: ibidem-Verlag. Gamboni, Dario. 2002. Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art. London: Reaktion Books. Grant, James. 2013. The Critical Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holland, Norman N. 1963. The Puzzling Movies: Their Appeal. The Journal of the Society of Cinematologists 3: 17–28. Kiss, Miklós, and Steven Willemsen. 2017. Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University. Labarthe, André S. 1986. Marienbad Year Zero. In Cahiers du Cinéma: 1960–1968: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim Hillier, 54–58. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

1  INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 

21

Martin, Adrian. 2020. The Hunt Plays a Violent Game, Screenhub (37, April). Accessed October 18, 2020. https://www.screenhub.com.au/news-­article/ reviews/film/adrian-­martin/film-­the-­hunt-­plays-­a-­violent-­game-­260203. Moi, Toril. 2017. Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Moore, G.E. 1955. Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33. Mind 64 (253, Jan.): 1–27. Perkins, V.F. 1990. Must We Say What They Mean? Movie 34/35: 1–6. ———. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York: Da Capo Press. Ray, Robert B. 2020. The Structure of Complex Images. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Self, Robert. 1979. Systems of Ambiguity in the Art Cinema. Film Criticism 4 (1, Fall): 74–80. Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis. 1992. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Beyond. London: Routledge. Wilson, George M. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1972. Lectures and Conversations: on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wood, Robin. 2006. Personal Views: Explorations in Film. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

PART I

Pursuits of Reasons

CHAPTER 2

Difficulty of Reading

One of the most intriguing moments in the history of cinema can be found in Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring (1949). It takes place towards the end of the movie, at the inn on the last night of the Kyoto visit, when Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her father Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) rest side by side on the tatami. Noriko is getting married soon, so the visit is also the final trip the two will take together. Things have not been going well between them. Mistaken about her father’s intent to remarry, Noriko has been upset. But she won’t divulge her reasons or discuss her feelings with Shukichi.1 At the aforementioned juncture in the film, as Noriko is finally about to open up to her father, the camera shows the following: 1. Medium close-up of Noriko: since her words (“I was feeling angry towards you, but”) receive no response from Shukichi, she looks to her left to check on him. 2. Medium close-up of Shukichi: his eyes are closed. 3. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1): she turns to her right briefly before looking ahead, staring at middle distance. Shukichi starts snoring and that continues for the remainder of the scene. Noriko smiles (Fig. 2.1). 4. Medium shot of the room: at the centre of the frame is a vase in the alcove. Shadows of bamboo are projected on the shō ji screen behind it (Fig. 2.2). The shot lasts for about six seconds. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_2

25

26 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 2.1  Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

5. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1 and 3): her smile is gone. As in shot 3, the character briefly turns to her right before looking ahead, into the middle distance (Fig. 2.3). 6. Medium shot of the room (as shot 4, like Fig. 2.2): this shot lasts for about ten seconds. Elegiac non-diegetic music comes in about half-­way through and acts as a sound bridge to a “new” scene.2 The intrigue of the moment is marked by the amount of critical attention it has garnered, the diversity of accounts it stimulates. Typically, these accounts are animated by the vase’s uncertainty of suggestion, which is all the more prominent for its centrality in the frame and the repetitions of the shot. This sense of persistent obscurity makes the moment both compelling and challenging. But instead of directly advancing my own interpretation, this chapter points out fruitful directions of reading by reflecting on a range of

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

27

Fig. 2.2  Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

pre-existing accounts. Some of them are canonical and some are chosen for their critical finesse. Not every one of them sees the moment as ambiguous. But all can be considered answers to the “why” question concerning the images with the vase and may therefore work as accounts of their ambiguity. I shall study the claims of these accounts and tease out their interpretive and methodological assumptions. By doing so, not only will we get a better grasp on the intriguing moment and its critical challenges but we will also be able to sketch a number of representative or exemplary analytic positions towards ambiguity. And this further makes possible the discernment of a number of key characteristics of the concept which the subsequent chapters will address. If ambiguity poses enquiries, it would be beneficial to identify the types of answer it can inspire, so that we may further recognise productive ways of answering it. I am interested in what these accounts of Late Spring can teach us about the criticism of ambiguity.

28 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 2.3  Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

This chapter diverges from Abé Mark Nornes’s essay “The Riddle of the Vase” (2007), which samples diverse readings of the moment and situates them within the development of film studies as an academic subject. Exploring the correspondences between these accounts and critical trends or traditions within or outside the discipline, Nornes highlights how they have shaped the study of Japanese cinema. Though my examples are similarly presented in the order of their publication, I do not make any historical arguments. Instead, my aim is to assess their validity and strengths. And these can be made clear by juxtaposing the critical texts, inspecting how they speak to each other. Contra Nornes’s essay, this chapter doesn’t insist on “a multiplicity of readings for a given text” (79). Not every account of the moment with the vase is equally satisfying or rewarding.

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

29

Explanation and Function The Transcendental In his renowned study on the “transcendental style” in cinema, Paul Schrader argues: The vase [in Late Spring] is stasis, a form which can accept deep, contradictory emotion and transform it into an expression of something unified, permanent, transcendent […]. The transcendental style, like the vase, is a form which expresses something deeper than itself, the inner unity of all things. (1972, 49; 51)

The vase is here taken as an illustration of the transcendental aesthetics. More specifically, it stands for “stasis”, which, according to Schrader, “is the trademark of religious art in every culture. It establishes an image of a second reality which can stand beside the ordinary reality” (49). In other words, he appears to read the scene as a spiritual experience and the vase as something like a sublimation of Noriko’s sorrow about leaving home. But without a sustained discussion of the moment, it remains unclear how the object achieves “stasis” and articulates “something unified, permanent, transcendent”. The remark hardly clarifies what makes the scene ambiguous. It preserves the mystery of the moment. This lack of engagement with specificities is a telling sign of the account’s lack of interest in what is on the “surface”, suggested by Schrader’s claim of the vase as “something deeper than itself, the inner unity of all things”. In this way, the passage above enacts a suspicion that ambiguity sometimes arouses: that meaning and significance is buried or hidden, beyond what is readily observable. This misleading assumption will be addressed in Chap. 4. The Cathartic Donald Richie writes in his seminal study on Ozu: The image of the vase in the darkened room to which Ozu returns at the end of Late Spring serves […] to contain and to an extent create our own emotions. Empathy is not the key here. To be sure we do imaginatively project our own consciousness onto another being, but this is perhaps a secondary effect. Primary to the experience is that in these scenes empty of

30 

H. L. LAW

all but mu, we suddenly apprehend what the film has been about, i.e. we suddenly apprehend life. […] In Late Spring the daughter has seen what will happen to her: she will leave her father, she will marry. She comes to understand this precisely during the time that both we and she have been shown the vase. The vase itself means nothing, but its presence is also a space and into it pours our emotion. (1974, 175)

Richie is interested in what the moment signifies. As a moment of realisation for both the character and the viewer, it nonetheless suggests different things to them. For Noriko, it is a recognition of her future (“she will leave her father, she will marry”); for us, it is the revelation of a fact of life, perhaps the inevitability of change. Interestingly, Richie speaks of the double realisation arising “precisely during the time that both we and she have been shown the vase”. That is, not unlike us, Noriki sees the object when it is “shown” to her. It is as though the dawning of her recognition is prompted by the shots, instigated by the filmmaker. It is a subtle instance of narrational metalepsis.3 As we shall see, the relationship between the shots and the character—especially that of between their suggestions and her subjectivity—is at the heart of the moment’s ambiguity. Echoing Schrader’s account, Richie claims that the vase “means nothing”. But the wordplay he employs with regard to the affective dimension of the shots—how they “pour” and “contain” our feelings—seems to assert its relevance. As manifestations of “mu”—the potent presence of absence4—the shots represent an emptiness that calls attention to itself, as though a blank canvas on which to project our emotions. Instead of clarifying the interiority of the character, they serve as vehicles for spectatorial catharsis. Receptive to the narrative and emotional significance of the scene, Richie nevertheless dismisses the meaning of the vase without qualifications. And that deserves questioning. How do these images generate emotions but deny meanings? Doesn’t what seems meaningless compel interpretation even more? In Chap. 6, we shall encounter a type of puzzling detail that threatens meaninglessness. As a result, our persistent interpretation of it may sound dangerously like “overreading”. It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But… It is worth pausing for a moment. Focusing on the scene’s style, emotional effect, or disclosure of mu, both Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts have

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

31

nevertheless left the narrative situation unaddressed, as if it is self-evident. What happens in the scene? What does the editing suggest? Cutting between a character gazing offscreen and a view of her vicinity is the structure of the point-of-view editing convention. Mobilising our knowledge of this convention, the film prompts us to read the moment as an instance of looking. That is, Noriko is looking at the vase. But this intuitive reading turns out to be not the case. In their article “Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu”, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson usefully point out the impossibility of shots (4) and (6) as Noriko’s views from her position on the tatami, since the vase is “seen in several earlier shots as being in a corner of the room behind and to the left of the two beds” (1976, 65) (Fig. 2.4). This impossibility, Bordwell and Thompson note, suggests that the images with the vase are not “‘realistically’ and ‘compositionally’ motivated by the narrative”, and that’s why Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts struggle. They instead speak of the vase

Fig. 2.4  Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

32 

H. L. LAW

as a “hypersituated object” that “works against, brakes the narrative flow because of its indifference to Noriko’s emotional situation”. This indifference, Bordwell and Thompson seem to imply, is guaranteed by the fact that the shots are not the character’s optical point-of-view shots. Their function can only be formal (in the narrow sense of what is not narrative); we shouldn’t interpret the meaning of the vase. (ibid.) The nascent ideas of both Bordwell’s and Thompson’s subsequent accounts can be found in this brief remark. We will inspect their Neoformalist understanding of the moment more closely below. While the impossibility of point-of-view editing, according to them, is a reason not to interpret the vase, I would suggest that it instead complicates the object’s uncertainty of meaning, contributing to the moment’s ambiguity. However, this would add to our critical challenge: alongside the question of what the vase suggests, there is an additional enquiry about the construction of the scene. And the two need to be considered together. Between Continuity and Discontinuity In his book on Japanese cinema, Noël Burch doesn’t explore the images with the vase, but his discussion of Ozu’s deployment of “the pillow-shot” can serve as a pertinent framework for understanding their structural function (1979, 160–2). Pillow-shots are unpeopled images which “suspend the diegetic flow”. And by doing so, they may be read as “an expression of a fundamentally Japanese trait”; drawing attention to the inanimate and the environment, they depart from the anthropocentrism of Western thoughts and, specifically, that of the Hollywood storytelling tradition. Reflective of a culture, this kind of shot embodies a worldview, proposing a particular way of looking. Importantly, in Ozu’s movies, these images introduce or reintroduce diegetic locales or objects. They are not necessarily without narrative implications despite their disruption of plot progress. Rather, their implications are subtle or uncertain. This is how Ozu’s pillow-­shots invite contemplation. For my purposes, it doesn’t matter that the images with the vase are not, strictly speaking, pillow shots. Their strong ties to the scene make them dissimilar to the kind of pronounced cutaways that Burch has in mind. But their attention to non-human presence recalls the environmental sensibility of Burch’s category. Moreover, once we become aware of the images’ impossibility as point-of-view shots, we may come to see how they, similar to the pillow-shots, pivot upon the tension between narrative

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

33

continuity and discontinuity. Like Bordwell and Thompson, Burch emphasises the formal aspect of a device, but unlike them, he sees the possibility of such a device to have dramatic and thematic significance. For Burch, there is no neat divide between form and narrative meaning. Play and Parameters Before inspecting Bordwell’s and Thompson’s accounts, we need to have a sense of what undergirds their arguments. For them, Ozu’s cinema exemplifies “parametric narration”.5 A parametric film is a film which sustains a set of parameters—usually in the form of a range of stylistic devices—independently of its narrative economy. These devices cannot be understood in terms of what Bordwell and Thompson call “realistic”, “compositional” or “transtextual” motivations, that is, by conventions of realism and genre, or by the requirements of storytelling. Instead, a parameter is “artistically motivated”, “simply for its own sake—as an appealing or shocking or neutral element […] directly focus[ing] attention on the forms and materials of the artwork” (Bordwell 1985, 36). The suggestion is that style can be divorced from content. Form can simply be. This is why parameters, for Bordwell, are not susceptible to interpretation. And these films, he notes, in fact discourage reading by accentuating its form: “parametric filmmakers have tended to employ strikingly obvious themes […]. It is as if stylistic organization becomes prominent only if the themes are so banal as to leave criticism little to interpret” (282). Interpretation becomes not only untenable but is often futile. Instead, Ozu employs parameters to “play stylistic games with the spectator[s]”, training them to “a distinct set of perceptual skills […] appropriate to his work” (Thompson, 1988, 341). These games are playful. And playing by the filmmaker’s rules, acquiring those perceptual skills, would allow us to play the games better, deepening our appreciation of Ozu’s playfulness. One of these games, Bordwell observes in his monograph on Ozu (1988, 117–8), is the game of the “‘false’ POV”, wherein the filmmaker undermines our expectations of the editing convention to subtle or surprising effects. Bordwell reads the sequence in Late Spring as a variant of this game and concludes: “Ozu’s fraying of POV cues makes the scene fairly unstable, and any interpretation of it must take such equivocations into account”. Interestingly, interpretation is no longer chastised here. Stopping short of a reading, Bordwell explains Ozu’s employment of the “‘false’ “POV” as a rejection of “canonical representation of character

34 

H. L. LAW

subjectivity”. His allusion to interpretive possibilities, however, invites us to envision how his explanation might be strengthened by close analysis. In fact, Bordwell gestures towards a careful reading of the moment by pointing out the saliency of the shadows behind the vase, a detail overlooked or disregarded by Schrader and Richie. Indeed, the intrigue of the object may easily, unduly consume our critical attention, at the expense of other significant features of the scene. The Arbitrary In her book chapter on Late Spring, Thompson (1988) elaborates on the movie’s playful strategy of parametric narration and continues to speak of the vase as a “hypersituated object”. Now she calls Ozu’s formal choices “unreasonable” because they are “neither natural nor logical” (341). She argues: Given the film’s consistent use of cutaways in a non-narrative way, it seems more reasonable to see it [the vase] as a non-narrative element wedged into the action. Such wedges must have an effect on the story, assuredly, if only in the negative sense of diffusing our attention. Here we might conclude that Ozu is in fact blocking our complete concentration on Noriko in order to prevent our taking this as the emotional climax of the film […]. But in any case, the choice for a vase for such a purpose is arbitrary; the shots could have shown a lantern in the garden, a tree branch, or whatever. As an emotion-­charged symbol, a cut to Soma’s toothbrush and glass would have been more effective, since earlier we had seen Noriko handing these objects to her father, and this would have associated them with the pair’s relationship. They have never even glanced at the vase. The very arbitrariness of the choice should warn us against simplistic readings. (339–40) If Ozu’s “‘false’ POVs” should not be read for meaning because they are “artistically motivated”, Thompson proposes to explain them in terms of function. As she declares: the “analysis of function and motivation will always remain the analyst’s central goal, and it will subsume interpretation” (21). In her view, it doesn’t matter what Ozu cuts to in place of the vase insofar as it “block[s] our complete concentration on Noriko”.6 Here, function is conceived as something like a solution to a problem. And as long as the problem is solved, the choice of solution is irrelevant. A function is fulfilled the same way by every choice.

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

35

But does the choice make no difference? A cut to “a lantern in the garden” would feel obtrusive considering its impossibility as Noriko’s sight. And a cut to a “toothbrush and glass” could be mildly confusing, especially in light of the character’s changed countenance in the sequence. We could say that these choices “block our complete concentration on Noriko” but that grossly neglects their specific effects and implications. Even though they might equally serve as a solution to a problem, it doesn’t mean they are equally as good and therefore arbitrarily replaceable. The issue with Thompson’s account, on the one hand, lies in its pragmatic conception of function and, on the other, in the unquestioned assumption that a device can be reduced to such a role. As a result, it oversimplifies the moment with the vase. Contrary to her conclusion, it is the very specificity of the vase that makes simplistic explanations unsatisfying, unsuitable. Similar to Bordwell, Thompson asserts that the meanings of most parametric films are “simple and obvious” (20). This view is fleshed out by Bordwell when he writes: “Not much acumen is needed to identify PlayTime [Jacques Tati, 1967] as treating the impersonality of modern life, Tokyo Story [Yasujirō Ozu, 1953] as examining the decline of the “inherently” Japanese family, or Vivre sa vie [Jean-Luc Godard, 1962] as dealing with contemporary urban alienation and female desire”. (1985, 282) In other words, what Bordwell and Thompson mean by meaning is the theme of a movie; interpretation, accordingly, is the elucidation of themes. This impoverished understanding of both concepts is the source of their misleading claim: the blatant “messages” of parametric films, Bordwell and Thompson observe, give us licence to study their style for their own sake, as though we could see what these films articulate prior to seeing their means of articulation. But I would suggest it is Bordwell and Thompson’s failure to interpret content in light of form, theme in conjunction with technique, that results in their underappreciation of the nuances and complexity of these movies. We shall see how the construction of the moment in Late Spring complicates its suggestion. It seems fair to say that Bordwell and Thompson are neither interested in nor concerned with what is ambiguous. For them, the scene may be initially puzzling. But this is only because we mistake the nature of its editing and instinctively read it in accordance with the point-of-view convention. Once our confusion is cleared up, the ambiguity would be solved. We should then be able to see that what is really at stake is not the uncertainty of meaning but a systematic play with form. For them, what the moment calls for is not interpretation or clarification but explanation and

36 

H. L. LAW

disambiguation. From this perspective, it is understandable to find the scene ambiguous at first, but to dwell upon its suggestion after our misbelief is rectified would be unjustifiable. But ambiguity may leave us in irresolvable doubt. One of its chief challenges—as this book will demonstrate throughout its course and address at its close—is its resistance to be refuted by knowledge, silenced with facts. But this doesn’t mean ambiguity is unreasonable or that our critical effort would necessarily end up being irrational. Instead, we are encouraged to present our reasons both for and against our doubt, and weigh them in relation to each other. This may not put the ambiguous to rest. More often than not, the best we could aim for is a provisional relief. But the practice would renew our understanding of the ambiguity, illuminating the reasonableness of our doubt.

Reading in Detail Ozu’s choice to cut to the vase in the alcove is far from arbitrary. Unlike “a lantern in the garden” or “a tree branch”, it is precisely a view we believe Noriko would be able to see from her position at that particular moment, and this reinforces our intuitive understanding of the moment as a sequence of point-of-view editing. Our subsequent realisation of the inaccessibility of that view would then invite us to reflect on this understanding, to ask why the film exploits our knowledge of the editing convention to imply that Noriko is looking at the vase without literally beholding it. The move from the intuitive to the reflective readings marks a shift from dramatic absorption to a special mode of aesthetic attention, from accepting the moment’s credibility to actively discerning its significance. (The probing of “why is it as it is” involves this kind of aesthetic attention.) In Film as Film, V.F. Perkins speaks of a movie’s balancing act between credibility and significance: “[i]t may shatter illusion in straining after expression. It may subside into meaningless reproduction presenting a world which is credible but without significance” (1993, 120). While the accounts we have considered so far all hone in on the significance of the moment in Late Spring—either dismissing (Bordwell and Thompson) or taking for granted (Schrader and Richie) its credibility—a more satisfying reading would require us to explore its expression in light of its illusion of seamlessness. It matters that the scene strives for verisimilitude and understates its design and suggestion. The moment’s deceptive credibility, its undemonstrative significance, is central to its intrigue and achievement.

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

37

The Figurative Andrew Klevan reads the significance of the scene in relation to Noriko’s anxiety about her forthcoming marriage: After settling down into bed in Kyoto, the film has two cut-aways to a vase which alternate with shots of Noriko’s pensive face (her face shows a slight change in register: at first it looks content; then, after the vase shot, it appears more concerned). Placed here, these shots of an inanimate object suggest Noriko’s worried fluctuations with regard to marriage which lie behind her front of passivity. Although the vase seems to be somewhere in the room behind Noriko, the effect here, because of the lack of establishing information with regard to its position, is to abstract the vase as a visualisation of the mood of her state of mind. (2000, 137)

The passage is sensitive to the pulls between the scene’s imitation of credibility and its subtle disclosure of significance. Klevan acknowledges the impossibility of the vase as Noriko’s view but also recognises the camera’s reluctance to announce that impossibility. This awareness of the moment’s reticence allows him to observe its artful articulation of the character’s state of mind. In particular, this articulation is characterised by abstraction. Functioning like an abstract, the image with the vase, as Klevan demonstrates, condenses Noriko’s complex interiority, signifying her entangled strands of feelings. The shot is symbolic. And in this way, the sequence can be considered abstract, in the sense that it is not a representation of looking but an instance of figurative seeing, as the character confronts the opacity of her thoughts. The moment is metaphorical. The figurative aspect of the sequence invites a comparison to a long-­ established concept in film theory known as the Kuleshov effect.7 Conceived by early Soviet film theorists and celebrated by filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, the effect refers to the possibility of suggesting an unequivocal state of mind by editing between a subject and a view. For example, according to V.I. Pudovkin, cutting from a shot of an expressionless face to a shot “showing a coffin in which lay a dead woman” indicates “deep sorrow” ( 1960, 168).8 The precision of this indication is supposed to be a testament of the power of editing. It is clear that the moment in Late Spring, despite its structural affinity to the Kuleshov effect, avoids the concept’s conclusiveness of meaning. Having said that, my aim is not to discredit the theoretical construct. (In any case, pointing out the uncertainty of one variant of this editing structure by no means

38 

H. L. LAW

denies the possibility of this type of editing to summon definite suggestions.) The comparison here instead sheds light on a key feature of the ambiguity of the scene. The Kuleshov effect, as the Soviet theorists conceived it, insisted on the expressionlessness of the facial close-up. And this was taken as a guarantee that the suggested state of mind came from the edit and not from the performance.9 But we can further say that the shot’s presumed lack of emotional display, to some extent, helps curtail the creation of confusing or bewildering effects in the context of the sequence. In Late Spring, Noriko’s changed expression—from looking content to looking concerned—is disorienting because it appears to be motivated by the view with the vase. There is an interpretive gap between the performance and the situation, between the animation of feeling and the inarticulacy of the object. This is an instance of ambiguity as undecidability: we feel unable to say with conviction what the moment means, for the moment makes no commitment to any of the possible significance. Movement and Stasis The scene’s suggestion of change is confounded by its sense of inarticulacy. Klevan continues: Her [Noriko’s] undramatic demeanour may be because she lies, tucked up, in the quiet of the night, unwilling and unable to disturb her father, or may be because her feelings are too indefinite to show themselves clearly. The inanimate vase suitably conveys the sense of her uncrystallised thoughts circling around varying manifestations of stillness: those thoughts shuffle indistinctly between, perhaps, the possible still tranquillity of marriage and vague feelings of non-human, ornamental lifelessness, of being stilled. (ibid.)

The passage pivots upon the tension between movement and stasis, evoking and exploring their many forms and expressions in the scene. The calmness of the unpeopled views, paradoxically, reveals Noriko’s inner turmoil, masked by her frail maintenance of poise. Klevan unpacks her interiority as strings of comparable possibilities. Yet the compactness of his reading also enacts the moment’s density of significance. Noriko’s thoughts are thoughts about settlement and arrest, but her mind remains unsettled and restless, “circling” around and “shuffl[ing]” between a set of ideas. She is overwhelmed, incapable of making up her mind or

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

39

catching up with her thoughts, seized by the whirlwind of thinking. The moment is marked by its indeterminacy, its movement of meaning.10 The character’s difficulty in coming to terms with her feelings is analogous to our interpretive struggle. The scene compels and eludes our reading. In fact, it feels all the more compelling for its elusiveness. It is elusive not because its suggestions are unripe or shapeless but because they are intricate, entangled, alive. Our interpretive challenge is to explore the development of these suggestions in a way that attends to both their continuity and their distinctiveness. What this requires is a tactful exposition of meanings which oppose to be stilled and easily coarsened by stilling. It is not a concern unique to the criticism of ambiguity. But the ambiguous, often concerning the movement of or the conflict between meanings, draws special attention to that resistance, and therefore strongly solicits the practice of critical tact. Seeing As William Rothman’s detailed reading of the scene (2006), by skillfully charting the moment-by-moment suggestions of the editing, is a sophisticated study of its movement of meaning. When Noriko and Shukichi lie on their futons, their conversation is presented as a series of shot/reverse-­ shot. But as she turns her head to look at him in shot 1, Rothman notes, we are encouraged to read the following image (shot 2) as her optical point-of-view. Consequently, when the camera returns to her in shot 3, we register it as a reaction shot. In other words, even though both shots 2 and 3 reprise previous camera set-ups, replicating the shot/reverse-shot structure, we see them differently. Their meanings are revised by our knowledge of context and convention. Rothman goes on to suggest: When Ozu cuts from this mysterious shot [shot 4] back to Noriko [shot 5], then back again [shot 6], this alternation feels like a point-of-view-shot/ reaction-shot pattern, one which underscores her aloneness (her father has fallen asleep, prefiguring his departure from her life). But it also feels like a shot/reverse-shot pattern, one that supersedes—or does it carry on?—her conversation with her father. Is this mysterious composite of object and shadow, of presence and absence, of being and nothingness [shot 6], the passive object of her thoughts? Or is it responding to, or leading her to, her dawning realization? (2006, 40)

40 

H. L. LAW

As in the preceding edits, a renewal of perception has taken place across shots 4 to 6. But now it comes with a crucial difference. The impossibility of the vase as Noriko’s vision means that these images do not and cannot constitute a point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot pattern in any straightforward sense. The moment denies a literal reading in these terms. Bordwell is rejecting the literal perspective when he questions the assumption that “Noriko sees the vase and this causes the change in her reaction” (1988, 117).11 But his subsequent claim about the shots’ absence of meaning, based on this rejection, seems to reflect literal thinking of another kind. Specifically, it fails to comprehend the film’s implication of Noriko seeing and reacting to the vase in a special sense. Such a special understanding entails the recognition that actions and events, and what counts as causes and effects, are artfully shaped and calibrated in a movie, so that their narrative significance takes into account this shaping and this calibration and may therefore enhance, undermine, or differ from their ready suggestion in the fictional world. That is, this type of understanding sees narrative meaning in an expanded sense.12 Rothman’s attention to what the sequence “feels like” offers an elegant way to address its precarious suggestion. It observes the appearance of the editing to indicate the moment’s expanded narrative meaning. Reappropriating the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot convention, the sequence encourages the understanding that, as Rothman puts it, “the shot with the vase stands in for what Noriko sees in her mind’s eye” (2006, 40). What the character “sees” and “reacts” to in shots 3 and 5, in other words, are not actual sights but something like mental images. Agreeing with Richie, Rothman considers the instance as Noriko’s moment of realisation; citing Klevan, he further recognises her experience of stasis and thoughts about stillness; finally, like Bordwell, he acknowledges the double preoccupation with materiality and shadow that the shots with the vase signifies. All of which contributes to Rothman’s own reading of the scene as an invocation of permanence and transience, as the occasion where Noriko’s comes to terms with the knowledge (or self-knowledge) about the intertwinement between love and loss, about the price of happiness and the gift of sacrifice.13 To see the image with the vase as something Noriko envisions, nevertheless, leads to a further enquiry about the nature of this vision. In Rothman’s words: “is it responding to, or leading her to, her dawning realization?” The sequence, as the critic perceptively points out, not only evokes the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot convention but also “feels

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

41

like a shot/reverse-shot pattern”. While reading the scene in terms of the convention highlights the vase as what animates Noriko’s response, prompting her reaction shot, reading it in light of the pattern emphasises the moment as a continuation of her talk with Shukichi and therefore conceives the view as something like an answer to her thinking. Appropriately, Rothman keeps his own question open. As his passage implies, the shots may appear as an acknowledgement of Noriko’s realisation and may also seem like what activates it. The two editing structures are the two equally salient references of the scene. And their respective implications are less alternatives than the alternating possibilities of the moment. Our understanding constantly switches between them. This movement between meanings is akin to the experience of aspect seeing. If such an experience is an experience of contradiction—as in the classic duck-rabbit illustration: what we perceive as either/or, our mind knows as both—this may be why the moment in Late Spring can leave us slightly conflicted, disconcerted. We feel torn between suggestions. Repetitions The scene modulates its meaning through its strategic use of repetitions. This modulation is possible because no repetition means the same. It is curious that even though the sequence is clearly structured around a series of reprises—most notably, the reiterated images with the vase and the recurring close-ups of Noriko—this feature of the movie is often only acknowledged but not analysed in critical literature.14 Rothman’s reading is one exception. Taking into account the significance of repetition, he suggests: When Ozu now repeats that mysterious shot [with the vase], and holds it even longer than the first time, this does not register the dawning of a new realization on Noriko’s part. She returns to the same thought. Not so much embracing as surrendering to it, she recognizes its inevitability, acknowledges the sense of necessity that Ozu’s camera declares or acknowledges by reprising the shot. (ibid.)

The implication of the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot pattern changes with its repetition. While its first iteration (shots 3 and 4) signifies Noriko’s dawning understanding about life and loss, the reprise (shots 5 and 6) marks her further recognition of the “inevitability” or “necessity” of what

42 

H. L. LAW

she has realised.15 This reading sheds light on the character’s repeated enigmatic gestures in shots 3 and 5: her brief turn to the right before returning to look ahead. The first time feels like an attempt to look away, which points to Noriko’s reluctance to face her realisation. And this encourages us to see the subsequent instance as an act of turning back, by which the character comes to brave her realisation, perhaps resigning to it, despite its infelicities. Note that Rothman’s reading, his claim about the scenario’s changing implication, requires the two images with the vase to stand for “the same thought”. But this is only to suggest they mean the same to Noriko. No repetition is exactly the same. The two shots affect the viewer in complementary yet distinctive ways. While the first cutaway creates intrigue, stimulating our interpretation, its reoccurrence deepens the intrigue into a tantalising promise of meaning, compelling our critical inquiry. Concluding the scene, the second shot nonetheless eschews closure. Its lingering presence works like a persistent challenge, confronting us with a quiet, dangling question. We feel dogged by a potent sense of why.

Question as Answer This chapter has considered numerous critical responses to an oft-­discussed but ever-mysterious moment in Late Spring. Some of which are more fruitful than others as an answer to its ambiguity. As we have seen, the less successful ones tend to devote scarce attention to the details of the sequence: while Schrader bypasses reading to assert the vase as emblematic of the transcendental style, Richie helpfully suggests the scene as a moment of realisation but insists on the object’s absence of meaning without qualification. In doing so, both accounts neglect some crucial aspects of the scene’s significance. In place of interpretation, Bordwell and Thompson advocate a type of film analysis that explores the motivation and function of devices. This kind of formal analysis, however, is hardly helpful in the study of ambiguity. The identification of the cutaway as “artistically motivated”—that is, as a choice for its own sake and free from further justifications—achieves little more than flagging its nature as artifice. One might then turn to the device’s function for an explanation of its puzzlement. But as we have seen, Bordwell and Thompson’s understanding of the shot as a narrative diversion doesn’t address what makes it puzzling. For Thompson, this role of diversion can be fulfilled by many other shots, and the replaceability of

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

43

the detail reflects Ozu’s arbitrariness of choice. Interpretation is therefore unwarranted, futile. Such an explanation leaves us unsatisfied as an account of what is ambiguous by leaving its call for acknowledgement and analysis unanswered. Satisfying readings of the scene, like Klevan’s and Rothman’s, on the other hand, are attuned to its specificities. And this attunement entails an attention to the evolving significance of the editing and to the moment-­ by-­ moment movement of meaning within and across the shots. This enables these accounts to appreciate the implications of the sequence, addressing its narrative meaning in the expanded sense, producing insights into its ambiguity. Notably, there is a sense that satisfying answers to the moment are guided by more nuanced lines of questioning. Take Rothman’s reading as an example. Given the impossibility of the view as Noriko’s vision, his account, however, unlike Bordwell’s, doesn’t take for granted this impossibility but makes it an underlying issue around which its inquiry revolves. This inquiry reflects on the multifarious rapports and the dynamic relationships between the character and the vase, and between the close-ups of her and the views with that object. Rothman charts the moment’s narrative meaning by taking into account the unusual ways the film deploys and recalls relevant editing conventions. By doing so, the account successfully engages with the perplexing question: why does it imply Noriko to be looking at something that she cannot behold? We commonly think of question and answer as distinct categories. But if it makes sense to speak of a critical account being guided by a distinctive question, as I have noted earlier, then it also makes sense to think of this question as a part of that account’s “answer” to the movie. It is because, not unlike a critical “answer”, such a question is a result of reading. And by setting the direction of research, pointing out what to look at, look for, and look forward to, this question in turn shapes the interests and the arguments of that account. From this perspective, the pursuit of a fruitful inquiry is as important as—for it is conducive to—the discovery of an illuminating response. A satisfying critical account entails knowing what questions to probe as much as what answers to propose; the probing and the proposing are mutually informing. This dual challenge is at the heart of the criticism of ambiguity. Ambiguity is difficult not only because it unsettles our reading but, more importantly—because of this unsettlement, as we have seen in Late Spring—it is often far from straightforward to figure out the pertinent or productive questions to ask. This difficulty

44 

H. L. LAW

is the point of departure of the next chapter, where we will encounter an instance of ambiguity that mobilises several threads of entangled questions.

Notes 1. This straightforward outline doesn’t aim to convey the intricacy of the plot. For the purposes of this chapter, I won’t be able to explore the narrative in detail. But it is crucial to acknowledge how much is left unsaid or unsettled in the film, especially regarding character motives, actions, and feelings. To begin with, it seems that Shukichi pretends to remarry in order to relieve Noriko of caring responsibility, as he has come to believe that it would be best for her to start her own family. Also, Noriko says she finds remarriages “distasteful”. But, arguably, her father’s “remarriage” upsets her because she feels deserted. She enjoys her father’s company and would like to go on taking care of him. Her subsequent, sudden decision to wed then sounds like an impulsive act—if not something like a retaliation—in response to his “desertion”. There is a sense that Noriko hasn’t been thinking about marriage at all. She is independent and wouldn’t want to marry just because it is socially expected for a woman at a certain suitable age. This social pressure, expressly voiced by her aunt, adds to Noriko’s frustration. All of which is suggested but not affirmed by the movie. What is otherwise a melodramatic plot is treated undramatically by Ozu. 2. What is it that demarcates a scene? How do we distinguish one scene from another? The notion of the scene has received little critical reflection, often taken for granted, despite being an indispensable vocabulary to film analysis (a similar case with related terms such as “vignette” and “set-piece”). It is not my intention here to advocate—film semiotics-style—a theoretical pursuit of what defines this “basic cinematic unit”. But a close attention to what makes a scene a scene in an individual film can sometimes enrich our understanding and appreciation. Intuitively, a scene appears to be what contains a single action, scenario, or setting. In this sense, the shots of the rocks in Ryō an-ji mark a new scene in Late Spring by introducing a new milieu. But these tranquil images also feel like something of a response to or a continuation of the enigmatic shot “exchanges” between the vase and Noriko. The demarcation between scenes is not always distinct and definite. The shots with the vase and the images of the rock garden invite us to consider them together, rather than as separate, self-contained situations. This is an aspect that most accounts neglect. I have previously raised this issue in Law (2014). 3. For a systematic account of cinematic metalepsis, see Lash (2020). 4. The Japanese aesthetic concept of mu underpins Richie’s understanding of Ozu. Mu draws our attention to the fact that “emptiness and silence are a part of the work, a positive ingredient. It is silence which gives meaning to

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

45

the dialogue that went before; it is emptiness which gives meaning to the action that went before” (1974, 174). 5. See Bordwell (1985, 275–310) and Thompson (1988, 247–50). 6. Kijū Yoshida similarly sees the vase shot as a diffusion of audience attention. However, his reading is based on his understanding of the moment’s psychosexual subtext: “When the viewers look at the shot of the vase abruptly inserted into the scene, they cannot help staring at it. They are forced to think about the meaning of the vase and interpret it. Such a moment forcing them to think distracts them from imagining the daughter’s desire to be embraced by her father, or any woman’s desire to make love with a man. For Ozu-san, the vase in the moonlight is an image of purification and redemption” (2003, 80). In his article on what he calls “puzzling movies”, Norman N.  Holland (1963) similarly suggests how ambiguous form may serve as a cover for uncomfortable content. The divide between form and content that these accounts pivot upon is questionable. But the idea that ambiguity is something that steals and absorbs our attention is a key characteristic of the concept that I wish to capture in this book, especially in Chap. 6. 7. See Prince and Hensley (1992) for a sustained consideration of the Kuleshov effect. Hitchcock discusses the effect in, for example, his interview with François Truffaut and Scott (1984, 214–6). 8. As Pudovkin writes: “we chose close-ups which were static and which did not express any feeling at all”. Another important claim of the concept is that distinctive meanings can be produced by intercutting the same expressionless close-up with different views. 9. The problem with this view, as V.F. Perkins notes, is that it “assume[s] from the start the irrelevance of all matters of lighting, make-up, camera angle and framing to the theoretical issues; assume, in fact, that the content of any specific presentation of a particular face is adequately described by the word ‘face’ or, worse still, ‘close-up’” (1993, 106). 10. Klevan (2012) discusses the importance of attending to the movement of meaning, as well as the challenges of addressing it, in relation to good film performances. 11. Bordwell takes this assumption to be shared by Schrader and Richie. But it seems to me Schrader is interested in neither what Noriko sees nor what leads to her changed expression. He uses the moment to illustrate the transcendental style. Even though Richie’s remark on the vase as something “shown” to her hardly negates Bordwell’s charge, it gestures towards a more complex view of the moment than the simplistic reading that Bordwell rejects. 12. An analogous instance of unusual implication can be found in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1946), where a shot of a character pressing

46 

H. L. LAW

a button is sandwiched between two shots that depict the happening of a car accident. It appears that this character has “caused” that accident. “[T]his impression of causality”, George M. Wilson remarks, “is difficult to reconcile with common sense and difficult also to integrate into our immediate sense of the film’s narrative development at that juncture” (1986, 2). This moment is more puzzling than the sequence in Late Spring (which contradicts our understanding of space but not much of our immediate sense of the narrative), but it equally invites a non-literal reading and requires us to adopt an enlarged conception of causality. 13. I have in mind Sara Ahmed’s suggestion: “Happiness can involve a gesture of deferral, as a deferral that is imagined simultaneously as a sacrifice and gift: for some, the happiness that is given up becomes what they give” (2010, 33). In Late Spring, Shukichi is the giver of happiness. But we can also say that Noriko has given up a life she is content with. He sacrifices his so that she can make a bid for hers; she gives up hers because she wants him to acquire his. The film invites us to compare and contrast their respective sacrifices. 14. Repetition is key to the parametric narration. But Bordwell and Thompson would likely take it to be a mark of playfulness or formal excess. In fact, Thompson’s argument of arbitrariness could have some difficulties accommodating the repeated shots with the vase. Their effect of insistence creates a sense of irreplaceability. Also, if distraction is the aim, why does Ozu return to Noriko after the cutaway? Wouldn’t avoiding dwelling on her be a more effective way to prevent us from “taking this [the moment] as the emotional climax of the film”? Why lingers on the moment by cutting to the vase again? 15. Note that Rothman’s reading, his claim about the scenario’s changing implication, requires the two cutaways to stand for “the same thought”. Put another way, the shots assume different suggestions for the viewer not despite but because of their identical meaning to Noriko. This disparity of significance is analogous to the gap between what something means in the fictional world and its expanded narrative meaning discussed earlier.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge. ———. 1988. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. London: BFI. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 1976. Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu. Screen 17 (2): 41–73. Burch, Noël. 1979. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2  DIFFICULTY OF READING 

47

Holland, Norman N. 1963. The Puzzling Movies: Their Appeal. The Journal of the Society of Cinematologists 3: 17–28. Klevan, Andrew. 2000. Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film. Trowbridge: Flicks Books. ———. 2012. Living Meaning: The Fluency of Film Performance. In Theorizing Film Acting, ed. Aaron Taylor, 33–46. London: Routledge. Lash, Dominic. 2020. The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Law, Hoi Lun. 2014. Two or Three Things I Know About the Filmic Objects. LOLA. Accessed October 26, 2020. http://www.lolajournal.com/5/ object.html. Nornes, Abé Mark. 2007. The Riddle of the Vase: Ozu Yasujirō ’s Late Spring (1949). In Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, ed. Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer, 78–89. London and New York: Routledge. Perkins, V.F. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York: Da Capo Press. Prince, Stephen, and Wayne E. Hensley. 1992. The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating the Classic Experiment. Cinema Journal 31 (2, Winter): 59–75. Pudovkin, Vsevolod I. 1960. Film Technique and Film Acting. Translated by Ivor Montagu. New York: Grove Press, Inc. Richie, Donald. 1974. Ozu: His Life and Films. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rothman, William. 2006. Notes on Ozu’s Cinematic Style. Film International 4 (5, Aug.): 33–42. Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. New York: DaCapo Press. Thompson, Kristin. 1988. Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Truffaut, François, and Helen G.  Scott. 1984. Hitchcock, Rev. ed. New  York: Simon and Schuster. Wilson, George M. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Yoshida, Kijū. 2003. Ozu’s Anti-cinema. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

CHAPTER 3

Perplexity of Style

Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (2002) is programmatic in form. The title of the film alludes to its composition as ten vignettes, all depicting the same unnamed female driver (Mania Akbari1) giving someone a lift. Occupying the front seat, the passenger is customarily a friend or a family member, and only on two occasions a total stranger. The scenario of the car ride—a shared sojourn in a small space—provides an opportunity for meaningful talk but also heightens the pressure of making conversation. Exploring such opportunity and such pressure, each vignette observes the interaction between two characters: what they say, how they behave, and when they retreat into silence. The constancy of the narrative situation is further matched by the formulaic assembling of the episodes. Kiarostami has called Ten a “two-word” movie, in reference to its routine, almost mechanical, practice of cutting between two symmetrical camera set-ups; between three-quarter views of the driver and three-quarter views of the passenger. It is as if the movie has adopted a plain cinematic lexicon, a monotony of twin articulations (see Andrew 2005, 73).2 Each episode in Ten is preceded by a title card, marked, perhaps counterintuitively, according to the number of episode(s) left in the movie: the number descends from “10” on the first card (which also announces the title of the movie) to “1” on the last. Dividing the narrative into chapters, these cards further contrive something like a countdown. The countdown, in concert with the titles’ unique animation (clockwise, a thin white line © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_3

49

50 

H. L. LAW

swiftly sweeps the gridded black screen, “turning” it grey) and sound effect (rapid mechanical chatters), harks back to a universal film leader. This invocation of a defunct practice of celluloid film projection ironically counterpoints Ten’s digital production. But we shall see that this is not borne of a nostalgia for analog filmmaking.3 The irony of the film runs deeper with its artful deployment of the aesthetic affordances of the medium of video. More than charting the film’s progress, the numbered titles give a sense of purpose to this progress by introducing an arc to, and envisioning a destination for, the otherwise vaguely connected, seemingly autonomous narrative nodes. This is another way to say that the vignettes work together, and together they work towards something that will be confirmed or revealed at the close of the movie. Why are the meticulous structure (the countdown; the vignette format; the fixed narrative scenario) and the patterned, procedural editing strategy (the iteration of two mirrored framings) implemented in Ten? This chapter considers the ambiguity arising from the film’s programmatic formal scheme. It goes without saying that such an investigation—or any investigations of this nature, concerning individual narrative movies—should take into account what is inseparable (but sometimes simplistically, for the ease of analysis, distinguished) from the achievement of form: the interpretation of “content”, of matters of plot, character, and theme. To inquire into form, in this sense, is to illuminate the correspondences between feature, function, and narrative meaning; not how form moulds our access to the fictional world—from the outside, as it were—but how it constitutes the fiction, being a condition of that world. The following discussion will therefore consider Ten’s formal structure and strategy in light of its narrative and in relation to its fictional world. But a challenge readily ensues. If close analysis typically concerns itself with, and takes its point of departure from, particulars—it is adept at appreciating isolated elements and local devices—then how might it proceed as a capable way of examining global construction? Put differently, where should reading commence if the task is to come to terms with a film’s overarching scheme? How do we approach the general from the specific? How might criticism reconcile Ten’s detail with its design? There is a moment near the midpoint of Ten where its editing regime— the two symmetrical medium close-ups of the characters—gives way to the driver’s optical point-of-view shot. This moment is puzzling, worth pondering, partly because it is exceptional, as the only moment of derivation in the entire movie. This edit, I propose, can further serve as an apt

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

51

analytic entry point into the movie’s programmatic construction. If deviation gains significance in light of the possibility of adherence, it is also where the meaning of the programme is thrown into sharp relief. We can appreciate Ten’s formal regime better if we get a handle on its disruption. But this, as suggested above, is predicated on some preliminary ideas of the programme, of the possibilities both enabled and withheld by the film’s dual framings. Adherence and deviation need to be understood jointly and dialectically. Accounts of them are mutually inclusive; they inform and illuminate each other. A study of Ten’s formal scheme should simultaneously attend to these two sets of ambiguity, to the effects of constriction and the consequences of departure. And that involves a series of entangled, difficult enquiries. It is useful at this juncture to unpack some of them, mapping the guiding questions of this chapter. To begin with, there is a range of issues regarding Ten’s editing: why does it insist on the dual camera set-ups? What does that achieve, especially in comparison to some other pertinent creative options (e.g., a continuous two-shot)? How is the constraint related to the subject of the film? Why does the film depart from the editing routine after diligently observing it? Why depart from it at this particular moment in the narrative, and only at this moment? Second, the driver’s point-of-view shot calls for interpretation. What does it suggest about the character? How is it related to the action and event in that vignette? What purpose does it serve in the movie? Finally, the film’s purposeful design deserves scrutiny. Why the vignette format, and how are the vignettes related? What is it that the film, with its countdown, is preparing us for? These three threads of interwoven questions are at the heart of Ten’s perplexing style.

The Speculative Spectator A Cinema of Question Criticism of Kiarostami’s films frequently stresses their inquisitive nature and intellectual challenges. Godfrey Cheshire declares: “Kiarostami’s is a cinema of questions”, questions that “hang in the air like an endless series of echoes […,] pointedly forestall hard answers, final certainties, ‘fundamental’ truths”; “[l]ike the best of pedagogues, Kiarostami leaves us aflail [sic] in questions” (1996, 34; 43). In other words, the questions posed by Kiarostami’s films not only suspend our answers but put them to the test,

52 

H. L. LAW

swaying our confidence in answering, and removing the ground on which our knowledge is founded. All of which further contributes to the pedagogical aspiration of these movies: by leaving us in interpretive suspense, they galvanise us into further and more rigorous acts of questioning. For Jonathan Rosenbaum, “a shot [in Kiarostami’s movies] is often closer to being a question than an answer” (2003, 11). While this analogy seemingly indicates the interpretive openness of Kiarostami’s images, one can equally take it as a remark on Kiarostami’s unusual way of putting images together, his departure from prevalent editing practices. According to such practices—exemplified by classical Hollywood cinema—a shot “answers” what precedes it: clarifying the narrative event, sustaining the dramatic interest, as well as preserving verisimilitude and stylistic consistency. By doing so, it also “answers” the viewers by managing and successfully meeting their expectations. To a certain extent, the editing in Ten is in line with the classical paradigm; each shot functions like an “answer” to one another and to the audience. Deceptively straightforward, these images in fact give rise to a whole host of narrative and aesthetic enquiries. Specifically, the film invites us to rethink the possibility and the implications of conventional editing practices. If Kiarostami’s cinema fosters a mode of inquisitive spectatorship, the viewer’s inquisitivity, as Laura Mulvey suggests, can be understood in terms of the dynamics between curiosity and uncertainty: “curiosity grows necessarily out of uncertainty and is, indeed, its counterpoint: here the spectator’s desire to know and understand is heightened by a conscious sense of uncertainty about even the truth or reality of what seems to be happening” (1998, 25). Curiosity and uncertainty typically go hand in hand. Moreover, as Mulvey points out, what is in doubt in Kiarostami’s cinema (she is specifically referring to the Koker Trilogy) concerns not only the meaning but also the nature of what we witness. His films encourage us to question the fictional reality, to ponder whether it is fiction or reality that we are really witnessing. As we shall see, in Ten, this epistemic uncertainty is interwoven with our interpretative curiosity; and this forms the very fabric of the film’s achievement. Not only it is the fourth vignette where the exceptional moment of disruption takes place, it is also where a salient effect of Ten’s programmatic editing is foregrounded. Specifically, the scene encourages a mode of inquisitive viewing by drawing attention to its fictional reality, confounding its fiction with elements of documentary.

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

53

The episode depicts an exchange between the driver and a young woman. As the scene progresses, it becomes clear—from the allusions to sex and sin, adultery and abortion, monetary exchange and marital duty— that the passenger is a sex worker, who got in the car only because she mistook the driver for a client. It adds to the uncertainty of the situation that the scene starts in media res, with the young woman already in the vehicle, so there is no way to check what actually happened against what the characters say happened. Our protagonist insists on giving the stranger a lift despite her repeated request to leave the car. This hints at the possibility of a deliberate pick-up, but a pick-up not out of sexual but some other interest. Or perhaps it is an accident that the driver is happy to go along with, to make something out of. Her unspecified motive doesn’t demand explication—it hardly dampens the scene’s intelligibility—instead, it quietly colours and enriches our reading of the scene. There is the impression that the driver simply wishes to talk to the prostitute. But her talk doesn’t find the form of a moralistic lecture or maternal guidance. Neither condescending nor condemning, the driver is a sympathetic peer who listens and responds respectfully. In particular, she is curious about the intimate details of the young woman’s life. The pair do not talk in that watchful courtesy or coyness common between casual acquaintances. Nor is their exchange fraught with awkwardness due to the sensitive nature of their topics. The fact that they are strangers—and will probably remain so—means that there is little consequence for them to speak their mind. The encounter affords the driver a chance to voice what she cannot with her friends and family. The first three vignettes in Ten have already given us a preview of the daily conundrum that distresses the driver, who is a divorcee juggling the responsibility of child-rearing and a career in photography. Her son Amin (Amin Maher) hates her for divorcing his father and for remarrying; he is also unhappy about her busy work schedule and poor culinary skills. This prompts the driver to doubt her aptitude for being a mother, feeling guilty about her life choices. Her guilt seems to be reinforced by the recognition that, in the heart of hearts, she isn’t sorry for pursuing what she is supposed to regret, for not making the sacrifices that are expected of her to make. Her conversation with the sex worker revolves around this tension between freedom and obligation: the conflict between personal interest and social commitment, that precariously fuzzy line between being self-­ reliant and being  self-seeking. Interestingly, throughout the prolonged eight-minute exchange, the driver is presented in an uninterrupted take

54 

H. L. LAW

while the passenger remains off-screen, relegated to a voice without a countenance.4 Why does the camera show the driver exclusively? Or, why does the film refrain from showing the prostitute? What is the reason behind the strategic long take, a choice which temporarily suspends the film’s editing routine? A Pursuit of Aesthetic Reason In 10 on Ten (2004), Kiarostami’s documentary on the making of Ten which is also a lesson on filmmaking, he sheds light on several key creative choices in the fourth vignette. In line with the film’s deployment of non-­ professional performers—of people “acting as themselves”, modelling their role on their life—Kiarostami intended to cast a sex professional for the part of the prostitute. Unable to persuade any to appear onscreen because of the social stigma burdening the trade, he then decided to only present character aurally. But he was quickly disappointed by how real-life sex workers could “speak like chaste women” and ended up employing a non-professional performer, Roya Arabshahi, to play—that is, against the film’s principle of “non-acting”, to pretend to be—the prostitute. Laying bare his creative process, Kiarostami’s report has nevertheless left a vital detail unjustified: why does Ten still refrain from showing the character even though she is not portrayed by a professional sex worker? One might be cued by the filmmaker and see the choice as a means of resolving certain production problems.5 Such a critic might point out that since Arabshahi appears in the seventh vignette as the heartbroken lover (a fact, however, not learned from the credits, which, unconventionally, confirm no such information), the concealment of her appearance in the fourth is a practical solution to the double casting. But is this logical, plausible explanation for a satisfying account of the puzzling choice of withholding? What is a satisfying way to account for ambiguity? In the Introduction, I proposed that ambiguity is what galvanises us into asking “why is it as it is”. And this “why” looks for answers about what the feature in question is and what it does instead of where it is from and how it comes about; instead of an explanation of origin or an assignment of abstract motivation, we are asked to clarify the nature of ambiguity, inquiring into its meaning, effect, and achievement. I called this a pursuit of “aesthetic reason”. Now, in order to better understand the kind of critical response ambiguity calls for, we need to have a closer look at this category. The term is derived from the work of the philosopher Frank Sibley (2001), who identifies two types of remarks about works of art. On the

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

55

one hand, there are “aesthetic concepts” whose application “requires the exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination or appreciation” (1): this is when we call a painting balanced, dull, or estranging. By contrast, we are making non-aesthetic observations when we say the same painting is symmetrical, in black and white, and free of human figures. If the former type is an expression of judgment, the latter recalls a statement of fact. What I call an aesthetic reason, like an aesthetic concept, requires “the exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination or appreciation”. But a reason can take many forms other than a concept. An aesthetic reason is typically more elaborate, and as a whole less explicitly evaluative, than a remark such as “estranging”. We can say that an aesthetic reason encompasses a series of remarks in the way the expression of an aesthetic concept, as Sibley points out, calls on the support of non-­ aesthetic observations: “the painting has a dull sense of balance because of its symmetrical use of black and white”. But an aesthetic reason, in contrast to a non-aesthetic one, necessarily involves more than statements of fact and includes analysis, interpretation, or  critique—all  some  form of judgement. Explaining Ten’s concealment of the prostitute in terms of a practical solution to the double casting would be a resort to non-aesthetic reason. This kind of response is unsatisfying not because such reasons are inherently unfruitful but because this observation, deployed this way, doesn’t engage with the specifics of the scene and explore their implications. It is worth noting that what appears to be a non-aesthetic remark can in fact function as an aesthetic one, depending on the context, determined by how it is applied: “symmetrical”, for example, can serve as a word of praise when referred to a painting with delicately complex patterns, for it recognises the skill of the painter. Analogously, the distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic reasons is sometimes a matter of use, of whether a remark has been developed appropriately and sufficiently in the context of an argument. A non-aesthetic reason can transform into an aesthetic one if we redirect it towards, and pursue it further along, a suitable analytical course. In the case of the withholding in Ten, if a critic wishes to claim that it is a solution to the double casting, he or she would have to think hard about and subsequently flesh out the choice’s importance, perhaps in precluding audience confusion (“why are two characters played by a single performer?”) or preventing us from conflating the two characters. An adequate account of ambiguity involves some form of aesthetic reasoning.

56 

H. L. LAW

Room for Conjecture But rather than a measure to ward off unwanted effects, I think a good aesthetic reason for the withholding lies in the possibilities it opens up. If the device would have kept anonymous the identity of a real-life sex worker, here, in the final film, it has created the impression of accomplishing precisely that. Put differently, it makes possible the belief, upon viewing the movie, that the prostitute character is indeed a real-life professional, either cast to play a version of herself (i.e., a fiction) or picked up on location to participate in a candid interview with the driver-performer (i.e., documentary). And this belief could become the basis on which we make sense of the concealment; one plausible option is to situate the choice within the cultural, historical context of the film’s making. Such an understanding would be something like this: made in and “about” Iran, Ten was probably, to some degree, subjected to state censorship, which policed or forbade the treatment of sensitive contents and social taboos. Kiarostami’s tactful choice to present the prostitute indirectly—offscreen, as a voice— has balanced the need for dramatic portrayal and the requirement to uphold official norms of decency. Probing into the origin of the withholding, isn’t the above understanding short of a satisfying account of its perplexity? What I wish to highlight here, however, is not the particulars of the hypothetical reading but the fact that the scene encourages us to venture a reading of this kind, a kind which is, more accurately, a speculation about the movie’s production process, its conditions of making. It is an achievement of Ten—its fourth vignette in particular—to systematically invite such speculations, exploiting them to meaningful ends. But first a word on the idea of speculation. We speculate when we cannot ascertain; this is customarily what we resort to when we don’t know something well enough. The practice has a bad ring to it, connoting a whim rather than insights, by succumbing to intuition instead of searching for valid evidence. To speculate, on this view, is to make things up on dangerous grounds and, consequently, threatens to collapse into either superficial or nonsensical reading, fallen into the rabbit hole of “reading into”. The practice is therefore dismissed as uncritical or corrupted; it is a flawed way of conducting criticism if it counts as criticism at all. (Interestingly, according to the OED, the term used to mean “the contemplation, consideration, or profound study of some subject”; it once had a much better reputation.) This dismissal is perhaps why the strong link between

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

57

ambiguity and speculation remains unacknowledged. If ambiguity nourishes uncertainty and stimulates reading, then it equally spawns speculations. Speculation, that is to say, is an offshoot of ambiguity, but an offshoot that common wisdom deems parasitic and cautions us to banish. The worry lies in speculation’s resemblance to ambiguity’s unruly child: interpretative anarchy. But the fact that certain speculations are destructive and barren doesn’t necessarily mean that the practice is altogether inadmissible. When is speculation a fruit of ambiguity? And how do we cultivate such a speculation—to make it fruitful? In Ten, the conjecture about the sex worker is not only a function of the scene, it also grows out of an underlying doubt across the movie, grounded in its sphere of possibilities. Specifically, it is made possible by the doubt surrounding the ontological status of the images, that is, of whether what we see in the film is “unrehearsed actuality” (Perez 1998, 271) or its facsimile. Not all vignettes animate this doubt equally starkly, but they all activate, to varying degrees, the expectation of “unrehearsed actuality” due to Kiarostami’s systematic use of the signifiers of observational documentary: the low resolution of the image, the synchronised sound, the car-camera-style fixed framings, the “real” people on the street and their “accidental” looks into the camera (as markers of “unrehearsed actuality”, these looks also, paradoxically, acknowledge the film’s artifice). The reportage aesthetics also extends to editing, which presents the character encounters in “real time”, preserving even dull and undramatic moments (the second vignette is exemplary). There are no pronounced shot transitions such as fade-outs and dissolves within the episodes; no obtrusive ellipses during the exchanges.6 All of which invites us to see the film as a documentary. In his insightful study of documentary, Dai Vaughan doesn’t define it as a mode of production or as a set of conventions but recognises its unique reception: “the documentary response is one in which the image is perceived as signifying what it appears to record; a documentary film is one which seeks, by whatever means, to elicit this response” (1998, 58–9). On this view, we find documentary in what has convincingly blurred the line between signifier and referent, between representation and reality. Ten may work as something like a documentary not because we know it records real events and people but because we intuit and register it as such. Documentary can be a matter of belief. I said “something like a documentary” because, for reasons which should have become evident, Ten is also unlike a documentary. The film’s

58 

H. L. LAW

affinity to “unrehearsed actuality” is offset by elements that suggest otherwise, specifically in tension with its strategic deployment of artifice: the carefully devised plot, the purposeful countdown, the programmatic editing. This interplay between observation and intervention is in fact at the heart of the movie’s unique stylistic rhetoric, which interweaves documentary aesthetics and dramatic conventions.7 The result is a synthesis of design and contingency, a reconciliation between an impression of the “real” and a sense of staged fiction. At different junctures of the film, one of the aspects gains prominence and overshadows the other. So sometimes we see Ten as more of a documentary and sometimes as more of a fiction, although it is always simultaneously both. The movie’s ontological status is indistinct, indeterminable: a fusion which begets confusion. This ontological indeterminacy is the reason why our speculation about the prostitute character remains a speculation. Comparing Ten with reality television, Mathew Abbott notes how they both “forwar[d] content that can neither be believed nor imaginatively supposed; both leave the viewer in a highly ambiguous epistemic position” (2016, 71). While it seems justified to say we can’t make suppositions about the nature of Ten’s images, we indeed do so regarding their implications. Even though we cannot confidently decide the truth about the sex worker, we are nevertheless invited to entertain the prospect of her truthfulness, making speculations about it. It is precisely because we feel uncertain about the truth that we speculate, and can only speculate.8 Our “highly ambiguous epistemic position” in relation to Ten—a suspension of knowledge that compels a desire for knowing—recalls the dynamics of uncertainty and curiosity that Laura Mulvey identifies in Kiarostami’s cinema. If our speculation about Ten similarly operates as a “criss-cross questioning between screen and spectator” (1998, 25),9 it is because speculation is not automatically an act of whimsy but can serve as a part of our negotiation with a movie. Speculative spectatorship is a worthy subject of investigation. Returning to the fourth vignette, what does the withholding achieve? Why does Kiarostami encourage us to speculate about the prostitute? Mobilising our “documentary response”, the withholding, as mentioned, directs our attention to the profilmic, asking us to situate the movie in the society in which it was made. By doing so, Ten strengthens the link between its fictional world and the real world. Elevating the particular to the general, this encourages us to think of the narrative allegorically, as a story about an Iranian woman which is also a commentary on the Iranian society. All this further imparts the movie’s interest in gender inequality

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

59

with a sense of urgency, enlarging its political relevance and gravitas. Our appreciation of Ten, that is to say, would be enhanced if we take into account the conjecture. Note that while speculation appears to be the inverse of responsible reading, the conjecture about the sex worker is not simply compatible with but in fact complementary to our appreciation of the film. What this suggests is that the speculation, working in conjunction with our reading, is part of the aesthetic reason for the withholding. So, perhaps what is irresponsible is not speculation as a practice but when it is put forward as critical truth without involving some form of convincing aesthetic reasoning. We can think of irresponsible speculations as cases of what James Grant calls “[i]maginative failure[s] in criticism” (2013, 86). They are failures not for being imaginative but for being imaginative to unsuccessful ends. For Grant, what is imaginative in relation to criticism is not what concerns the act of imagining but what is opposed to unimaginative (i.e., there exists instances of unimaginative imagining). It means the ability to come up with “unobvious”—that is, imaginative—ways of thinking and talking about works of art that allows for better appreciation and more effective communication. A test case for such imaginativeness is the use of critical metaphor (a topic to which Grant devotes half of his book). Imaginativeness is a vital characteristic of a good critic alongside “judiciousness”, “sensitivity”, and “perceptiveness” (53–86). (This is a list of useful criteria for an aesthetic reason too.) If one hurdle of taking speculation seriously is its association with imagining (as opposed to interpreting, analysing, reasoning), imaginativeness offers an alternative framework to rethink speculations. We can accordingly speak of their fruitfulness in terms of imaginative failure and success. Speculations are traditionally unwelcome in academic Film Studies, and for good reasons. But there exists a handful of scholars whose works exemplify the possibilities of critical imaginativeness without giving in to imagining. It would be appropriate to refer to these works as speculative instead of speculations. A fine example is Robert B. Ray’s The ABC’s of Classic Hollywood (2008).10 Focusing on four Hollywood movies, Ray collaborates with his students to produce twenty-six text entries on each, with each corresponding to a letter in the English alphabet, for example: “Art Deco”, “Blue Danube”, and “Coffin” are the first three entries on Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932). These random parameters have invited the authors to explore unusual angles of study by inspecting the

60 

H. L. LAW

films from multiple perspectives. The texts are speculative in the sense of pursuing an experimental way of inquiry rather than as a symptom of a precarious manner of answering. But in order not to stray into precariousness, the inquiries follow a set of critical guidelines, fulfilling at least two of the following: (a) “generate knowledge about the movie at hand”, (b) “speculate about classic Hollywood”, and (c) “reflect on the cinema in general” (xxiii). A quick example is called for. In the “Questions” entry (62–4), Ray speaks of an enquiry that intrigues him: “In the scene with the Baron’s coffin [in Grand Hotel], what are the men counting?” Inspired by the Surrealist game, he names such questions “irrational enlargement questions”. They are “irrational” because they are, strictly speaking, “inconsequential to the story”; our moments of wonder about the fictional world which we wish to entertain but know best to suppress. The “Coffin” entry (12–5) doesn’t address this question directly but in a way answers it by reading the scene as where Hollywood’s realism struggles; as an exceptional instance that reveals how the classical style becomes invisible and why it may otherwise seem utterly mysterious. The lesson, I think, is simple but worth stressing, abstract yet also practical: what seems irrational can be harnessed to instructive inquiry, providing we employ imaginativeness critically. Or, to use Grant’s terms, “imaginativeness” works best in concert with, when kept in check by, “judiciousness”, “sensitivity”, and “perceptiveness”. This is how speculative inquiry could again become “the contemplation, consideration, or profound study of some subject”. Conjecture, so conceived, may be called a critical conjecture; a suggestive line of questioning that enriches instead of overextending a film’s horizon of suggestion. I have discussed the subject of speculation at some length not in order to prescribe it as an analytic method or defend its every possible instance. Nor is speculating an activity that most films animate. Kiarotami’s movies—especially Close-Up (1990) and the Koker Trilogy—belongs to a special kind of cinema where speculations about its making not only enables insights into its creative choices but also enriches its meaning and enhances our appreciation. Speculation warrants scrutiny because, as a reasonable answer to what is ambiguous, it can teach us something about both the nature of ambiguity and its criticism. Specifically, I have demonstrated how the speculative can offer a beneficial way to conceive the critical activity of questioning, to articulate the “why” questions of ambiguity. The

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

61

topic of how to formulate our “why” questions will be picked up again at the end of this chapter.

All That Restriction Allows Let’s return to the fourth vignette. As her conversation with the driver has come to a close, the sex worker gets out of the vehicle. But the scene doesn’t terminate here, as in the last three episodes, with the passenger disembarked, and matched to the sound of the door closing. Instead, the camera continues to show the driver, even though her expression is indiscernible due to the darkness of the moment (Fig.  3.1). After a beat, Kiarostami cuts to a view of the street, in which a woman, presumably the prostitute, is quickly picked up by another car (Fig. 3.2).11 The edit here prompts us to read this view as what our protagonist is seeing from behind the windshield. And the vignette ends with this point-of-view shot.

Fig. 3.1  Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

62 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 3.2  Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

At the beginning of the chapter, I noted that this point-of-view shot is the only deviation from Ten’s editing scheme; and by understanding the pertinence of this deviation, we are able to better comprehend the relevance of that scheme. Like the vase images in Late Spring, the ambiguity of this shot concerns both narrative meaning and aesthetic reason. Why does it take place here? Why only here? Our puzzlement is further deepened by the difficulty in reconciling the two aspects: the nondescript content of the shot seems to fail to honour the singularity of the cut. There appears to be a mismatch between the shot’s prominence and its significance. And this raises the suspicion of a miscalculated creative choice. How do we account for this seeming compromise of both stylistic consistency (i.e., the editing regime) and aesthetic coherence (i.e., the achievement of the film)? To answer this question, we need to first have some sense of this consistency and this coherence, of the things that the deviation disrupts or risks jeopardising. Let’s look at Ten’s aesthetic scheme closely.

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

63

Limitations and Possibilities A sequence of alternating views of two characters, the editing routine in Ten calls to mind the convention of the shot/reverse-shot. But it is unlike conventional shot/reverse-shots: if the convention typically conjures up a powerful intelligence teleporting strategically in the fictional world— approximating to the perspectives of the characters12—the dual framings in Ten suggest a stationary entity, tethered to the dashboard, mechanically directing its gaze to one character and then another. While the ubiquity of the former disguises the camera’s materiality to posit an “ideal” observer (the impression of “we are here, looking at the characters”), the latter’s restrictiveness of viewpoint invokes the conditions of the filmmaking cameras, acknowledging their “presence” in the “fictional world” (the intuition of “they were there, recording the actions”). This is why the film can affect us like candid footage. Conflating fiction and reality, the paradoxical presence of the camera triggers something like a “documentary response”; to appropriate Vaughan’s formulation, Ten’s camera is perceived as signifying how it appears to record. All of which points to the way the film exploits our expectations and engages our knowledge of the familiar. And this is how its parameters—its unique formal scheme—operate. That being said, I do not intend to examine Ten under the rubric of “parametric narration”. In Chap. 2, I have discussed how the concept’s insistence on the unreadability of form, together with its search for blanket motivations, makes it an unhelpful candidate for the understanding of ambiguity; it fails to produce satisfying answers to the questions of “why is it as it is”. In place of an abstract explanation, what we need is an alternative framework to comprehend Ten’s parameters, a framework that helps navigate their familiarity and distinctiveness; a way to address their management of our knowledge and expectation. One such concept is the concept of cinematic dispositif.13 In his chapter on the genesis and the evolution of the term, Adrian Martin speaks of it as a “systematic set-up or arrangement of elements” which a filmmaker devises to implement in her movie (2014, 181). But more than a model of practical filmmaking, dispositif is also useful as a vocabulary of film analysis. The concept’s capacious definition allows for inclusiveness, encompassing a variety of things from a stylistic precept to a structural principle to a recurring narrative scenario. But for something to be recognised as a dispositif, its elements have to be consistent enough to contribute to an

64 

H. L. LAW

arrangement, and cohesive enough to constitute a system. Any critical effort to understand aesthetic schemes would, sooner or later, have to deal with this dynamics between device and design, the perennial question of part and whole. A major benefit of thinking in terms of dispositif is that it is a malleable system, a still-evolving arrangement; it presents an organic part-whole relationship. Martin describes dispositif as “more like an aesthetic guide-­ track that is as open to variation, surprise or artful contradiction as the filmmaker (who sets it in motion) decrees” (192). This susceptibility to change is a vital feature that “parametric narration” fails to acknowledge. Where “parametric narration” sees a finished work bounded by parameters (a whole made of parts), dispositif pictures a work-in-progress. It restores the progress in the work by appreciating the interactions among its parameters and among these parameters and its other elements (the parts are the whole). In this way, the concept enables a more robust understanding of the creative process behind aesthetic schemes: a continuous, mutually reshaping dialogue between part and whole; that constant push-­ and-­pull between adherence, adjustment, and alteration. Dispositif is not another name for artistic parameter. In fact, it is a special artistic strategy that works creatively with parameters. It is hardly surprising that Martin’s chapter makes extensive references to Kiarotami’s late works.14 These films, typically shot on video, often work with a dispositif. For example, Shirin (2008) is composed exclusively of facial close-ups, wherein dozens of women are watching and reacting to an offscreen movie about the titular mythic figure Shirin. While the dispositif denies our direct access to the film-within-the-film that so captivates these female spectators, Shirin arrests our attention and invites us to envision that film, by means of its affecting soundtrack and vivid performance. The result is all the more rewarding as it dwells on where fact meets imagination, probing the interval between what we see and what we hear. It is in the space in-between that a “third film”15—neither straightforwardly the movie Shirin nor the film-within-the-film about Shirin—resides. We are enchanted by that film in and of the mind. This highlights the capacity of dispositif to facilitate inspired artistic choices. When a filmmaker settles on a set of creative options, she is at the same time limiting herself to those options. Her challenge is to make good use of these available resources at her disposal, perhaps by organising familiar elements and conventions into a new, exciting configuration (like Shirin) or by pursuing ways of articulating what has been curbed by the

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

65

constraints. In more than one way, dispositif challenges a filmmaker to renew her habitual modes of thinking and working, offering her an opportunity to exercise her skills and imaginativeness. (An “imaginative failure”, to translate Grant’s term here, would be a failing of attitude and its product: an unthinking application of dispositif and the empty gimmick that it produces.) It is this interest in both limitation and the possibility which it allows that makes dispositif a productive framework to appreciate the stake of adherence and the upshot of deviation in Ten. And we shall see that the tension between conformity and transgression is not only a formal but also a thematic inquiry in the movie. In its openness to possibility, Dispositif recalls the familiar concept of artistic convention. As Andrew Britton observes, conventions are “useful not because of their invariance, but because they conduce to the most complex particularized modifications and inflections of attitude” (2009, 233). If conventions are established ways of doing something across movies, dispositifs are unique ways of doing something that are established in individual films. What convention is to cinema is akin to what dispositif is to a movie. (Note that while it makes sense to speak of dispositifs as a film’s internal conventions, calling conventions universal dispositifs seems counterintuitive.) But the editing routine in Ten complicates this neat divide. It is a dispositif and a (very unusual) variation of the shot/reverse-shot convention. In dialogue with both concepts, the routine’s negotiation with artistic possibility is accordingly twofold: on the one hand, it is pitted against our expectations of the shot/reverse-shot; on the other, it confronts its own logic of formal narrowness. The effects of the routine draw upon both sources; its success entails a meaningful engagement with these two fronts—these two kinds of creative constraint. It is because of this consistent exploration of selected limits and their possibilities that we expect a dispositif to be modified or altered only for a good aesthetic reason. Like an artistic convention, a dispositif works like a contract with the audience, and this contract may, in addition, come with strict terms.16 The breaching of it runs the risk of trivialising the terms or even forfeiting the deal. In other words, this throws into question the merits of the proposed artistic remit, so perhaps jeopardising the film’s success. If dispositif filmmaking, as Martin suggests, encourages or even stipulates changes (i.e., change as a creative principle instead of a possibility17), we want to understand whether and  how a particular change of conditions enriches the work. This is the type of concern raised by the point-­of-­view shot

66 

H. L. LAW

in the fourth vignette: is the imaginative change of terms judicious? What is its aesthetic justification? How does it fit our contract with the film? An Aesthetics of Withholding Ten’s main strategy for engaging the viewer is straightforward: it controls what we see. But such controls are never simple; they seem so only because their implications tend to be subtle. Kiarostami excels at exploring these subtleties, often skillfully. The films discussed earlier can be couched in these terms: in the case of Shirin, what we see is used systematically to call attention to what is withheld; the fourth vignette in Ten works similarly, except our attention needs no call here but appears to readily side with the offscreen. In both scenarios, what holds the camera’s gaze insufficiently sustains our interest. The images instead foreground what is out of sight, what is withheld from us. What they have developed is an aesthetics of withholding. To speak of withholding as an aesthetic risks sounding pedestrian or trivial. After all, isn’t withholding an inescapable fact of the cinematic frame?18 Then it is only inevitable that movies control what we see. However, not all films exploit the artistic possibilities of withholding, and do so consistently and rewardingly like Ten does. A main source of this achievement is the film’s dispositif, which not only gives new meanings to the act of withholding but also charges what is withheld with renewed significance. The editing scheme reduces the film’s fictional world into two sets of representations and, as the narrative unfolds, trains us to see it as such. This results in a special mode of viewing, a form of binary thinking: we come to expect the movie to be a series of either/or views. So, even though we are privy to only half of the world at a time, we are cognisant of its current missing part, having some sense of its shape, though not its specifics. If the offscreen tends to connote uncertainty, it is somewhat predictable, knowable in Ten.19 Note that what is offscreen is not necessarily a consequence of withholding. Withholding suggests a refusal of access; it deprives us of something desirable or worth obtaining. But not everything offscreen is kept from us intentionally or for aesthetic reasons; nor is it where things of interest and importance always stow away. Withholding doesn’t happen whenever there is a cut; it is not guaranteed by the frame. We should accordingly speak of an aesthetics of withholding only if a movie

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

67

strategically edits to manipulate access, deploying the onscreen-offscreen relationship to meaningful ends. What is remarkable about Ten is that it makes this manipulation and this deployment something like a fact of its editing. Every image in the film feels more or less like a result of withholding due to our pointed awareness of the offscreen. We are therefore constantly a step away from experiencing our limited access as an epistemic lack. When such an experience happens—the fourth vignette is one of those—it dispatches us into an analytic pursuit. The feeling of lack feeds into the desire for access; we wish to understand “why is this withheld from us”. Only a handful of instances in Ten are as persistently puzzling as the scene with the sex worker.20 We don’t register every image in the movie as a lack. But our alertness to the alternative view nonetheless encourages a pause every time Kiarostami cuts—why now?21 This decision about when is an immanent question of editing but it has become keener under the restrictive routine, whose reduced means of articulation further allows such a choice to assume greater prominence.22 We are more attuned to the precise timing of the cut and prepared to read it closely. We seek to interpret its suggestion and assess its eloquence. Not every cut withholds. But the one that does refuse our access for an aesthetic reason. To see the point of withholding is then to see what its refusal achieves (i.e., its suggestion and eloquence). In other words, how it stages the negotiation between limits and possibilities. This suggests what appears to be the opposite of withholding is in fact closer to its preserve; withholding harbours the possibility of revelation. While withholding derives its power from the desire for access, access feels all the more like an achievement if it is previously suspended. Revelation may be the reward, but that doesn’t mean the withholding of it isn’t rewarding; a reveal may be dramatically rewarding because it is overdue. Perhaps no other cinematic feature enacts the intimate link between the twin concepts better than editing. An edit simultaneously shows and conceals, and is therefore capable of being a means of withholding and the delivery of revelation. But just like withholding is more than the fact of omission, revelation is not a corollary of display. To understand how they work requires our interpretation.

68 

H. L. LAW

Showing and Revealing That brings us back to the fourth vignette, where the interplay between withholding and revelation is integral to its style and meaning. During the extended shot, while the offscreen sex worker defies our direct scrutiny, the driver is equally elusive despite being the onscreen focus. Driving at night, under the city’s street lights, our protagonist’s face is tantalisingly veiled by shape-shifting shadows. Not only is her expression partially obscured, but, even for those fleeting moments of visibility, it seems opaque (Fig. 3.3). The image only gets dimmer as the scene advances, as if to match the sobering conversation about duty, desire, and disappointment. Making the driver’s countenance even less discernible, the change in lighting nevertheless invites us to pay extra attention to what and how she speaks. We may detect the swelling unease in her tone and a sense of incomprehension through her pauses. But our incomplete, intermittent access to the character leaves us without firm grounds to interpret her

Fig. 3.3  Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

69

thoughts and feelings. The camera’s attention to her claims no special insight. What it shows reveals very little. On the other hand, the singularity of the point-of-view shot creates the expectation of a revelation. But what it shows, like the extended take before it, doesn’t seem to be revealing: we see the sex worker being swiftly picked up by another driver. In his monograph on Ten, Geoff Andrew takes note of this shot and cites what Kiarostami told him in an interview: “[I] wanted to show how [sic] men there are just waiting in the streets. Two cars come along in a matter of seconds—the first for real!—which looks really predatory” (2005, 65). The critic offers this as an example of the filmmaker’s unique production method (which incorporates deceit) without exploring the shot further. It is as though Kiarostami has the last word; this is all there is to say about the moment. But is the brief remark really a satisfying account? Has the image been exhausted by those words? To be clear, I am not dismissing Kiarostami’s account. Nor am I taking issue with Andrew’s silence on both the image and the comment; his concern lies elsewhere. However, his neglect seems to me symptomatic of the shot’s analytical challenge. It is challenging not for being unusual, complex, or nuanced but for the opposite reasons: it appears strictly narrative-­ serving, formally conventional, stylistically indistinctive, and therefore critically uninteresting. In a word, it is obvious. And it is difficult to pursue the obvious because, plainly, there is nothing to pursue. (Put this way, this shot is everything that the vase images in Late Spring aren’t.) Is there more to say about this obvious point-of-view shot of the driver? One may flesh out the social commentary Kiarostami professed, which suggests the prostitute not as a problem but a potential prey. And this is further validated by the documentary moment of the unstaged pickup. Ascertained by the filmmaker’s statement, the authenticity of the detail is however not a revelation by means of the film’s showing; nothing in the image allows us to see that. We might suspect that is the case due to our documentary response to the scene but that’s far from certain. The moment’s claim to truthfulness is not something evident. Without the support of the anecdote, what the shot shows remains pale because of its obviousness. But to home in on what the shot shows neglects the importance of what it does. What it does—as the one and only departure from the film’s dispositif—in fact defies all the connotations of obviousness associated with its showing. A satisfying account of the moment needs to reconcile this singularity of the cut with the obviousness of the image. What is required

70 

H. L. LAW

is a holistic understanding of form and meaning that assesses the detail’s significance in light of the film’s gradation of prominence. It entails that we have to widen our critical purview and situate the point-of-view shot within Ten’s narrative, stylistic, and thematic contexts.23 What a detail reveals may take into account much more than what it readily shows. A Narrative Divided Let’s consider the film’s wider contexts. Ten’s exacting formal design is matched by its careful storytelling structure. The ten vignettes follow two narrative threads. The four episodes that feature Amin—the only male presence in the film—trace the vicissitudes of the mother–son relationship. The rest are the driver’s encounters with a mix of female figures; some of them are recurring characters with a narrative arc, while others, like the prostitute, appear only once yet serve important symbolic purposes in the fiction. The two threads appear to enact a gender divide. Most of the women the driver meets appear to be fixed by their relationship or bound by their responsibility, that is, whether they have a man, whether they are married, and whether they have kids and a family. These issues are often raised in the conversations and at times the preoccupations of a character. The driver is not exempt from the struggle with gender expectations. This is put into sharp relief in her opening exchange with Amin, where she is sidelined, unacknowledged offscreen and deprived of a proper entrance for some sixteen minutes. It is as though she is reducible to her function as a mother before she is an individual. Disenfranchised or disillusioned, divorced or widowed, the female individuals in the film negotiate with their role and run up against confining social mores. Each represents a distinct facet of female experience in a society where gender inequality holds the reins. On the other side of the divide is Amin, whom some commentators see as the spokesman for traditional chauvinist attitude (see Andrew 2005, 44; Abbott 2016, 64). The fact that he is an enfant terrible, rude and entitled, is central to this reading. But this flattens the film’s complex treatment of gender politics. If Amin embodies that attitude, it is worth remembering he is also a son and a child. Apart from a stand-in for what the driver resists, he is a person she loves and cares for; his behaviours indeed leave much to be desired, but she nonetheless seeks his acceptance and compassion, and feels obliged to take good care of him. Our protagonist is conflicted.

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

71

And that encourages us to see the two narrative threads less in terms of binary oppositions than as complementary components in the scheme of the fiction. The episodes with the female figures often serve as opportunities for the driver to address the challenges in her personal life and to broach women’s difficulties in the society. Contextualising her problems, such conversations clarify the nature of her dilemmas. The episodes with Amin, on the other hand, ground the theme of social struggle in a personal scenario. They are where the interrogation of gender roles is played out on the level of an individual. The film shows that when such a struggle and such an interrogation are lived, they are experienced as contradictions. For our protagonist, happiness is therefore not a simple choice between conformity and independence, or between duty and desire. Its promise is fraught with compromises. The two narrative threads enhance the meaning of each other by fleshing out life’s complication together. At a Crossroad One thing that the driver’s point-of-view shot reveals is her sustained interest in the sex worker. This concern or curiosity is nevertheless not something visualised in the image but implied by it. The shot stands for her continuing presence at the scene, indicating her act of observing the prostitute. Delaying the end of the episode to underline this act, the film invites us to take interest in the driver’s interest. Though our attention is not directed to a three-quarters view of her, as the editing scheme would have prescribed, but keyed to her visual perspective. The prescribed framing would have encouraged us to interpret her thoughts and feelings from her demeanour and expression. Kiarostami’s choice instead prompts us to engage with what she sees. While the driver’s point-of-view shot feels like a reveal by virtue of the unexpected edit, does it actually work as a revelation? If so, what does it reveal about her concern and interiority? Worth noting is how Ten’s formal digression also revises our relationship with the driver. The point-of-view shot is the only instance in the film where we don’t look at but look with the character. Our object of observation has momentarily become the surrogate for our observation. And the identification between our view and her vision is further emphasised by the composition: the interior of the car is faintly visible at the bottom of the frame, as though we are looking out from the driver’s seat. What we see in this point-of-view image cannot be divorced from the character’s

72 

H. L. LAW

subjective way of seeing. To understand what the shot reveals, analogously, require us to explore the stakes of her spectatorial experience. This experience is an instance of a character’s act of seeing becomes a pivotal moment in a movie. And these instances typically take the form of point-of-view editing.24 Among the most memorable examples is the finale of Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) where the titular character (Barbara Stanwyck) watches her daughter Laurel’s wedding through a window. Stella is supposed to be happy about the marriage—she has somehow engineered it—but her design has also left her no place in Laurel’s future happiness. A chief question of the moment revolves around what she sees means to her. The sight of the wedding, Andrew Klevan suggests, “is not a surrogate mirror, reflecting back her [Stella’s] own desires, or more accurately, she no longer identifies herself in the scene, or wants to have a part in it. Laurel has fulfilled this desire on her behalf” (2013, 55). In other words, Stella’s relationship with what she sees is something between investment and detachment. The scene has crystallised her entangled preoccupations. The clarification of such relationships and such preoccupations—what a character sees means to her—I suggest is a possibility of such spectatorial moments. Similar to Stella Dallas, the point-of-view editing in Ten suitably stages the driver’s conflicted interiority. Here, the cut asserted by the convention—the divide between the onlooker and the view—simultaneously serves as a metaphor for difference and stands for the wish to bridge that difference.25 Seemingly contributing to the moment’s obviousness (“this is simply what the character sees”), the editing in fact facilitates complex suggestions. The protagonist’s absorption in what she sees, which motivates the cut to her perspective, points to a simultaneous concern and fascination with the prostitute’s carefree attitude. For the driver, the younger woman represents something like freedom, not exactly for her chosen path of life, but because of her audacity to stick to her own way, even though it means being marginalised and misunderstood. But this version of freedom, the character also recognises, is undesirable, or at least unsustainable in her own case. She cannot really live carefree without also taking care of her obligations. Freedom for her is not being free from responsibilities. The point-of-view shot is a fictional device, Gilberto Perez observes, because “our seeing through a character’s eyes is but a fiction” (2005, 22). The driver’s point-of-view shot is noteworthy not only because it suddenly switches the film’s quasi-documentary mode into a pointedly fictional moment but this moment further offers us insights into the

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

73

fiction. At this exceptional juncture sitting strategically at the midpoint of Ten, our protagonist comes to an acute realisation of her conundrum: she longs for freedom, she wants more of it, she wants it to be a right and not a synonym for transgression. However, in light of her duties, she feels guilty about wanting and getting, and about wanting and getting more. Ideally, she would have a career and a happy family life. But, realistically, to accomplish both is more than she can afford, more than the society permits. She can’t exercise her rights without being labelled as transgressive. She knows all that. And this knowledge has left her feeling disempowered. She has turned into a pensive spectator. Prior to this moment in the film, the driver has been constantly in motion. As a source of mobility, her car is also a symbol of her resourcefulness and independence. She knows where she is going and is capable of getting there by herself. But realising the impasse of her freedom, the character comes to a standstill—undecided and unable to act. The crossroads she is now looking at is equally metaphorical. This is a decisive moment for the driver: what is the way forward? Ripples of Change The question extends to us by means of the open point-of-view structure. Concluding the fourth vignette without returning to the driver, Kiarostami withholds her reaction to what she sees. This enhances the moment’s uncertainty of meaning and results in interpretive suspense. We look forward to discovering how the driver actually thinks and feels about the prior conversation. Most importantly, how will it affect her subsequent choices and actions? How will she cope with her conundrum? The driver never mentions this exchange to other characters. Nor does the sex worker return to the movie. But their exchange is like a stone being thrown into a pond. Hitting the protagonist hard, its emotional turmoil sinks in and runs deep. The impacts it causes, like ripples, slowly fan out to other corners of her life. The weight of the stone is to be gauged by these ripples. How the character is changed becomes clear if we look closely into the surrounding scenes. In the symbolically charged third vignette, the driver is lost on the road before meeting a pious old woman whom she gives a lift to the shrine. The passing of the woman’s family has prompted her to find solace in religion. Answering her religious calling, she gives up her worldly possessions and devotes her time to praying, not for her own gains but for the weak and

74 

H. L. LAW

the needed. This conviction of selfless charity is the complete opposite of the prostitute’s transgressive self-interest, but it equally estranges the driver. The protagonist’s polite refusal to visit the shrine with the old woman symbolises a scepticism towards her spiritual recourse, her resigned way of life. The fifth episode is something of a spiritual sequel to the third. We find out the driver has been visiting the shrine. Giving a fellow female visitor a ride, they open up to each other about what they seek. Neither of them practices worship purely out of faith. The woman prays for her love life while the driver is unsure about what she wants except having some peace of mind. Where one requests aid the other searches for relief. The driver’s renewed attitude to religious practices is reflected in her notable change of appearance; trendily dressed in the prior episodes, she is now without make-up, wearing a modest outfit. Placing the encounter with the prostitute between the episodes of disregarding and accepting religion, Ten encourages us to see it indeed as the stone that causes the ripples of change in the driver. But the film doesn’t reveal the precise reasons for that change. Neither does it press such an inquiry. The uncertainty of purpose that the character admits is a sign of her lostness. Maybe she doesn’t understand why she turns to religion either; she needs some time to figure out how to get on with her life; she is exploring a path previously introduced to her. What this sequence of vignettes depicts is three women, despite their distinctive problems and diverging aims, all find a similar solution, pursuing the spiritual path. Their lives run in parallels. Coming Together Such parallels are markers of narrative continuity and thematic coherence. I have earlier discussed how the film’s two narrative threads work together. But it is also remarkable how they operate differently from each other. If one of the threads finds continuity in the mother–son relationship, the other appears disjointed for its lack of an overarching narrative. These female episodes invite us to interpret their links, discern their design, and assess their coherence. Referring to the religious old lady and the prostitute, Gilberto Perez notes that the film’s inclusion of these “two women not from the driver’s class […] signifies their exclusion from her bourgeois story” (2003, 198). But as we have seen, although the two characters do not share the driver’s

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

75

bourgeois concerns, they nonetheless modify the terms of her struggle, dispatching her to a spiritual quest. This testifies to Ten’s narrative scheme as a journey where each episode not only clarifies its course but perhaps revises its destination. As the scattered encounters in the film are in fact intricately connected, implicating each other, the lives of the female characters are inextricably intertwined. This is manifested in the obvious and oblique cross-references throughout the plot. For instance, the young woman in the seventh episode is something like a foil to the prostitute. They appear in the film’s only two nocturnal scenes. Though both are lovelorn, the prostitute represents a dangerous path that the young woman might take. Another pairing is the prostitute and the pious old lady. They are similarly hidden from view in their episodes, which subsequently triggers our documentary response. They respectively stand for enlightenment and corruption, the spiritual and the profane. The female characters in Ten invite comparison. Sometimes they are analogous and sometimes they are contrasting. The movie weaves these individual stories into a tapestry of female experiences. However, the fragmentary plot also suggests that even though the women are all up against unjust gender expectations, each has to fight her own battle. And the film’s exclusive uses of singles further picture their fights in solitude, condemning them to isolation. Their commonalities do not automatically make them a community. Are they fighting lost battles, and for a lost cause? Is Ten lamenting the impossibility of social resistance and reform? In the penultimate scene, the driver meets up again with the woman from the fifth episode. It turns out her prayers are not answered: her lover has met someone else. Perhaps as an attempt to shed her cumbersome past, she has shaved her head. Opening up to the driver, she gets emotional and bursts into tears. Then, in perhaps the most beautiful moment in Ten, the protagonist touches the woman’s face, gently wiping her teardrops away. The move is extraordinary: the only time a character intentionally crosses over into another’s partition in the movie is also the sole physical expression of care and compassion throughout the narrative.26 This unexpected move shatters the young woman’s bubble of sadness— she laughs (Fig. 3.4). Conversely, this also means that the driver has transcended her own container of isolation for the first time, reaching out to the other in an act of acknowledgement. What this eloquent gesture envisions is a form of female solidarity that begins with understanding. And it

76 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 3.4  Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

is understanding that brings people together, making possible both communities and changes. An Ethic of Style Now we are in a better position to appreciate Ten’s ambiguous editing choices. The act of formal deviation, as we have seen, coincides with the driver’s moment of change. It is as though the cut inspires her to probe the possibilities of a spiritual lifestyle. What this exemplifies is an intimate correlation between editing and narrative, between style and theme. And this correlation, I suggest, further applies to the movie’s editing scheme as a whole. It means that the scheme is a systematic articulation of Ten’s central subjects of limited personal freedom, repressive gender roles, and social isolation. The movie achieves a synthesis between form and meaning.27

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

77

More specifically, the dispositif works like the oppressive forces that relegate the women to their “proper” social stations. While the fixed framings recall the strict gender expectations about female behaviours, the routined cutting suggests predetermination and evokes a sense of no escape—“this is the way things were and will be”. It is against this context of meaning that the formal deviation holds out a promise of change. The point-of-view image, as it were, introduces the driver to a new way of seeing, a way of thinking outside the box of the restrictive framings. This opens up unexplored paths of her life, whose charting may generate insights and allow things to work out differently. The formal constraints make possible this dramatic revelation. Note that the deviation is a singular occurrence. It is not a change of the system but a promise of such a change. Ten’s return to the editing scheme, however, shouldn’t be taken as a belief in the failure of social reform. The film may not depict the overturning of patriarchy, but it sees the promise of change in a steady revolution from the ground-up, which starts with the individual, drawing on the possibilities of resilience and human understanding. This modest proposal is not defeatist but realistic. It recognises the bearing of the personal on the political, and therefore avoids to readily reduce the women’s struggles into a grand narrative of, in Gilberto Perez’s words, “bourgeois feminism versus Muslim patriarchy, or of Western modernity versus Iranian tradition, [which] are seen to be inadequate to the claims and complexities of life” (2003, 201). Instead of seeing social injustice as a zero-sum game, Kiarostami is more interested in revealing its multifaceted nature and its conflicting effects on the individual. The women’s struggle is an existential as much as a social condition. Ten’s form further implicates us into its drama. The constrictive editing limits our perspective to the dual camera set-ups on the dashboard, as though we are confined to the inside of the car. This instills a sense of entrapment into the viewer that matches the driver’s experience of social captivity. In so doing, the dispositif guarantees not only the charged significance of the deviation but also its affective power. The film’s retreat from the scheme is equally our temporary release from its claustrophobic mise-en-scène. The moment’s powerful affect, its acute sense of relief, makes us more sensitive to its significance. Ten’s editing allows its meanings to be felt. This implication of the spectator is indicative of the ethics of Ten’s style. Ethics is a pervasive subject in movies, and film style necessarily possesses

78 

H. L. LAW

a moral dimension. What is distinctive about Ten is its success in practicing ethics through a suitable style, and in a way that takes into account our participation. Rather than moral creeds and dogmatic instructions, the film envisions ethics as rhetoric, that is, as a movie’s appeal to and engagement with the viewer. To better understand the ethical aspect of Ten, we can look at its rhetorical strategy. This brings us back to the pedagogical aspiration of the movie. If Ten teaches us anything about contemporary female struggles, it doesn’t develop and deliver that as a single moral. The vignettes fail to add up to a conclusive message, imparted to us at the end of the movie. Instead, the film’s lessons are open and dialogical. The emphasis on conversation allows various perspectives, voiced by the female characters, to be heard and considered, and perhaps to pit against each other. What emerges is not a cohesive picture of the social issues in question but a complex view of their terms and implications. This is far from an analysis of the problems but a call for our appreciation of the women’s difficulties and dilemmas. Like what we learn from the driver’s point-of-view shot, the kind of moral education Ten offers is something of a moral identification; it concerns our capacity to acknowledge the experiences of others.28 The film’s request of our acknowledgement sheds light on its countdown structure: concluding with something like a beginning, it reminds us that the end of the fiction shouldn’t be the end of its ethical lessons, which are useful to the extent we may find use of them outside Kiarostami’s “class” and continue to ponder and practice them in real life. In this way, Ten is a special kind of road movie which invites us to learns from its journey and take up its meaningful quest.29 Observations on Part and Whole If the assessment of a film’s aesthetic scheme, as I suggested, entails a reflection of its part-whole relationship, then we can shed light on the ambiguity of Ten’s editing strategy by mapping it in such terms. The following are a couple of tentative thoughts. 1. An intuitive way to map the part-whole relationship in Ten is to see the deviation as a part dislodged from the whole envisioned by the dispositif. Not partaking in this whole, the point-of-view shot appears to have no place in the film’s design, and that becomes a source of its ambiguity. But if the earlier analysis has revealed oth-

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

79

erwise, what is suggested is that the envisioned whole is non-identical to the film’s aesthetic scheme. The design of the editing regime has in fact taken into account the deviation; the actual whole of the movie contains the ambiguity. In other words, the coming into terms with that ambiguous part is also a renewal of the conception of the whole. Our experience is akin to seeing both the detail and the film in a new light, as if they have changed their meanings. 2. The dispositif of Ten may envision a whole yet it is in fact a system of parts. If it prescribes the two units—the dual framings—that prevail in the film, the deviation is the piece that defies this prescription. That is, the point-of-view shot is a part inconsistent with other parts, and that partially accounts for its ambiguity. More specifically, this is an ambiguity at odds with the cohesiveness of these other parts. It is defined by its unconformity to consistency and cohesion. 3. There are multifarious ways for a part to relate to the whole, and this is key to the effect of the driver’s point-of-view shot. The shot is not at all confusing. The disruption of the dispositif and the sudden switch from quasi-documentary to the fictional register may cause a mild puzzlement but they do not hinder our understanding of the narrative action. The detail is perplexing only in some respects and not others; its different aspects relate to the whole differently. This further suggests the many shapes of ambiguity. Instead of seeing it as a zero-sum quality, it is by specifying its type and degree of intensity that we can appropriately gauge its place in the whole. 4. It should be evident that this chapter has been dealing with issues of coherence, revolving around concepts of part and whole, consistency and cohesion, adherence and deviation. But the aim is not to claim ambiguity and coherence as antitheses. Instead, my analysis has sought to establish how the point-of-view shot fits in Ten’s aesthetic scheme by answering or illuminating its other parts. This entails pitting it against the cohesion and consistency otherwise obtained in the movie. By doing so, we are able to rethink the coherence of the film.

80 

H. L. LAW

Unraveling At the beginning of the chapter, I noted the two-foldness of the Ten’s editing strategy: the scheme of the dispositif and the moment of deviation. Accordingly, a study of this strategy is a study of how these two aspects operate on their own and, most importantly, how they work together. Mutually implicated, the scheme and the moment require to be considered jointly. Our critical challenge is therefore to attend to the restriction and the deviation in light of each other, engaging with their entangled effects, exploring their complicated achievements. What this makes evident is that an instance of ambiguity may be a bundle of difficulties or a series of nested questions. This is why the ambiguous sometimes defies ready schematisation and resists straightforward reading. Moreover, our employment of the term, frequently in its singular, is liable to obscure its complexity; that it may involve an amalgam of connected affairs, which further comes with a host of attendant challenges. So, unless these affairs and challenges are identified and given their due critical attention—each on their own and then collectively—this kind of complex ambiguity would remain underappreciated, in want of a satisfying account. Sometimes what we label ambiguity is overloaded with referents that it requires careful unpacking to comprehend. This careful unpacking is what this chapter aims to achieve with Ten’s complex editing choices. In Seven Types of Ambiguity, William Empson observes that ambiguity’s coalescence of meanings, its simultaneity of suggestions, “when teased out [are] too complicated to be remembered together […] in one glance of the eye; they [have] to be followed each in turn, as possible alternative reactions” (1961, x). What is entangled or complicated deserves to be laid out. Analogously, I suggest that it is beneficial, as a critical practice, to unravel an ambiguity’s compact clusters of concerns into distinct threads of complementary questions. (And I have further noted the possibility of such questions to take the form of speculative inquiries.) By doing so, we gain a better grasp of what is at issue and what is at stake, and that paves the way for a satisfying account. Most importantly, the success of this practice depends on our attunement to the complex or unexpected ways a film’s questions may manifest. We have seen how the significance of the driver’s point-of-view shot is enhanced by taking into account both the scenes before and after. In other words, the questions it poses become more intelligible and interesting when situated

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

81

in context. At the end of the last chapter, I spoke of the difficulty of figuring out the pertinent questions of a movie as well as our imperative to search for them. Now we are able to see one reason why such a search is difficult: the identification of productive critical enquiries calls for an appropriate understanding of the whole. This whole may change as these questions in turn invite us to rethink the possibilities of the film, enabling a new conception of its coherence.

Notes 1. The story of the driver draws upon the biography of the performer. And the driver’s son—the first character introduced in the film—is also Mania’s son (see Andrew 2005, 36–7). This conflation between fiction and nonfiction is not something we can know but intuit from watching the film. This intuition, as we shall see, shapes our understanding of the narrative. 2. Kiarostami’s linguistic analogy is worth pondering. Instead of equating shots to words, which is a familiar claim of film semiotics, he likens a particular framing to a word, a device to a meaning. This analogy reflects the repetitive nature of Ten’s editing, but it gives the misleading impression that the repetitions achieve similar effects or suggestions. The simplicity of the analogy obscures the complexity of the movie. 3. The awareness of the medium and its various material bases is not alien to Kiarostami’s cinema. For example, in the famous ending of Taste of Cherry (1997), the line between life and what lies beyond, the link between fiction and documentary, is staged as a clash between celluloid image and video footage. There, video figuratively stands for the daylight of reality that dispels the illusion of fictional death, the dark ending of the suicide narrative. 4. Three other vignettes—namely the opening, the third, and the final—are filmed in this way, focusing on one party of the conversation; the camera only cuts away upon the termination of the exchange. 5. Obviously, there is a crucial difference between what a filmmaker says they did and what a viewer thinks they did: while a filmmaker reports the process—perhaps with omission, exaggeration, or simplification—a viewer can only speculate about it. I shall return to the idea of speculation later. 6. The few jump-cuts in the opening scene are cleverly disguised, subtly embedded into the flow of the action. 7. This is reflected in the film’s production process. Kiarostami reportedly collaborated closely with his non-professional cast and incorporated their life situations into the fabric of the film. His creative contribution varies

82 

H. L. LAW

between, for instance, giving the performers precise acting instructions, preparing them for the scenes with informal talks, and letting them improvise on the spot during the shoot (see Andrew 2005, 35–9). His artistic decision is subsequently to find a treatment that suits both the dramatic requirements of the scene and the expressive repertoire of the performers; this treatment may involve employing different strategies towards the two performers within the same episode—say, allowing one to go “off-script”, therefore in a way directing or provoking the reaction of the other—so as to introduce an element of surprise and spontaneity to their interaction. Ten is a mixture of planning and improvisation. 8. An apt term for this condition is Charles Warren’s “confidence issue”, a feature of documentary where “[o]ne cannot decisively know that the images are what they purport to be” (2007, 289). 9. Incidentally, this phrase is a good description of a certain kind of ambiguity. 10. See also Wadia Richards (2013). In film academia, videographic scholarship is an emerging field where imaginativeness really flourishes. I would also think of the works of Mark Rappaport—including his writings, video essays, and several of his movies—as speculative, and fruitfully so. 11. This is not Arabshahi whom we see here but an unnamed friend of Kiarostami’s, see Andrew (2005, 64–5). 12. The switch of viewpoint resembles a teleportation because, as David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith (2016) suggest, the reverse shot suddenly reveals “the opposite end of the axis of action” (2016, 233–4). 13. The term, French in origin, is unfamiliar to English-speaking criticism. It is frequently translated as “apparatus”: a phrase redolent of technological connotations, hence over-emphasising the concept’s material dimension. The translation therefore obscures the usefulness of dispositif to stylistic analysis. The concept has enjoyed some recent attention, see Albera and Tortajada (2015) and Kessler (2006, 57–70). 14. Such works include ABC Africa (2001), Ten, Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003), 10 on Ten (2004), Shirin (2008), and 24 Frames (2017). 15. This is, however, not an allusion to what Roland Barthes (1977) calls “the third meaning” which is the inarticulable significance of a film still. The “third film” here emerges when Shirin is in “motion”, being screened. 16. It is Gilberto Perez who speaks of convention as a film’s “transaction with the audience” (1998, 26). Another way to think of dispositif’s transaction with the viewer is that of a promise. The breaking of such a promise betrays our trust. We therefore suspect the film has been dishonest or manipulative. This draws attention to the ethical aspect of style, a topic I will discuss in this chapter and in Chap. 5. 17. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012) is such a movie, see Dominic Lash’s “Achieving Coherence: Diegesis and Death in Holy Motors” (2020, 69–87).

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

83

18. This sounds temptingly intuitive but cannot be said without caveat. Withholding implies the existence of an offscreen world, fictional or real. But such a world doesn’t exist in and for every movie. Some films may feel centripetal or self-contained enough that the commonsense understanding of cinematic withholding loses traction: what does the frame withhold in an abstract animation? Withholding appears to have as much to do with the fictional world as with the frame. 19. Another way to say all this is that the fictional world feels shrunken, reduced to the twin snippets which in turn stand in for that world. This redefines Ten’s onscreen-offscreen dynamics in interesting ways. To begin with, the onscreen and the offscreen are no longer “open” categories (that can be, at any given moment, filled by any possible views of the fictional world) but the exclusive hosts for the two predetermined viewpoints. If the onscreen and the offscreen are usually related metonymically—a part in and for the whole—their relationship in Ten appears oppositional: we no longer situate what we see within the larger fictional world, as it were, but against the other possible view. 20. Another example is the opening episode, where the driver is withheld from sight for some sixteen minutes. The delayed entrance of the main character is unusual; one may not register her importance on the first viewing because of this treatment. 21. My argument here seems to rehearse a key idea of the theory of suture: editing creates and capitalises on a felt lack that it is capable of mending. See Oudart (1977) and Rothman (1975). However, this is only incidental; my discussion should not be read as an illustration of that theory. My points are specific to this film. 22. It is a hallmark of a skilful filmmaker to create subtle suggestions with what seems to be conventional or formulaic editing choices. Even cutting before or after a line of dialogue could result in a profound change of meaning, see Henderson (1980, 55–7). 23. At first glance, this seems to magnify the shot’s analytical challenge. But in fact the “challenge” would no longer be the kind that arrests the practice of reading. The difficulty of obviousness can be dissolved, as Wittgenstein would say, by understanding its use within the context. 24. Two examples from Hitchcock’s cinema readily come to mind: (1) when Jeff (James Stewart) watches Lisa (Grace Kelly) risking her life to gather incriminating evidence in the wife-murderer’s apartment in Rear Window (1954); (2) when Scotty (Stewart again!) catches sight of Madeleine (Kim Novak) at Ernie’s in Vertigo (1958). Note that while (1) consists of optical POV shots, (2) deploys interesting variations of the convention. These moments testify to the filmmaker’s artful exploitation of the act of looking.

84 

H. L. LAW

25. Maybe this is why the convention is adept at the expression of wanting, longing, or craving; its cut creates a felt absence central to these acts. 26. The power of this moment draws upon the film’s prior withholding of such acts and expressions. 27. One may also read the editing scheme as an allergy of artistic creation. Specifically, it conceives the movie’s creative process as a complex interaction between choice and constraint (i.e., it invokes the same dynamics that animates the reading of female struggles). At first glance, the dispositif is the constraint from which the choice of the point-of-view shot departs. But the dispositif, by definition, is a chosen constraint. Its nature as a decision is in fact put into sharp relief by the deviation. We have also seen how the choice of withholding the sex worker appears to flag up censorship but in fact solicits our speculation about the creative process. What looks like a constraint, again, turns out to be a strategic decision. Also, as Sam Rohdie observes, “to choose is to choose constraints” (2006, 118). Every decision imposes distinctive limits on further choices. All this encourages us to rethink the nature of the two categories and their roles in artistic creation. While a focus on constraints/norms tends to conceive filmmaking as problem-solving, an emphasis on choice highlights the responsibility of the filmmaker. (Incidentally, this distinction also stands for the divide between cognitive film studies and interpretative film criticism.) Any useful theory of film practice/film criticism should take into account the dynamics between choice and constraint. 28. Murray Smith (1995) calls our moral identification with film characters “allegiance”. 29. It is also an unusual road movie in which the road is barely shown.

References Abbott, Matthew. 2016. Abbas Kiarostami and Film-Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Albera, François, and Maria Tortajada. 2015. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Andrew, Geoff. 2005. 10. London: BFI. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana. Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith. 2016. Film Art: An Introduction. 11th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Britton, Andrew. 2009. Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Cheshire, Godfrey. 1996. Abbas Kiarostami: A Cinema of Questions. Film Comment 34-6 (July/August): 41–43.

3  PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 

85

Empson, William. 1961. Seven Types of Ambiguity. Middlesex: Pelican Book. Grant, James. 2013. The Critical Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henderson, Brian. 1980. A Critique of Film Theory. New York: Dutton. Kessler, Frank. 2006. The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif. In The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, ed. Wanda Strauven, 57–70. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Klevan, Andrew. 2013. Barbara Stanwyck. London: BFI. Lash, Dominic. 2020. The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Martin, Adrian. 2014. The Rise of the Dispositif. In Mise en scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art, 178–204. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mulvey, Laura. 1998. Kiarostami’s Uncertainty Principle. Sight and Sound (June): 24–27. Oudart, Jean-Pierre. 1977. Suture: Cinema and Suture. Screen 18 (4, Winter): 35–47. Perez, Gilberto. 1998. The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 2003. Film in Review: Abbas Kiarostami. The Yale Review 91 (4, October): 185–201. ———. 2005. Where Is the Director?. Sight and Sound (May): 18–22. Ray, Robert B. 2008. The ABCs of Classic Hollywood. Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press. Richards, Wadia Rashna. 2013. Cinematic Flashes: Cinephilia and Classical Hollywood. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rohdie, Sam. 2006. Montage. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 2003. Abbas Kiarostami. In Abbas Kiarostami, co-­ authored by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, 1–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rothman, William. 1975. Against “The System of the Suture”. Film Quarterly 29 (1): 45–50. Sibley, Frank. 2001. Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon. Vaughan, Dai. 1998. For Documentary: Twelve Essays. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Warren, Charles. 2007. The Confidence Issue: Rouch and Kiarostami. In Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, ed. Joram Ten Brink, 287–98. New York: Wallflower Press.

CHAPTER 4

Depth of Suggestion

The Ambiguity of Gesture Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) exploits the pregnancy of gesture. One exemplar is that of a shoulder-grasp. In his article on the film, V.F. Perkins charts three successive performances of this gesture in the space of a scene: The first time, it is a perfunctory and patronizing greeting whose pretence of warmth is a bare cover for the assertion of superiority. Then, between the hero and an old friend, it conveys intimacy and genuine regard. Finally, when a large-mouthed producer uses the shoulders on the hero himself as a rostrum from which to publicize his latest triumph, it is seen as oppressive and openly slighting. These moments are significant in their own right, but their deeper purpose is—in a perfectly ordinary context—to dramatise the ambiguity of gesture itself. (2006 [1981])

The suggestion of the gesture changes across the scenarios; the import of each is distinctive to its dramatic situation. The “ambiguity of gesture” that Perkins speaks of is the contingency of gesture, its dependence upon context, its malleable meaning. In this early moment of In a Lonely Place, we are introduced to the protagonist—screenwriter Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart)—and his Hollywood friends and enemies in a restaurant. Here, the shoulder-clasps © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_4

87

88 

H. L. LAW

offer a vivid portrayal of show business as a trade where performance and pretence is part of its ordinary commerce. Dix is caught in a world where insincerity habitually finds the same expression as allegiance—in an all-­ too-­familiar gesture of affection. It is vital that Dix’s heartfelt shoulder-­ grasp stands out against its fraudulent counterparts: his actions match his feelings. But this intimate relationship between the inter and the outer is not a guarantee of character transparency but, as we shall see, a source of enigma. Indeed, the misleading transparency of Dix is something with which other characters struggle and the viewer must grapple. In a Lonely Place explores the tension between a gesture’s impression and its meaning, between its typical import and its unique implication at a narrative juncture. There is another shoulder-grasp later in the film, when Dix proposes marriage to his lover Laurel (Gloria Grahame). She is wary, however, having growing doubt about his character as well as his reckless behaviour. Laurel delays response by fleeing to the kitchen. Dix follows, approaches her from behind, and clutches her arms with both hands (Fig. 4.1). This grip sharply contrasts with his gentle gesture of affection in the restaurant scene. The affection remains but the gentleness is replaced by a tinge of intimidation. Here, the gesture grows out of Dix’s longing for Laurel. But far from a loving embrace, it comes across as a means to crush her defence, holding her hostage. The gesture unleashes the menacing side of the shoulder-grasp untapped by its prior incarnations: to catch others unaware, to ambush and coerce. Seizing Laurel from behind, Dix entraps her between him and the stove. She cannot escape. His firm grips—like a set of claws—scratches lines of wrinkle on her velvety dress (the silkiness of the garment has yielded to his force and its paleness has brought out the scores). Dix presses his body against Laurel’s. The romantic speech that he breathes into her ear is alarmingly a chain of commands: “No ‘of course’, no ‘but’, no ‘why’. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ will do”. He forbids any further talk and any second thoughts about the proposal, demanding her definitive answer right here, right now. The sequence of preemptive denials (“no… no… no…”) betrays a premonition of defeat, maybe his defeatism; he anticipates rejection, rather prematurely, and refuses to accept it. Dix’s uncompromising attitude seems to find its source in insecurity. Bogart’s measured delivery conveys a sense of vulnerability: the gradually softened tone, the loosened grip, the pained expression. The moment’s nature as a passionate plea is neither obscured by nor subordinated to its dimension of threat.

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

89

Fig. 4.1  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

Dix’s grasp here is simultaneously a signifier of profound desire and a symptom of unsettling, unhealthy possessiveness. It is suspended between understandings, revealing the tormented interiority of the character. The revelation of gesture, however, may not be recognised or readily recognisable. Andrew Klevan remarks on the restaurant scene of In a Lonely Place: “[t]he sequence shows the power dynamics in ordinary gestures without proclaiming them. It therefore remains faithful to the way ordinary gestures incorporate power and obscure the dynamics” (2018, 173). Ordinary gestures may not concede their nature or intent; we could see them without seeing their significance. Perkins, in his seminal book Film as Film, speaks of the “‘invisible’ effect” of skilful cinematic gestures (1993, 77). A gesture becomes “invisible” when it achieves a successful balance between credibility and significance, when its presence is embedded in the narration and its import integrated into the drama. This fluent transparency allows the pertinent gesture to pass for inconspicuous narrative data. As a result, Perkins suggests, “it does not demand

90 

H. L. LAW

interpretation”. But if we study the gesture, “the significance of the moment is enhanced”. The shoulder-grasps in the restaurant scene are ample instances of the “invisible effect”. Their presence is not enlarged with a close-up and their significance not given prominence with the performance. They may go unattended. Perkins’ perceptive analysis not only illuminates the meaning of the shoulder-grasps but, as shown earlier, further guides us to recognise and appreciate the significance of an analogous gesture in the kitchen. All this testifies to the reward of interpreting the gestures in this movie, which, in turn, demonstrates the importance of the interpretation of cinematic gestures. This chapter examines how In a Lonely Place deploys the ambiguous gesture to explore character complexity and its drama of doubt. Focusing on character action and interaction, I will first consider the opaque nature of Dix, then bringing that to bear on our interpretation of his gestures. My discussion will look at ambiguity in the two senses raised earlier in the text: the contingency of gesture—its malleable meaning across scenarios— as well as the single gesture as an embodiment of conflicting understandings. In other words, it considers gestures as moments and as a pattern, studying how the individual instances flesh out an overarching dramatic concern and how this concern finds focus in an individual instance. By reflecting upon the stakes and significance of gestures, especially when they are contingent or confounding, the film explores issues of philosophical scepticism, of the knowledge of oneself and others. The gestures under scrutiny here are to a large extent ordinary and “invisible”. But they may be more recognisable as salient actions—for they are given more visual emphasis, for example, with a tighter framing—in comparison to the three shoulder-grasps. (Note that a detail’s “visibility” is a variable depending on, among many things, a viewer’s disposition and familiarity with a film.) Their significance may however remain difficult to fully fathom, even when registered, without an in-depth analysis of their pertinence to motive, thought, and feeling, prior to an inquiry into the deeper reasons for character deed and decision. This chapter unpacks such notions of reading in depth and reading for deeper reasons. Putting in dialogue the issues of depth and interpretation, I suggest, opens up an alternative way to conceive and characterise ambiguity.

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

91

An Opaque Character In a Lonely Place recounts a story of love doomed by doubt. Dix falls in love with Laurel at the same time as he finds himself the chief suspect of a murder. The suspicion plot then complicates the romantic prospect. As a witness to several of Dix’s outbursts, Laurel becomes alert to his propensity for violence. She starts to have doubts about Dix, of whether he murdered Mildred Akinson (Martha Stewart) and of whether he is capable of murder. Her mistrust drives Dix to increasingly aggressive behaviour, which in turn “confirms” and heightens her suspicion. Eventually, Laurel is consumed by her doubt—Dix’s forced marriage proposal is the last straw—and has made plans to leave him. In the final confrontation, Dix is overtaken by rage and nearly strangles Laurel. His awful act is interrupted by a call from the police. They have arrested Mildred’s murderer, and that leaves Dix in the clear. But the truth doesn’t matter anymore. The couple’s relationship has reached a point beyond repair; their love now lays in ruins. In dejection they part. Did Dix Kill? In a Lonely Place’s drama of suspicion can be, as suggested, sorted into two related enquiries: whether Dix has killed Mildred and whether he is capable of killing. The two are interlaced and mutually informing. But it is worth separating them for analysis. Each opens up a host of distinctive issues about narrative and narrational strategy. The issue of Dix’s culpability is eluded with an unobtrusive narrative omission. On the night of the murder, the film fades out on the image of Mildred leaving Dix’s apartment and cuts to the morning after. We do not see how she is killed and do not know what he does for the rest of the night. And we don’t even hear him closing the door behind her. (The slow fade-out here, in retrospect, underlines what is omitted, serving as a contemplative “dot-dot-dot” or a foreboding “and then she…”.) It is therefore not, as Perkins remarks, “clear that Humphrey Bogart’s Dix did not kill her” (1992, 223). But the claim is more an overemphasis than a misguided assertion. The innocence of the character is a wishful belief— though not an unreasonable expectation, considering Bogard being a star and Dix being the protagonist—rather than a verified detail. This belief could have been easily substantiated, for example, by depicting Dix fast asleep. (Note also the omission of Laurel’s witnessing of Mildred’s

92 

H. L. LAW

departure.1) Instead, the film’s treatment yields neither a guarantee nor a repudiation of Dix’s innocence but leaves it unclarified, more a product of intuition.2 Dix’s culpability is however by no means a prioritised inquiry. It is not posed as an urgent question whose answer is paramount to any appropriate understanding of the movie. Its relevance and implication are not fully fleshed out by the film. The narrative is not that of a whodunit; it hardly takes interest in the detection and the identity of the murderer. It is vital to the movie’s drama of doubt that Dix’s innocence is only disclosed in the finale. As a result, this remains a relevant inquiry throughout the film. The question of Dix’s guilt remains pertinent but not pressed and lingering as a narrative undercurrent. It undergirds the central plot of suspicion. Can Dix Kill? In a Lonely Place’s careful narrative omission has important dramatic consequences. A prompt reveal of Dix’s innocence would place the movie in the thematic domain of the “wrongfully-accused man” (notably a Hitchcockian territory). Other characters’ suspicion of Dix could then appear unfair, misguided, or cruel. The last-minute confirmation allows for a sense of necessity, perhaps urgency, to these doubts; they are not presented as undue or misconceived despite clashing with our plausible expectation of innocence. So why is Dix susceptible to wrongful suspicion? Why does he look like a killer? Dix has a bad reputation for being a brute. His abusive, savage behaviours are widely chronicled in the newspapers, as the stuff of sensational tabloid drama. (We see such clippings, briefly, in a police report. Their veracity is of course questionable. And that’s the point.) More disturbing though is the character’s irascibility. He exhibits an eagerness for brutality during the credit sequence and rushes into a fistfight in the subsequent scene. He seems to have anger issues or angry impulses; it is uncertain whether “madness” (both in the senses of being unhinged and being enraged) is a symptom or the source. At one point, Dix goes rampant and comes close to killing a man during a roadrage incident. All this indicates the character’s struggle with self-control. It is therefore not impossible to picture him “completely losing it” at any moment. It is a reasonable worry that Dix is a ticking bomb of murderous instincts which may eventually go off, realising his potential of killing.3 It is important, however, to complicate this worry. Robert Pippin (2012a) usefully points out the problem of seeing In a Lonely Place as the

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

93

unmasking of Dix’s “real”, murderous nature. Such a conception, by positing murderousness as a concealed aspect of the character, grossly schematises the film’s achievement of psychological intricacy. Pippin’s argument draws upon Stanley Cavell’s work on philosophical scepticism, which concerns our capacity for—but most tragically, our difficulty in—understanding other minds.4 The topic traditionally inquires about the possibility of knowledge: what we know and how we come to know about others’ feelings and thoughts. This is a quest for certainty. But the notions of knowledge and certainty, Cavell suggests, misconstrue what is at stake (see Hammer 2002, 63–8). There is only so much we know and there is not much we come to know for certain. It is therefore vital to rethink our framework of understanding others. Cavell’s intervention is the introduction of acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is not a retreat from knowledge; instead it requires us to do something with our knowledge. Imagine, if I see you moaning, with tiny droplets streaming down your face, it would be absurd of me—unless I have very strong reasons—to step back and seek to ascertain you are crying. I wouldn’t just take a mental note of your sadness either. I wouldn’t stop with that. In light of what I see (in the broadest sense), I will instead try to comfort you or offer you a handkerchief. Put simply, to acknowledge others is to become attuned to the claims of their actions and expressions on us, and this attunement involves reacting accordingly or appropriately.5 This elicits a moral responsibility (even though our response may not be moral). Acknowledgement is not always straightforward— despite the simplicity of the above example and formulation—and is typically, in Pippin’s words, “a struggle of some sort”. Social intercourse can then be conceived as a mutual struggle, a dialogue of acknowledgement: continuous, consequential, challenging. Acknowledgement stands for a possibility of meaningful human bonding but it may equally be where the collapse of communication lies. The “unmasking-Dix” explanation mistakes our hindsight (e.g., his attempt to kill Laurel) for a fact about the character (i.e., he is a killer). According to this view, the failure of recognition, to have “caught him out” earlier, is a failure of knowledge: “If only I’d known Dix better I would have recognised his murderousness”. (This further represents a simplistic, essentialist conception of human identity.) This view fails to appreciate the complexity of character interaction, the mutual struggle for understanding in the movie. It is worth pointing out that despite being quick-tempered, Dix hardly displays “homicidal fury” from the start. As

94 

H. L. LAW

Pippin argues, his rage is more accurately a reaction, as it dawns on him that his trust in others—painfully, in Laurel—has been betrayed. This is unbearable. Dix “is wounded, he changes, and then, and only then, does he begin to evince what could be, and are taken to be, indications that he really is ‘capable of murder’”. In other words, other characters, especially Laurel, are morally implicated in Dix’s escalating violence, in abetting his “capability to kill”. Their doubt and his rage feed into each other. The film dramatises the failure of acknowledgement, the tragic repercussions of misunderstanding. The Uncertainty of Understanding Dix is indeed hard to understand. In James Harvey’s words, the character is “dangerous, mysterious, unalterably ambiguous” (2001, 150). Perhaps this explains other characters’ compulsion to talk about him, about how callous he is and how perplexing his actions are.6 He is an enigma to be figured out. The viewer is privy to pertinent information about Dix that are denied to the characters. Two notable cases are him sending bouquets to Mildred’s funeral7 and monetary compensation to the motorist he assaulted. These respectively point to Dix’s compassion and repentance. He is not without scruples like some characters believe. But the decision to keep these actions anonymous exemplifies his disregard for public opinions and, most importantly, his refusal to make his feelings accessible to others. Dix’s warped self-reliance makes him vulnerable to prejudice and misapprehension. The above actions, as afterthoughts, are also evidence of Dix’s delayed self-knowledge.8 The meaning of his deeds always comes to him overdue, if not all-too-late. Most disastrously, this is the case with his acts of aggression. Pippin observes a kind of “passive agency” characteristic of doomed film noir heroes: “events seem to come at them rapidly and slam into them, leaving them stunned, with little time of reflective space to deliberate, but having to respond and act nevertheless” (2012b, 17). Dix’s destructive actions similarly manifest a sense of urgency, except he seems to act without or in advance of thinking. There is a sense that he is in a daze or being driven, cut off from motive and consequence, and frighteningly blind to reality and reason. So more than being “passive”, it can be said that he is “possessed” during his violent fits. Temporarily losing

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

95

control of himself, as though compelled by forces beyond his understanding, Dix is unaware of what he is doing. This failure to know himself points to the character’s self-opacity.9 Self-­ opacity describes the condition when our deeds and decisions are not intelligible to us, because our motives and feelings may become clear or comprehensible belatedly or not at all. And such a lack of self-knowledge or punctual self-knowledge can lead to our unsatisfying accounts of our own actions and agency. Note that self-knowledge may come in degrees, it is possible that we recognise our motives and feelings only partially or we understand some aspects of our action but mistake others. So accordingly, self-opacity also admits degrees. And this is why it is a thorny issue with regard to film characters. It is not always straightforward to discern what and how much they know or do not know about themselves. And in a fictional world, as in real life, this discernment is often further entangled with the difficult question of what the characters know or do not know about each other. All this requires our sustained and careful interpretation. As we shall see, the issue of self-opacity haunts Dix’s gestures throughout the movie. Specifically, he seems alien to their effects and significance, unable to fathom their tolls on others and revelations about himself. This adds to the enigma of the character by introducing a layer of complication to his intent and purpose, posing a challenge to reading. To what extent is Dix cognisant of his action? Appreciating Film Character So, how do we approach and analyse challenging film characters? Film Studies’ sustained investigation of narrative has curiously left out character as a distinct area of interest.10 Character typically serves as a locus for other critical concerns, for example, as an ingredient of star persona, as embodied representation of gender and race, and as a vessel for audience identification.11 In such cases, the significance of individual characters are seldom emphasised even when examined. It is worth inquiring into the possibility of understanding character as character. One such analytic avenue is to dwell upon what characters do and what they mean, prioritising the study of action and agency. This position is exemplified by the work of Robert Pippin. His monograph on film noir, for instance, accounts for the baffling acts and obscure motivations of iconic noir protagonists and, in so doing, renews our understanding of the genre’s much-discussed modalities of fate and determinism (2012b). The

96 

H. L. LAW

practice is predicated on screen character’s affinity with real people—not least physically, but notably—the possession of an “inner life”. To make sense of character behaviour requires us to pursue, among other things, matters of motive and feeling, and to comprehend the role of belief and experience in action. The strategy is akin to our everyday inspection of other people. And similar to our interaction with real people, the discernment of character interiority is necessarily the assessment of particularities: “what does this character mean by doing this in that situation?”, “how does his or her specific means of delivery complicate meaning?”, “how does his or her unique background contribute to such a choice?”, and so on.12 One fruitful way to engage character as character is to interpret variegated specimens, exploring the interest of their action and the depth of their inner life. This approach is profitable towards the examination of ambiguity.13 To begin with, by avoiding a reductive, flattened view of character—as a mere vehicle for narrative linearity—it is less susceptible to schematic interpretation. To give an example, our awareness of the potential nuances of intention would prevent us from any unreflective acceptance of character speech; there may be a gap between what a character says and what he or she means or means to say. Moreover, it allows us to recognise character ambiguity as different from—or at least, more than just—a lack of goal or motivation.14 Ambiguity is affiliated with but not defined by such lacks. In the most interesting cases, it instead comes from the presence of a complicated motive or conflicting attitudes towards one’s goal. An attention to character inner life may yield a more sophisticated understanding of narrative, of how and why things happen in the fictional world. This enriches our appreciation of a film’s human drama.15 What a character does and what he or she means is a pressing question in In a Lonely Place. It is pressing because their actions, especially Dix’s, preserve only “the strength of feeling” and “not its nature”. As Perkins perceptively remarks, “neither hero nor heroine is sure whether the man’s embrace is protective and loving or threatening, murderous” (2006). Many of Dix’s gestures are like that—demonstrative and disconcerting— simultaneously advancing meanings and suspending our judgement. Our interpretative task is, importantly, multi-folded. Consider the embrace. Not only should we account for the threat of the gesture but also the couple’s awareness or certainty of it. And we need to further explicate how the film directs us to see the threat, her doubt, and his seeming oblivion. All this requires a special attention to both the matters of character

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

97

interiority and the matters of film form, of how character and form work together to articulate meaning and grade significance. This is the concern of the rest of the chapter.

Unsettling Gestures A Lover’s Embrace? Dix and Laurel’s beach picnic with the Nicolais (Frank Lovejoy and Jeff Donnell) comes to an abrupt end when he learns about her secret interview with Captain Lochner (Carl Benton Reid). Crazed, Dix drives away with Laurel, recklessly, putting their lives in jeopardy. He then almost crushes a man’s skull with a rock. Seemingly calm during the ordeal, Laurel’s faith in Dix is in fact put to the test. “Laurel’s problem”, Perkins observes, “is that it is not enough to know that Dix is innocent of murder. She needs to feel able to deny that he is, in Lochner’s words, an erratic, violent man, or that killing has a fascination for him” (1992, 299). Such a denial has now become unsustainable. We see glimpses of Laurel’s growing worry.16 The sight of Laurel’s disquiet prompts Dix’s recognition of his awful actions—characteristically belatedly. He then pulls over at a deserted spot off the road while she strengthens her guard. Perhaps he wants to apologise? Dix embraces her with one arm. But Laurel doesn’t see this as comforting but distressing. Her unease is divulged by a swallowed gasp. Frightened or startled by Dix’s gesture, Laurel nonetheless seeks to suppress her reaction. Having seen what she has seen—Dix’s murderous rage—Laurel is now wary of him, and worrying about displaying her wariness. Here, her worry is reasonable but its object is somewhat imaginary: she is afraid of what he is capable of doing (to her) which can be as horrifying as her imagination allows. Grahame’s performance is expressive but not assertive; she articulates Laurel’s waxing fear and waning faith without losing her sense of poise. Note that Dix indeed performs his embrace more than a touch aggressively. Instead of resting on the shoulder, his arm serpentines her neck, strongarming her to him (Fig. 4.2). It looks like— for a split second—he is trying to suffocate her. Does Laurel imagine that? Is the embrace, in Perkins’ words, “protective and loving or threatening, murderous”? It is uncertain. Dix seems unaware of the strength of his embrace. And people who don’t know their own strength are prone to excessive force without knowing, hurting others without intending to. Yet our intention is not

98 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 4.2  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

consistently available for inspection (or introspection)—like recalling a piece of knowledge—but often revealed by—becoming knowable through—our action. Dix’s forceful embrace makes known his aggressiveness; he could have meant to harm Laurel without realising. Ironically, the embrace evokes how Dix pictures Mildred’s murder. During his dinner with the Nicolais, Dix hypotheses about the murder taking place in a moving vehicle, “in a lonely place in the road”—not unlike the above moment with the central couple. One hand on the wheel, the killer, Dix believes, strangled the victim with his right arm. He then invites Brub and Sylvia to stage the scenario, directing them. The scene takes a sudden turn to the ominous as Dix recounts the killing in vivid details. Suspenseful music creeps in while his face is theatrically lit, ablaze with sinister excitement. Performing an imaginative chokehold, he further instructs Brub to “squeeze harder”. (In the reaction shot, we see the husband, as though hypnotised, suffocating his wife.) It is as if Dix is seeing the murder in his mind’s eye, enacting it vicariously. Not only does the

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

99

scene foreground his disturbing identification with the murderer, it also casts his subsequent embraces under the shadow of the murderous stranglehold. Back to the couple’s scene in the car. The false alarm hardly relieves Laurel’s vigilance, especially with Dix’s arm still hanging around her neck. Upon his request for a cigarette,17 Laurel abruptly leans back, strikes a pause—perhaps pondering her next step—and swiftly turns away from him. She eventually reaches for the cigarettes. It seems that Laurel’s movements also serve as a furtive attempt to undo Dix’s firm grip. They are ungainly but tactful. We come to recognise the tact because we notice the off-key ungainliness. These moves are further timed with sudden blasts of brass on the soundtrack, which teases a sense of menace, mimicking the scene’s rise and release of suspense.18 The tension of the moment finally dissipates when Dix withdraws his arm to smoke. But Laurel stays stiffly on guard, maintaining her distance. Throughout the scene, Dix fails to observe the telltale signs of Laurel’s doubt and caution: the passivity, the darting eyes, and the detachment. The film doesn’t take an exclusive interest in Laurel’s perspective. The moment is more than a private drama of suspicion. Her reactions are expressive but not emphasised by the framing. Instead, the scene is filmed as a series of two-shots. This facilitates not only a study of Laurel’s alertness but also of Dix’s oblivion. We can see that she is afraid to speak her mind, but her thoughts and feelings are already bespoken by her demeanours. We also witness his effort to reach out to her, but his actions—without him noticing—works against his best intentions. He couldn’t see her doubt and she couldn’t help seeing him suspiciously. The pair are trapped in their own perspective, unable to acknowledge what the other is experiencing. In a Lonely Place’s tragedy of misunderstanding is a tragedy about the limited point-of-view—an all-too-human limitation. It is suitable that a scene about character inarticulacy, the difficulty of expressing oneself, closes with much unsaid, with “borrowed” sentiments. On their ride home, Dix recites a passage he has been working on and asks Laurel (now the driver) where it should go in his screenplay. The farewell note, she says. Then he wants her to recite it. Laurel stops before the last line, unable to finish, as if hitting upon a sobering thought. The passage describes a man’s life renewed by a woman’s love, and the ruination of this life due to the loss of that love (“I was born when she kissed me/I died when she left me/I lived a few weeks while she loved me”). Dix is not speaking these words in the first person. But it is not hard to see their

100 

H. L. LAW

personal resonance: he too is reborn through love. (Is this what inspires the lines?) What he doesn’t know, however, is that the sentiment of the passage is prophetic of his breakup with Laurel. The speech will become her farewell note at the end. She will pick up her unfinished line, saying what she couldn’t say here. And she will mean it, making it her own—”I lived a few weeks while you loved me”. Not only foreshadowing the finale, the exchange in the car also signifies the beginning of the end: the couple’s relationship has now reached a point of no return; their love is fast expiring. The sequence concludes with Dix wrapping his arm—once again— around Laurel, resting on her seat. Affection or intimidation? She steals a glance. Doubt lingers (Fig. 4.3). A Killer’s Kiss? The undoing of the Dix and Laurel’s romance has been forewarned at its dawn. The film draws attention to Dix’s overbearing passion and its

Fig. 4.3  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

101

looming hazard during the couple’s first kiss. James Harvey perceptively describes Dix’s kiss as “vampirelike”. In a high-angle shot, Dix hovers above Laurel, “tak[es] her face in his hands, fingers on her throat, lifting her mouth to his” (2001, 151).19 He looks like a menacing presence, preying on Laurel, perhaps strangling her (Fig. 4.4). His kiss represents a murderous love. Vampirism is indeed a potent metaphor for Dix’s consuming passion. Pippin (2012a) speaks of the asymmetrical expectations of the couple: “his desperate desire to be loved”, revealed in his speech before the first kiss, is a sharp contrast to Laurel’s composed articulation of desire, exemplified by her teasing remark “I am interested”. This imbalance leaves Dix insecure, vulnerable. His threatening possessiveness, seen in many of his gestures, can be read as a symptom of his insatiable thirst for love—like a vampire’s lust for blood—an unhappy compensation for his impotence. It is when Dix finds out about Laurel’s “betrayal” that his possessiveness

Fig. 4.4  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

102 

H. L. LAW

evolves into destructive fury. He is compelled to destroy what he cannot possess. A reversed image of the first kiss is seen later: this time, Laurel is approaching Dix from above (Fig. 4.5). The kiss does not look “vampirelike” but is equally indicative of his appetite for affection. Dix circles his arm around Laurel’s head, palm on the crown, and presses her down to him. From a performance perspective, it would have been easier for Bogart to embrace Grahame’s head from her left. But the resultant gesture would look more natural, and less forceful onscreen. Alternatively, if Bogart have done it with his other arm, Grahame’s face could have been obstructed. The gesture, as it is, looks contrived, and this contrivance subtlety introduces a note of coercion to the kiss without denying its tenderness. After all, it is a “goodnight” kiss. But the gesture points to a need to fix Laurel in place, keeping her close and not letting her go. Indeed, Dix is always seen holding her too tight, dragging her towards him, or keeping her head

Fig. 4.5  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

103

still. His gestures of affection often resemble gestures of entrapment. Dix’s love can be oppressive.

Moments of Recognition “I will never let you go!” Dix declares while subduing Laurel in the climactic confrontation (Fig. 4.6). He just finds out about her plan to flee the wedding, her lie about wanting to marry him. Dix’s chokehold is a mirror image of his caress during the proposal scene (Fig. 4.7): the reversed composition, the darkened colour palette. It is as though everything has gone awry in Dix’s world. The chokehold, in retrospect, testifies to the potential threat of the caress. The menacing aspect of Dix’s gesture, present from the start, brewing throughout the movie, is at the end materialised in a homicidal attempt. Suddenly, the telephone rings. And the ringing sound, like an opportune alarm, snaps Dix out of his murderous daze. Stunned, he let go of

Fig. 4.6  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

104 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 4.7  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

Laurel. His confusion about what he is doing gradually gives way to a painful realisation of what he has done. He then utters a word, an inaudible word. Stanley Cavell has written about the possibility of being “struck dumb” when made to confront the significance of our deeds; when we realise we couldn’t come to terms with what we do; and when we don’t recognise or understand what we mean by doing that (see note 9). Dix is here “struck dumb” by what he was meant to do. He takes a pause before picking up the call, recovering from his unspeakable action. There is an analogous moment during the road-rage fight. Just when Dix is about to bash the skull of the other motorist, he suddenly freezes, shocked by the severity of his action. This is the first time both Dix and Laurel (and the viewer) recognise his capacity for killing—a pivotal point for the subsequent narrative. The event is particularly key to a better understanding of his marriage proposal. Dix’s outburst during the beach picnic, Perkins observes, is a result of, among other things, “the articulation of the marriage prospect”: the character is more concerned about

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

105

what Laurel may have talked about (marriage) than whom she has talked to (Lochner) behind his back (1992, 231). The marriage proposal, taking place on the next occasion the couple meet, is therefore surprising. But the film’s rapid unravelling of narrative action could distract us from this surprise, obscuring a pertinent question: what makes marriage something Dix “wants to rush into” if it is initially what “panics him”? The answer seems to lie in the events succeeding the picnic, in the character’s realisation of his murderous brutality. Dix tells Laurel all he needs is “a push” to get married. It is possible that he has come to register— perhaps without fully understanding it—the intricate link between his worsening violence and his desire to be loved. This allows us to see his compulsion to marry, his need to secure love, as the result of a (likely) unconscious wish to put a stop to his violence. That is, it is his effort to redeem himself, to save himself from himself. The irony is that it is already too late to save his relationship with Laurel: she has made up her mind about leaving him. Both characters have reached a vital realisation after the catastrophic night of the beach picnic. But the film only depicts Laurel agonising over her decision while leaving Dix’s urge to wed to our interpretation. It is only when he confronts his attempt to suffocate Laurel that Dix finally catches up with what we have witnessed all along (Fig.  4.8): the violence of his gesture, the threat of his passion, and the murderousness of his love—in other words, his ambiguity. This self-understanding, as always, arrives tragically late. At the end it doesn’t matter that Dix is innocent of Mildred’s murder; in Laurel’s mind, he is guilty of being murderous, of trying to kill her. There is nothing left to be said between them. They part. Both characters know that their love cannot be revived. It has perished because of her mistrust and guardedness, as well as his violence and insecurity. In a sense, the lovers have killed their love.

The Depth of Understanding Grasping the difficulty in its depth is what is hard. —Ludwig Wittgenstein (1998, 55e)

In his article on the film, Perkins further celebrates an “invisible” yet illuminating gesture during the proposal scene (1992, 231). Preparing breakfast for Laurel, Dix removes the curve of a grapefruit knife, picking the right tool for the task but making a wrong correction. This can be taken

106 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 4.8  In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

as a sign of “his unfamiliarity with domestic routine” or of “an anxious desire to be of service”. But these readings, Perkins observes, do not go far enough. He highlights the fact that the gesture has (inadvertently or unconsciously) turned the utensil into a weapon, “something more like a dagger”. This makes clear Dix’s unknowing penchant for violence. “In its reconciliation of clarity with depth of suggestion, in its extraordinary mixture of charm, humour and violence”, Perkins concludes, “this moment is representative of the film’s achievement” (231). It is not uncommon to conceive a film’s suggestion “geologically”, distinguishing between surface and deep(er) meanings.20 If surface meanings are obvious, readily available, deep(er) meanings are obscured, more difficult to access. This divide allows for the distinction between what a film means (i.e., depth) and what it says (i.e., surface), and consequently the possibility for the film to mean differently from what it says.21 It is often assumed that deep(er) meanings are more authentic, profound, and

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

107

worthy than “surface meanings”, and therefore should be what criticism seeks and secures; that is, to detect, decode, and unearth. It is, however, not easy to dissect the grapefruit-knife gesture into layers of meaning. Its violent implication—the supposedly deep meaning—is not exactly obvious but it is not in any sense obscured either. It is not hidden behind or buried under the act of correcting. Nor is it a dissident or subversive reading of the action. Instead, Dix’s erroneous modification represents his unconscious threat. This suggestion is grounded upon, revealed by, or embodied in the gesture. It is less about “the depth” we didn’t previously see than a fresh way of seeing “the surface”. The implication of violence is not a deep meaning but, more accurately, an enhanced understanding of the moment. “Depth” can be indeed a mark of rewarding interpretation. As a metaphor, Alexander Nehamas suggests, depth is “less an indication of the location of what we understand and more of the quality of the understanding we are able, sometimes, to reach: the deeper it is, the more it encompasses” (2007, 123–4). It has been the aim of this chapter to develop a deeper understanding of Dix in this particular sense, by exploring his pattern of ambiguous gestures throughout the movie. Specifically, this calls for an appreciation of the way these gestures hold conflicting meanings productively in tension. Rather than, as Perkins remarks, being “protective and loving or threatening, murderous”, Dix’s actions in fact balance the two sets of readings. An attention to the gestures’ equivocal nature, to the correspondences between the opposite suggestions, makes possible a nuanced account of the character’s complex interiority: his conflation between passion and possessiveness, his angst-induced anger, and his murderous love. To arrive at a deeper account of the character, we need to perform detailed and in-depth reading. Inspired by the work of Pippin, I have outlined the benefits of pursuing character agency and action. This has to do with, in the case of Dix, the state of his self-knowledge, of whether he recognises the significance of his deed, of what he means by what he does. We are encouraged to inquire into why he does what he does—for example, why does he change his mind about marriage?—and into the pertinent reason for his action—that is, his likely  subconscious realisation of Laurel’s affection as the cure to his violence. Our task is to dwell on these, sometimes very difficult, “why” questions and come up with a framework to account for Dix’s ambiguous actions and gestures, both as a pattern and as individual instances, in an intelligible, interesting, or illuminating way.

108 

H. L. LAW

Such an account is in-depth because it explores the character’s deeper reasons; it is detailed because it examines the film’s array of narrative and stylistic elements as well as their configurations. Drawing special links between ambiguity and the notion of depth, this chapter has highlighted a salient but neglected aspect of the aesthetic category: ambiguity not only accommodates a range of readings, it is also a call for the productive dwelling on these readings. It can be both the multiplicity and the depth of meaning. This is a reason why ambiguity is difficult. One might wonder whether the practice of reading character in-depth and in detail runs the risk of sliding into what is commonly called “overreading”. For example, my account of Dix’s rushed marriage proposal appears to go into too much detail about his psychological depth: how can I know about these “deeper”, half-developed feelings and thoughts? how can I know for sure? This resembles the challenges of philosophical scepticism discussed earlier. But as Cavell suggests, the true moral of scepticism is that we need not resort to hyperbolic worry about our knowledge and certainty about others. The day-to-day practice of interpreting other people, after all, often involves reasonable speculation and guesswork.22 Our interpretation of screen characters, like that of real people, is seldom, if at all, measured against the “truth” but what we can readily see. The merit of a particular interpretation needs to be put to the test, lying in whether it facilitates a better grip on the character, in how it sheds light on his or her actions, in how well it yields pertinent psychological insights. My deeper account of Dix is of course only one viable interpretation; one among others.23 But I believe this is one which succeeds to illuminate and appreciate the difficulty of the character. The topic of “overreading”, however, indeed warrants investigation, especially considering this book’s engagement with interpretative uncertainty. We shall return to this issue in Chap. 6, which will address the worry of “overreading” what seems to be accidental or erroneous.

Notes 1. This is Dix’s sole alibi. The significance of this omission is made clear by Laurel’s later doubt about Dix. This doubt not only, as Dana Polan suggests, “would indicate that her original observations allow for the possibility that Dix could have found a way to kill the hatcheck girl” (1993, 65), but it also implies that she may not have actually witnessed such a scene

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

109

(see Pippin 2012a, n5). This then reveals something about Laurel, perhaps her trust in her own intuition about people. 2. Chapter 6 further explores how our assumptions inform our interpretative orientation. 3. The fact that even Dix’s close friend Mel (Art Smith) has doubt about Dix’s innocence indicates the urgency of this worry. 4. Cavell’s examination of scepticism in tragedies is intertwined with his reflection on the tragic aspects of scepticism, see, for example, “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear” (2002). 5. Acknowledgement is therefore not a particular type of response “but a category in terms of which a given response is evaluated” (Cavell 2002, 263–4). 6. This can take the form of Martha’s (Ruth Gillette) insidious words of gossip that corrode Laurel’s faith in Dix. 7. This contradicts Dix’s professed indifference towards Mildred’s death (something the police hold against him). Perhaps he doesn’t want to look “soft”. 8. A further suggestion is that Dix doesn’t do the “right” thing and cannot do the “right” thing at the “right” time. He straightens the supposedly crooked grapefruit knife (and fails to correct it after the mistake is pointed out to him); he discusses the unappetising topic of murder at the dinner table. The character is inept at social convention and etiquette; he somewhat frustrates society’s idea of normality. 9. The following passage by Cavell eloquently formulates the issues of (self-) opacity. It is primarily about speech but also applicable to action and gesture: “whatever words are said and meant are said and meant by particular men, and that to understand what they (the words) mean you must understand what they (whoever is using them) mean, and that sometimes men do not see what they mean, that usually they cannot say what they mean, that for various reasons they may not know what they mean, and that when they are forced to recognize this they feel they do not, and perhaps cannot, mean anything, and they are struck dumb” (2002, 270). 10. Volumes devoted to film character are scarce. They include Michaels (1998), Eder et al. (2010), and Rils and Taylor (2019). 11. See, respectively, Smith (2012), Doane (1991), and Smith (1995). 12. Cavell notes: “the individual significance of an act (like that of a word) arises in its being this one rather than every other that might have been said or done here and now” (1995, 153). 13. It is also important to point out a major risk of this approach. Pippin’s monograph on the Western, Gilberto Perez suggests, occasionally reads the movies “too psychologically” and, as a result, neglects other, sometimes more salient, aspects of their achievement (2019, 33–9). Some of the

110 

H. L. LAW

discussions in this book are inspired by Pippin’s work. I hope the insights gained from the analysis of character are the justification of such an interest. Moreover, Chap. 2 has demonstrated how the engagement with character psychology allows us to see Ten’s political significance. 14. Such a position is implied in Bordwell (2008). 15. Pippin’s approach further accommodates the fact that a screen character is embodied by a human performer, with his or her own thought and feeling. How the two layers of “inner life” overlap is a key question both to the theorising of film character and the appreciation of film performance. 16. Throughout the movie, Dix’s explosive temperament is offset by Laurel’s mannered self-possession. If his gestures are demonstrative and impassioned, hers are reticent, poised, at times calculated, see also Perkins (1992, 227). 17. Earlier during the drive, Dix refuses Laurel’s offer of a cigarette. This has symbolic significance. We have seen that smoking is something like an intimate ritual for the couple in the piano bar scene. Both their moment of closeness and moment of crisis are charted by their willingness to share a moment of smoking. Later in this scene, it is Laurel who refuses Dix’s offer of a cigarette. 18. The film’s conflation of passion and violence—exemplified by Dix’s gestures—is somewhat simulated by its music, which is prone to change its emotional register rapidly, sometimes awkwardly: from wistful to foreboding to melancholic to suspenseful. The music can be erratic like the central character. But it also creates critical distance. For example, the “main theme”, through its association of moments of romance, gradually picks up the growing uncertainty of the romance. It is at times unclear whether this piece of music is supposed to be sentimental, ironic, or rueful. 19. Bogart performs a similar “vampirelike” gesture in his earlier film Dead Reckoning (John Cromwell, 1947). The mixture between the predatory and the vulnerable in Bogart’s persona is perhaps a worthy topic of investigation. 20. A closely related dichotomy is between the explicit and the implicit meaning, see Bordwell (1989). For a detailed critique of the surface/depth, explicit/implicit view, see MacDowell (2018), Wilson (1997), and Perkins (1990). 21. The model therefore underpins the 70s ideological critique of film, for example, Comolli and Narboni (1971). 22. But we also have to bear in mind the impossibility of interacting with screen characters: unlike with real people, for instance, we cannot ask characters about themselves. This means that we cannot acknowledge them in the most direct sense; there is nothing we can do for them. But we can still “acknowledge” them, in some sense, by paying the appropriate kind

4  DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 

111

and degree of attention to their posture and gesture, speech and behaviour—to do something with  the claims of their actions. What appropriate means here is a vital part of this special kind of acknowledgement. 23. My account would be an inappropriate reading if demonstrated to be distorting the film’s dramatic emphasis and narrative significance.

References Bordwell, David. 1989. Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York and London: Routledge. Cavell, Stanley. 1995. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2002. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays, Updated ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Comolli, Jean-Luc, and Paul Narboni. 1971. Cinema/ldeology/Criticism. Screen 12 (1, Mar.): 27–38. Doane, Mary Ann. 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Eder, Jens, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider. 2010. Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Hammer, Espen. 2002. Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary. Cambridge: Polity. Harvey, James. 2001. Movie Love in the Fifties. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Klevan, Andrew. 2018. Aesthetic Evaluation and Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacDowell, James. 2018. Interpretation, Irony and “Surface Meanings” in Film. Film-Philosophy 22 (2): 261–280. Michaels, Lloyd. 1998. The Phantom of the Cinema: Character in Modern Film. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nehamas, Alexander. 2007. Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Perez, Gilberto. 2019. The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Perkins, V.F. 1990. Must We Say What They Mean? Movie 34/35: 1–6. ———. 1992. In a Lonely Place. In The Movie Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron, 222–231. London: Studio Vista. ———. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York: Da Capo Press. ———. 2006. Moments of Choice. Rouge, 9. Accessed October 11, 2017. http:// www.rouge.com.au/9/moments_choice.html.

112 

H. L. LAW

Pippin, Robert B. 2012a. Passive and Active Skepticism in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place. Nonsite 5. Accessed August 3, 2020. http://nonsite.org/article/ passive-­and-­active-­skepticism-­in-­nicholas-­rays-­in-­a-­lonely-­place. ———. 2012b. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Polan, Dana. 1993. In a Lonely Place. London: BFI. Rils, Johannes, and Aaron Taylor. 2019. Screening Characters: Theories of Character in Film, Television, and Interactive Media. New York, NY: Routledge. Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, Susan. 2012. Elizabeth Taylor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, George M. 1997. On Film Narrative and Narrative Meaning. In Film Theory and Philosophy, ed. Richard Allen and Murray Smith, 221–238. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1998. Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, Rev. ed. Translated by Peter Winch. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

PART II

Drama of Doubt

CHAPTER 5

Uncertainty of Viewpoint

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) pivots upon an avalanche. But it refrains from deriving its dramatic force—its prominent narrative questions—directly from this larger-than-life incident. Evoking the scenario of a disaster, the film nevertheless eschews the tropes and conventions of the disaster movie. It features no imagery of mass destruction, of civilisation in ruins; neither does it celebrate human resilience nor lament heroic sacrifice. In fact, strictly speaking, there isn’t a disaster to begin with. As a controlled occurrence, the avalanche in question may have brought about chaos and confusion but it stops short of causing damage and casualty. The film instead grounds its drama and finds its narrative premise, in a crisis far more intimate in nature as well as in scale—a character’s untoward act in the heat of the extraordinary happening. And by focusing on the fallouts and grief implications of this act, Force Majeure delves into the no less catastrophic potential of human deed and decision. The kind of devastation it explores concerns human agency. The movie depicts a bourgeois family’s holiday at a luxury ski resort. What is supposed to be an occasion to strengthen familial bonds ends up putting them to the test. During the aforementioned avalanche, while the mother Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) stays with her two children, seeking to shield them from harm, the father Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) flees the scene alone, running for his life. His flight from danger is therefore equally

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_5

115

116 

H. L. LAW

something of a desertion of his family. Instead, he is supposed to have done what his wife has done, putting the safety and survival of his children before his own. He is also supposed to have stood by Ebba, weathering the dire situation together with her. Unable to do either, Tomas has failed his family, failing both his roles as a father and as a husband. This failure to do what a good person is expected to do, under circumstances where doing the expected is considered the right thing to do, is deemed a moral failure. If real-life catastrophes tend to call for the reaffirming of accepted moral codes, movie disasters, as Susan Sontag observes, accommodate an imaginary renewal of these standards. The renewal is possible because the fiction of life-threatening disruption harbours the fantasy in which “normal obligations” are jeopardised, open to renegotiation (2009, 215). The scenario therefore offers an opportunity to engage with what we typically judge morally compromised or suspect.1 In Force Majeure, the calamity that doesn’t happen nonetheless prompts an ethical crisis. And this irony is vital to its specific moral inquiry. The choice to make the avalanche “fictional” is also a choice to lay bare the fiction of moral escape. In doing so, the film draws attention to the ethical weight of Tomas’ flight, inviting us to reflect on what it means and what it reveals about the character.2 This enquiry is tendered within the movie. Throughout its course, numerous explanations of the act are tentatively offered. Mats (Kristofer Hivju) gives his friend Tomas the benefit of the doubt. The flight, he proposes, is likely the result of some innate survival instinct, and is therefore defensible, as a natural reflex, beyond Tomas’ immediate control. To run away in such a predicament is but a knee-jerk reaction; to self-preserve is only human, in fact all-too-human. So, we shouldn’t rush to judgement.3 The problem with this proposal of course lies in its inability to account for Ebba’s instinctive reaction, under the same circumstances, to protect the children. In other words, even if the survival instinct is innate, perhaps universal, it doesn’t mean we are necessarily governed by it. What also makes us human, as Ebba’s behaviour suggests, is our capacity of defying our instincts. It is not until late in the movie that Tomas addresses his questionable action. His plea for forgiveness, however, doesn’t involve an apology or an acknowledgement of his failing. Attributing the flight to “another person” materialised in him, Tomas insists that he himself, not unlike Ebba, is a victim. Divorcing agency from action, the account points to his disavowal of his deed. Notably, both the aforementioned explanations conceive the flight as something like a lapse of judgement. That is, instead of being indicative of Tomas’ moral worth, it is a regrettable moral

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

117

blemish. His act is blameworthy, yet he is not a bad person. He is just a normal—fallible—human being unfortunately caught in a bad situation. Anyone could have, and might have, done what he has done.4 While the nature of Tomas’ exit, what it suggests about him, is open to reading, the ways he deals with discussions about the act, in both the public and the private spheres, are in themselves very revealing. His response oscillates between evasive answer, silence, and unconvincing denial (“how does one run in ski boots?”). More than once, he maintains that there are alternative ways of interpreting his flight, though he is never able to produce any plausible alternative understanding, but instead of resorting to a vague assertiveness of his innocence, a kind of nervous hesitancy that is redolent of a guilt-ridden consciousness. The suspicion is that he is self-­ deceived or being dishonest, knowing more than or differently from what he discloses to other characters. In any case, it seems that he wouldn’t admit the action in front of others because he couldn’t bear the shame of admitting it. It is only when confronted with a phone video of the avalanche, a video which he made that irrefutably shows his flight, that Tomas hesitantly confirms: “I agree that it looks like I’m running”. But the acknowledgement of a fact is not the same as an acknowledgement of its meaning. To confess he runs away is still a step away from recognising his abandonment. If Ebba is initially upset about Tomas’ flight, as the film progresses, she is further troubled by his vehement refusal to own up to this action, coping with its consequences. This is what she finds unforgivable. The moral drama in Force Majeure therefore revolves around the twin poles of action and accountability: not only what an agent does but also his responsibility of accounting for his doing, of offering an intelligible account. Tomas’ own account of the flight is of interest and importance all the more for the indisputability of the act. It is notable that the scene of the avalanche is filmed as a static, extended long shot. While this stylish strategy, to recall André Bazin (see Introduction), promotes interpretative possibilities, its effect here is to render Tomas’ and Ebba’s contrasting actions unambiguous. There is no mistake about his self-preserving escape and her self-sacrificing gesture.5 She is right to accuse him of abandonment and he is wrong to deny it. As a result, we are encouraged to side with Ebba and see Tomas’ disclaiming of his deed as stubborn and unsympathetic. This implication of the audience, this assignment of our allegiance, is what makes the shot vital to the film’s moral drama.6 Only that this implication may not be straightforward or seamless. The same stylish

118 

H. L. LAW

strategy also heightens the possibility of overseeing the couple’s actions. These pertinent details are not actively highlighted by the camera, declared within the extended long-shot. What this scene hinges upon is a tension between action and viewpoint, between the gravity of what happens and the unemphatic way of seeing. It is as though the camera wants us to barely see—nearly miss—the moment’s significance. This chapter considers how Force Majeure strategically exploits the tension between action and viewpoint to ambiguous effects. Viewpoint here means more than visual perspective but, as George M. Wilson defines the cinematic point-of-view, the various ways in which a movie “systematically structure[s] an audience’s overall epistemic access to narrative” (1986, 3). Take the avalanche scene as an example. We can easily envision it—as the Hollywood remake of the film Downhill (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2020) in fact does—being analytically edited into a series of close-ups of the pertinent details. But then the couple’s differing behaviours, despite being similarly unmistakable like in the original version, would also become unmissable. The difference here is a difference between viewpoints. And the epistemic difference this makes further reflects dissimilar ethical perspectives. While analytical editing lays bare Tomas’ flight and therefore feels like a blatant condemnation of it, the static, extended long-shot seems to anticipate his act. It is as though the camera knows of, perhaps in advance, Tomas’ objectionable behaviour but refrains from acknowledging it, pointing it out for us. This suggests a conflicted attitude. We are uncertain where Force Majeure stands towards the character. The following discussion will focus on the last three scenes of the movie, which, as will be clear, pivots upon this kind of uncertainty. If most of the film seeks to maintain a moral distance from Tomas and encourages judgements of his behaviours—through the uses of irony, parody, and awkward social comedy—the final scenes somewhat erode that distance in plot terms yet open up a critical perspective by structural and stylistic means. This seeming tension between content and form throws into question Force Majeure’s point-of-view. And our inquiry into viewpoint, here concerning the final twenty-five minutes of the movie, is of course bound up with matters of film ending and its attendant issues. Accordingly, my examination will take into account how the scenes resolve or complicate the movie’s abiding moral drama: most importantly, whether and how Tomas accounts for his flight and, as a result, whether the couple, and the family, reunite in satisfying terms.

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

119

“Reconciliation” Tonal Complexity The first sequence we will consider takes place at the end of “Ski Day Four”. It begins with Tomas’ act of accounting for his flight but, as the scene develops, the question becomes how his account is taken by Ebba, whether she accepts it. Tomas has been wanting to make up with Ebba. His attempt earlier in the evening is, however, interrupted by the children’s request to fix the Internet connection (their interjection—“Daddy, it’s still not working!”— equally describes and humorously comments on his effort). It is now daybreak.7 We see Tomas asking Ebba for a talk outside the hotel suite. The camera lingers on her concerned expression before cutting to him, face in palms, seemingly sobbing. But the pathos of the moment is punctured as soon as it begins to set. The scene takes a turn to the comical as Ebba readily sees through Tomas’ crocodile tears and calls him out, like catching a crafty child in the act. And indeed like a kid holding his ground until his wish is granted, he claims the floor, settling on it. (Note that he is also sitting by the room door, as though stopping her from quitting the conversation, cornering her.) The scene achieves comedy by presenting Tomas as a man-child. Only that this comedy is dark. The moment, on the one hand, highlights the husband’s insincerity. Not necessarily in the sense that he forges remorse, yet he has at least embellished it to secure forgiveness. On the other hand, Ebba’s quick uncovering of the false cry marks her mistrust, perhaps pointing to her familiarity with his tactics of deceit. The unhappy implication is that Tomas is not new to petty duplicity or even emotional blackmailing. All of which not only, retrospectively, enhances our doubt about his insistent denial of the flight but also tinges his subsequent plea for forgiveness. We may want to take his sayings and doings with a grain of salt. After admitting his pretence, Tomas takes a beat and, perhaps without recognising the irony, delivers his confession in the third person. He speaks of being a victim of his own instincts, which have run riot and taken over his actions. He simply had no control of what he did. This account, as mentioned earlier, conveniently explains away his accountability. The character’s delivery is increasingly emotional. He weeps what seems to be real tears and eventually bursts into a mix of crying and screaming. In her reaction shot, Ebba turns away from the camera and therefore also away

120 

H. L. LAW

from him—as if averting her eyes, in disbelief of what she saw—only returns to reveal a look of pity. She seems softened and swayed by his devastation. Tomas is indeed a sorry sight (Fig. 5.1).8 His breakdown is, nevertheless, so fervid that it pushes the scene, which only just recovered its emotional poise, once again towards caricature, perhaps even risibility. And that, like earlier, raises the suspicion of playacting. This suspicion is ours but also Ebba’s. But in this case, the nature of Tomas’ tears feels even harder to ascertain. In fact, there is a sense the film appropriately leaves that uncertain. It is worth noting that crying serves a public and a private function; it can be both a performance and an authentic expression. In other words, Tomas’ tears may be simultaneously the release of his emotion and an emotional claim on Ebba.9 It is possible that he cries out of pretence, remorse, or self-pity, or something else entirely. But the deeper reason, to recall the lesson of Chap. 4, is likely a combination of several or all of them.10 This points to the poignancy underneath the comic scenario. Tomas’ pathetic plea for forgiveness may be a performance but that doesn’t mean it is not driven by real pain and regret. The scene recognises the entwinement and complication of human feelings, and it observes these via its conflicting tone. Like Ebba, we may feel conflicted about Tomas. The tonal complexity of the moment stems not only from the performance but also from the editing. As Tomas starts screaming uncontrollably in the hallway, Ebba seeks to continue their exchange back inside the

Fig. 5.1  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

121

hotel suite. The camera cuts from a shot of Tomas staying put on the floor, like a stubborn kid refusing to give in, to a shot of a janitor looking on impassively. The clash of tenors here—from a hyperbolic spectacle to a deadpan countenance (with Tomas’ screaming still audible)—may provoke laughter. But this laughter would not be without reservation. Not only are we embarrassed for Ebba—as a case of fremdschämen—we might also feel bad for Tomas, for embarrassing himself like that. The edit further raises the possibility that the anonymous janitor may have been watching them all along. Often miraculously showing up where the drama is, the janitor is a man who knows too much. His presence at a scene is sometimes only confirmed in a delayed, unexpected reveal, as though he tends to lurk, habitually observing. And his “invisibility” to the characters (in the way hotel cleaning staffs are “invisible” to guests) further facilitates his silent observation, allowing him to look without being noticed. So, it is not unlikely that some of his act of looking has gone unremarked by the camera. In fact, the janitor has witnessed an earlier hallway exchange between Tomas and Ebba. But in this previous instance, they quickly detect his presence: in a shot which we read as the janitor’s view, the couple look to the direction of the camera—so effectively addressing not only him but also us—demanding their privacy. This invites a comparison between his intrusive looking and our interested viewing. The couple’s demand of privacy paradoxically highlights how much of the film’s narrative revolves around the laying bare of what is primarily a domestic dispute in public. Tomas and Ebba frequently convene in the hotel hallway to talk things over, so as to protect their kids from their fight, but at the risk of exposing it to public scrutiny. Their most heated disagreements take place over meetings with friends and acquaintances. Ebba is the one who brings up Tomas’ flight on these occasions. It seems that she recounts the incident to others as a way to account for it to herself, and to seek their words of sympathy and emotional support. By doing so, she further subjects Tomas’ action to the judgement of other characters, perhaps shaming him on purpose.11 A prominent instance of this is the couple’s dinner with Mats and his girlfriend, which develops into a mock trial of the husband. The presence of these outsiders serves as a form of social pressure. This is why Tomas cannot but address his flight. This is also why, in the wake of watching the phone video with the group, he has to admit it. There is a sense that he admits it less because it is a fact—arguably, he knows this all along—than because it is a fact now known by others too. Most importantly, they know he knows it. And Tomas’ knowledge

122 

H. L. LAW

of what they know causes shame. What this scene darkly dramatises is Force Majeure’s interest in what can be called the “social consciousness”, which concerns our agency of self-regulation, our management of action and appearance in the public arena, especially when interacting with others. Many of the movie’s situations expose how this consciousness can be a source of stress and explore how a character’s failure of self-regulation in public may cause embarrassment for others. For the viewer, however, such awkward scenarios often result in amusement. The comedy of Force Majeure is a comedy of fraught social behaviours. An Expansive Viewpoint Apart from the insert of the janitor, Tomas’ confession in the hallway also incorporates intermittent cutaway shots of the children, in which they are wide awake in bed, sobbing, eavesdropping on their parents’ exchange. On the one hand, these heart-wrenching images counterbalance the moment’s comedy, and therefore contributes to its tonal complexity. On the other hand, these edits reassert the narrative significance of the perspective of the children, reminding us that the film concerns more than the falling-out of a couple but the disintegration of a family.12 As we shall see, the children are key to the final scenes of Force Majeure. They hold the family together yet also play a vital part in the scenario that drives Tomas and Ebba further apart. What the film’s attention to the children and the social sphere points to is its expansive viewpoint. And such a viewpoint, as seen earlier, is a standing possibility of editing. This is achieved—to name another recurring strategy of the movie—when the camera intercuts narrative episodes with unpeopled images of the snowy mountains in the resort. And frequently, such images depict the mountains being cultivated by heavy machines, whose purposes remain unexplained, as though they are inexplicable. What these edits create is an enigmatic link between the story and the setting. The implication is that those instruments of manipulation, seemingly operating at their own will and unsupervised by people, have something to do with the development of the narrative.13 The human drama is being moulded by some unspecified, unstoppable force—a force majeure. This metaphorical suggestion ties in with the mystery of action that lies at the heart of the movie: our actions may seem mysterious to ourselves because— as Tomas claims about his flight—they appear uncontrollable, and they sometimes look mysterious to others—like Ebba’s panic reaction in the ending, as we shall see—because they feel out of character, so that others are left uncertain whether and how much these acts are intended by us or indicative of our character. It is by forging meaningful parallels or

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

123

comparisons like this that Force Majeure broadens its moral purview and deepens its ethical investigation. Its expansive viewpoint creates nuances and complexity. Image and Imitation The couple’s embarrassing situation in the hallway is prolonged as their keycard fails to work, so that they need to be let into the room by the janitor. This comical episode further undercuts the moment’s pathos and intensifies our laughter. Back in the privacy of the suite, Tomas continues to give in to tears and woe, and finally collapses on, seeking refuge in, a cushion, as though he is defeated—deflated. But instead of granting him the solace of a hug, Ebba paces back and forth in the room, seemingly pondering what to do, perhaps also keeping her distance. Then, as something like an ironic reversal of what happens during the avalanche, the children enter the room and throw themselves on top of their father, as if to shelter him from pain, repaying his lamentable flight earlier with compassion and generous acceptance. It is significant that Ebba doesn’t rush into this act of moral support but only reluctantly joins in when forced by her daughter. Unready to receive Tomas with open arms—both literally and figuratively—she participates in the family embrace, but her heart is not in it. She does it for the kids, made clear by the fact that she has been only concerned with comforting them (“Daddy’s sad. That’s all”). Ebba hasn’t come to terms with, and perhaps cannot reconcile with, what Tomas has done. The image of family togetherness with which the scene ends feels uncomfortably contrived (Fig. 5.2). The scene of reconciliation is presented in one single take. The distance of our viewing recalls the detached observation of the janitor and marks the distance required for the moment’s irony. (Imagine how much more emotional the scenario would be if it were shot as a series of facial close-­ ups.) Typically, such an image—depicting family members being closely together—suggests their togetherness. What this kind of tableau evokes is a conventional image of family happiness, which draws upon our intuitive conception of what a happy family looks like (it is intuitive perhaps because, as Tolstoy observes, “all happy families are alike”).14 However, Force Majeure strategically deploys such a tableau, at various points of the narrative, less to celebrate the family’s happiness, despite appearing to be so, but to invite us to reflect on its state of affairs. This reflexive aspect of the device is introduced in the opening scene, which features a composition of

124 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 5.2  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

Fig. 5.3  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

togetherness that actually highlights how togetherness is composed. Here, the family is having their holiday photos professionally taken (Fig. 5.3). The way that the photographer directs their poses mirrors the way the daughter orchestrates the family embrace during their “reconciliation”, and therefore puts into sharp relief its artificiality. Striking are the family’s matching, chromatically coordinated outfits, which serve as something like their team uniforms, emblematic of their solidarity (maybe a happy family requires its members to be alike).15 What this scene calls attention to are the effort and care that go into the reproduction of the family’s

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

125

picture-perfect togetherness. The moment deconstructs the artifice of its tableau to expose the theatricality of their happiness. The composition of togetherness, as we shall see, is a recurring figure in the final scenes of the movie. And it will be again employed reflexively, often ironically.16 Allowing the confusion between what is naturalistic and what is contrived, the figure offers an eloquent means to dramatise the film’s central tension between authenticity and its imitation. To better understand Force Majeure, not only should we be capable of distinguishing one from the other when needed but, most importantly, we also need to be able to appreciate the difficulty or impossibility of telling them apart. The dangerous resemblance or productive conflation between the two is sometimes precisely the point, a key to the film’s ambiguity. We will look at one such instance shortly. State of the Union One might see Force Majeure as a story of a happy family shaken up by an unfortunate event, of a marriage shattered by the husband’s untoward actions. Its resolution, accordingly, pivots upon the reconciliation of the couple and the restoration of the family—the retrieval of happiness. But this straightforward view is misleading. As the opening tableau suggests, the family’s merry intimacy is threatened by a sense of contrivance. The implication is that it is not exactly harmonious to begin with. Although we have no access to the life of the family outside the resort, there are clues of its infelicities (e.g., Tomas’ unhealthy devotion to work) throughout the narrative. The couple seems to have long repressed their grievances and bottled up their ugly feelings. So more accurately, the movie exposes the family’s fragility and explores its undercurrent. Instead of disrupting the couple’s happiness, the avalanche forces the latent blemishes of their relationship in the open. All of which suggests that Force Majeure’s resolution is not a matter of reinstating equilibrium. In fact, without an equilibrium to start with, it is the very possibility of such a thing with which the film is concerned. The central question is whether the couple can discover the necessary terms and conditions of the family’s happiness, reinvigorating their intimacy. What is vital, then, is the nature of their togetherness, of how they get back together. Together, but not in the way they were; not a return to the previous status quo but the achievement of a more viable, felicitous state of union.

126 

H. L. LAW

The moment in the hotel suite presents a reunion but it feels unsettling, unsustainable. Not only is it comparable to the opening tableau in its artificiality, the family reconciliation—pictured as a precarious heap of bodies—also suggests a sense of desperation. Notably, this image perpetuates the child-like caricature of Tomas, who is here in the protective embrace of his kids, under the wing of the maternal Ebba. If it isn’t an attractive portrayal of a patriarch who has regained the faith of his family, we may find something of a remedy to this in the subsequent scene.

“Redemption” A Heroic Rescue? The fact that Tomas has accounted for his flight—perhaps insincerely, however unconvincingly—means that the ball is now in Ebba’s court. Will she be able to let go of her frustration and resentment? Will she give him another chance for the sake of keeping the family together? The imminent end of the holiday speaks to our mounting anticipation of the fraught situation to come to an end. While the moment discussed earlier can be read as Tomas’ endeavour to put an end to things, his “forging” of a reconciliation, the sequence we are examining below appears to feature Ebba’s comparable effort, functioning as her answer to his unsuccessful “resolution”. Even at a cursory glance, this scene is equally theatrical as, if not more so than, the prior sequence of passionate confession and emotional reunion. And this is why the “happy ending” it proposes strikes us as something staged by Ebba. The scene depicts the family’s final ski in the resort. Although it is dangerously foggy in the mountains, Tomas remains convinced of the safety of their activity. As he leads the family to descend the slope, the camera presents them in a way that it looks like they are disappearing into the depth of the snowy-white frame, lost in the treacherous territory. Indeed, when we see the family again, there are only three of them. Ebba is missing, apparently strayed or stranded somewhere, shouting for and in need of help. Rushing to her rescue, Tomas instructs the children to stay put, then scurries into the fog and vanishes. The camera waits with the little ones. Similar to them, we await Tomas’ return, hopefully together with Ebba. The moment’s suspense—what is going to happen?—continues to grow as

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

127

the wait lengthens and gives way to apprehensiveness—has something gone wrong?—until eventually, rather belatedly (after a minute and a half of “nothing happening”), Tomas calls out to the kids. Then Vivaldi’s “Summer” promptly soars on the soundtrack. This gleeful, ever-quickening concerto cues the father’s triumphant entrance. We see him re-entering the scene, carrying Ebba in his arms, welcomed by the children in the foreground, like a knight returning from a gallant quest. “We made it!”, he exclaims twice, as if in disbelief of surviving the “ordeal” and therefore need to convince himself of it, to reassure his family about it. These words of relief, on the surface, refer to the rescue of Ebba in the snow but they can be equally a reference to the overcoming of the family crisis. The children’s keen reception of their father reflects their revived coincidence in him. He has just redeemed himself in their eyes by acting heroically, saving the day. And he probably knows it too. The family’s renewed bonding is commemorated by a tableau of togetherness (Fig. 5.4). However, the scene does not conclude by revelling this togetherness. The camera lingers on, not in order to savour the family reunion but to exhaust its sense of achievement. Tomas’ moment of pride is undercut in more than one way. Noticeably, the Vivaldi concerto hits an abrupt end as soon as he congratulates themselves for “making it”.17 Its absence allows us to recognise, on the one hand, how much the scene’s prior celebratory mood is in fact conveniently borrowed from this piece of music and, on the other, how anticlimactic the reunion actually feels.18 The moment, supposedly an emotional climax, hardly yields heightened expressions of

Fig. 5.4  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

128 

H. L. LAW

care and compassion. There is neither a sentimental speech nor an impassioned embrace. Instead, the reconciliation is marked by its quietness and the characters’ silence, except for Tomas, who is hungrily breathing loud and deep breaths. The result is a moment of awkwardness: Tomas is comically out of breath from his heroic deed, as though he is out of his depth, trying too hard for his own good. Most remarkable is Ebba’s strangely detached behaviour. Her first word after the rescue is a coldly delivered “good”, as if complimenting Tomas, a touch condescendingly, on narrowly passing a test. And her speedy recovery from the (unspecified) accident is astounding. Neither in pain nor in fright, she promptly gets up from the ground without help, dusts herself off, and walks away from the family to retrieve her skiing equipment alone. This readiness for practical business perhaps points to her reluctance—once again, like in the previous scene—to commit to the reunion. The tableau of togetherness in the snow disintegrates as soon as it is joyfully assembled. The scene ends on a note of disillusionment. A Necessary Pretence? All of which calls into question the “damsel in distress” scenario. More specifically, the suspicion is that Ebba doesn’t require to be but allows herself to be carried back by Tomas. That she willingly complies with his chivalrous gesture for dramatic effect, granting him the winning appearance of a hero. That is, Ebba has exaggerated the seriousness of the incident and overplayed her injury; in fact, there might not be any incident or injury in the first place (more on this later). On this view, the grand rescue is mainly for show, because it is what the kids need to regain their respect and admiration for their father. Ebba’s potential involvement in this show, however, by no means indicates her forgiveness of Tomas. As her aloof attitude after the rescue implies, she has yet to resign to his actions. Though she is able to repress her personal feelings for the good of the children, to retain the family in one piece. Interestingly, the equivalent scene in Downhill confirms the pretence of the “damsel in distress” scenario and is therefore something like an interpretation of the original. It is indeed a characteristic of the remake to interpret what is left uncertain in Force Majeure. The confirmation of the pretence is secured by a simple alternation of viewpoint. Instead of staying with the children, the camera follows the Tomas character, Pete (Will Ferrell), searching for and “rescuing” his wife Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

129

on the mountains. She is perfectly fine when he finds her, not at all in danger, and speaks of the need to redeem him in the eyes of the kids. As Pete admits in his earlier confession to Billie, what he finds unbearable, and consequently motivates his denial of the flight, is how his family looks at him in the wake of the avalanche, supposedly disapprovingly or disappointedly. But she also insists that if he wants to redeem himself in her eyes—implying he hasn’t—then he needs to earn it by being truly different. In other words, not only does Downhill spell out Force Majeure’s exploration of shame and social consciousness, Billie also gives voice to what Ebba would want from Tomas. His ability to be different is required to truly renew the family’s togetherness. The clarified scenario in the remake puts into stark relief the ambiguous effect of the original treatment. But this isn’t an ambiguity of meaning. Both the moment’s implication of a pretence and the motive for Ebba’s pretending (to redeem Tomas) are readily discernible. Instead, what remains uncertain is the degree and detail of her involvement. A modest claim on the issue might admit the existence of the accident but maintain the embellished dimension of the rescue. But one could also surmise that Ebba has engineered the whole situation, similar to what Billie does. And that would explain her ill-advised, out-of-character agreement with Tomas to proceed with the ski, despite the alarming weather conditions. Put differently, it might not be his judgement that she trusts but Ebba needs a chance to fabricate an “accident”.19 This reading further invites us to ponder when her scheme is conceived. To which one could point to the analogous moments in the movies, both right before the ski, where the wives are separated or visually singled out from the family, seemingly alone with their thoughts, planning their next move.20 And finally, there is the equally difficult, perhaps irresolvable question of Tomas’ part in the pretence: is he aware of it at all? Is he, like Pete, let in on the scheme by his wife when he finds her in the snow? In any case, there isn’t sufficient grounds for us to determine or reasonably debate what precisely happens during or behind the rescue. It is therefore suitable that a thick snow fog permeates the scene, as if signifying its impenetrability. But we can speculate about the event more or less justifiably—and we are indeed being encouraged to do so. If the possibility of speculation, as Chap. 3 argues, deepens the political implications of Ten, we may similarly ask how the allusion to a pretence enhances our appreciation of Force Majeure’s redemption scenario.

130 

H. L. LAW

To inquire into this question requires us to probe why the moment is presented ambiguously. And this entails a reflection on the significance of the scene’s specific viewpoint. We can start by observing the camera’s alignment with the kids as indicative of the movie’s expansive narrative perspective, which, as suggested earlier, takes into account the children’s role in the family reconciliation. By staying with them, we are invited to see how they see the rescue—as a heroic endeavour. And this is indeed the version of the event that both Tomas and Ebba would want them to see (regardless of whether the incident is staged). So even though we are placed in an epistemic position close to that of the kids throughout the scene, the camera is equally, in an important sense, complicit with the parents, motivated by and also materialising their wishes. However, it soon becomes clear that we don’t really read the rescue in the way the couple desire. I have analysed how the film undermines Tomas’ winning image in narrative and stylistic terms. It is also worth pointing out that one of the sharpest ironies about the rescue is actually emphasised by the very viewpoint that purports to make possible its ideal appearance. Specifically, the long wait with the children calls attention to the fact that Tomas has left them alone and unattended in perilous terrain, jeopardising their safety. In other words, the heroic act he is applauded for is also recognised as founded upon a blameworthy decision.21 The camera presents both his valiant effort and his poor judgement. This indicates complicity but also critique. What the earlier discussion hinges upon is two conceptions of viewpoint: that of the movie and that of the character. Strictly speaking, the latter is a function of the former. But their distinction is worth maintaining because the possibility of their difference—though still a function of the movie’s viewpoint—is an indispensable creative resource in films. A good example is dramatic irony, which involves the discrepancy between what a film allows us to know and what a character knows.22 However, there are also occasions where an overlap between the two kinds of viewpoint are exploited to meaningful effects. One interesting case is when a film’s perspective appears to be driven by a character; like how in the rescue scene the camera’s choice of staying with the children fulfils the wish of Tomas and Ebba. Gilberto Perez calls such a scenario, where “[t]he camera […] identif[ies] with a character’s agency as a mover of the story”, efficient identification (2019, 251). It is by exploiting the affinities and divergences between the two types of viewpoint, by employing both dramatic irony and efficient

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

131

identification, that Force Majeure’s presentation of the rescue creates conflicting suggestions and achieves a sense of inconclusiveness. And this results in a more nuanced portrayal of Tomas’ “redemption” compared with Downhill’s unambiguous treatment of the scenario. The distinction between the two types of viewpoint will be again useful in our interpretation of Force Majeure’s ending.

“Reversal” Downhill’s Resolution The two versions of the “redemption” scene couldn’t be more dissimilar in their meanings and effects. While the remake presents an ironic solution to its narrative conundrum (the presentation of this solution, however, is rather unironic), the original proposes a “happy reconciliation” dogged and unsettled by ambiguity. Downhill offers a resolution by means of Pete’s promise of change, gesturing towards the possibility of a genuine renewal of togetherness. By contrast, the “redemption” in Force Majeure resolves things only on the surface level. The moment has the look of a reconciliation but hardly feels like one; it just doesn’t seem like Ebba has reconciled to what Tomas has done. If the scene has forced an end to the family crisis, it nevertheless fails to lay the troubles it incites to rest. There are lingering uncertainties. We are left in suspense. Having settled its narrative questions, Downhill proceeds to end with a brief epilogue.23 As Pete and Billie gather with their younger couple friends in front of the hotel to say goodbye, a big pile of snow falls on the group from the roof. All of them dodge it in the nick of time, by breaking up their joined hands and jumping away from the others. Their separation is illustrated in pictorial terms, highlighted in an overhead image. Then the film ends with a sequence of shot/reverse-shot, in which we see the central couple exchanging looks with each other: (1) Pete seems to be at a loss, perhaps looking for Billie’s response; (2) she sighs a sigh that simultaneously suggests relief and disbelief; (3) he sighs too, but hesitantly, as though parroting her, unsure about what she means yet compelled to agree with it. The incident is a version of the avalanche; the scale is smaller, but the scenario is analogous. It is as though Pete is being tested for the second time, being given a second chance. However, he appears to have failed once again: neither able to stand by Billie nor to recognise or acknowledge what he did. (Though, interestingly, in this case, one could

132 

H. L. LAW

say the same about her.) This is ironic because only earlier in the day that he insists he could and would change. But this irony is not biting but comical, in the sense that the folly of repeating the same mistake is funny because it is ironic. Earlier in the film, Pete flippantly speaks of being “hit with a big dump of snow”, and as a result inadvertently upsets his family by evoking the memories of the avalanche (Freud might not think of such a joke as unconscious or incidental, or just a joke for that matter). The ending evinces a comparable joke structure: serving as the punchline of the movie, the little accident here also risks unsettling the resolution previously achieved in the “redemption” scene. As we shall see, the final scene of Force Majeure threatens a similar and a similarly ambiguous reversal effect. And this is why the conclusion of Downhill remains something of an interpretation of the original ending, despite their differences down to every single plot detail. End of the Tunnel? The Vivaldi concerto resumes at the very end of Force Majeure’s “redemption” scene and serves as a bridge to yet another tableau of togetherness. What we believed was the cessation of the music is in fact only a pregnant punctuation. The concerto again lends its celebratory mood to the film. But since we’ve just learned about the possibility of what we see to have opportunistically borrowed such a meaning, we are now inclined to approach any ready identification between sight and sound with greater caution, watching out for signs of irony and parody. Indeed, there is a sense that the image is trying to ride the joyful mood of the music, to deploy it rhetorically. Unlike in Downhill, the family’s exit from the resort is depicted as a family occasion. In one single take, the characters walk from the depth of the frame to the fore, working their way out of a tunnel while the camera slowly zooms into them. The overall effect is symbolic, as though to announce “they have arrived”, having overcome their crisis as a team.24 Aligning across the frame (and symmetrically so), the moment recalls the photo session at the start of the movie, evoking the image of a happy family. And like that image in the opening, the current tableau also courts a sense of theatricality. Only that this theatricality seems to partake in a commemoration and not a deconstruction of the family’s togetherness. For the most part, the family members are framed through the mouth of the tunnel, which incidentally resembles a box of nesting frames, a proscenium arch of sort. This appears to be their curtain call (Fig. 5.5).

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

133

Fig. 5.5  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

All these details endow the moment with a sense of triumph. But such a suggestion is at odds with our understanding of the current state of the couple’s union, as the last scene pointedly calls into question both Tomas’ rescue and Ebba’s feelings. Moreover, the characters do not look glad or grateful throughout the walk. In particular, Ebba seems distracted, especially seen alongside Tomas, who marches ahead in determination—perhaps pridefully? (his countenance is obscured by his sunglasses)—while she constantly looks left and right to check on the children, as though there are other concerns on her mind. Seemingly marking the end of the family crisis, the shot raises the question of what is going to happen. What is awaiting them at the end of the tunnel, so to speak? In fact, as they aren’t actually shown exiting the tunnel, perhaps their misadventure isn’t over yet? Will things work out for the family at the end? How will the film end? Studying Film Endings All films end. The end is where a movie’s shape and suggestion finally fall into place. So, it is also what puts things in perspective.25 This is why how a film closes is of great importance. Not only can the end illuminate what we have seen but it may also revise what we have hitherto known and believed, reconfiguring the implications of details or renewing our mode of seeing. And by putting things in perspective, the ending proposes a viewpoint, as it were, from which to inspect the meaning of the whole and

134 

H. L. LAW

appraise the significance of the parts. The attainment of this “viewpoint” therefore makes possible a deepened understanding of the movie, a more satisfying account of its rhetoric and achievement. This is why the study of how a film closes is of special interest.26 But while such a “viewpoint” conditions how we read, it is also vital to point out it is not a given but equally a construction of reading. We only start recognising what this “viewpoint” entails as we interpret, and this recognition in turn guides our interpretation, so in a way also guiding how the “viewpoint” itself to be understood. To say this is to suggest that the study of a film ending—the inquiry into why it ends the way it does—involves the search of a critical viewpoint. And this search is often ongoing, theoretically never-ending, until we reach an appropriate rest, temporarily.27 Nothing comes after the end. So, in an important sense, it is also where everything is at stake. Indeed, the ending appears to possess the exceptional power of defining a movie. According to Barbara Herrnstein Smith, the finality of the end “confirm[s] retrospectively, as if with a final stamp of approval, the valued qualities of the entire experience we have just sustained” (1968, 4). But such a power can be an excessive burden; the ending bears the possibility of altering our perception of a movie, of changing everything about it for us. And such a burden is all the more apparent when an ending is experienced negatively, when it seems to “ruin” what a film has otherwise accomplished. Yvette Bíró likens a “hasty resolution” to a “short circuit [that] can ‘extinguish’ the entire work” (2008, 203). And Thomas Sutcliffe notes that we tend to find “disappointing endings” harder to forgive because endings are where films become “incorrigible”, so that their disappointment cannot be “rehabilitated by what follows” like uninspired beginnings do (2000, 8). All of which suggests that the end is both something like a test and a testament to a film’s achievement. That’s why it is fruitful to analyse and assess an ending by placing it in relation to the rest of the work. In other words, the study of how a film ends, among other things, involves the consideration of part and whole. And this typically concerns whether the ending is a fitting conclusion of what comes before. This is made clear by some of our colloquial evaluative shorthands for disappointing endings such as “cop-out” and “tacked-on” (again, it is when an ending fails that we become acutely aware of the nature of endings). The former indicates a failure of commitment, a betrayal of the original artistic cause; the latter describes a case of aesthetic incongruity, a tactless addition of unproductive materials. Put simply, the concern with the fittingness of

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

135

an ending is the concern with whether it is appropriate, productive, or rewarding. The ambiguity of Force Majeure’s ending lies in its meaning and merit as a part, its contribution to the whole. Its unfitting nature is underlined by several reviews of the film. For Jonathan Romney (2015), the conclusion “is a coda that feels a bit superfluous”, adding nothing to the movie but belabouring its “point”. And Richard Brody (undated) is outright dismissive of the ending for its “convenient resolutions” and “superficial ironies”, implying that it is both unearned and uninteresting. The two reviewers neither explore the ending in detail nor explain their evaluation, but I suspect a main source of their discontents concerns a key event in the scene, stemming from its blatancy and seeming opportunism. Specifically, this event is something like a reversal of what happens during the avalanche and, as such, it appears to effect an all-too-neat resolution of the narrative issues. The ending therefore feels “unnatural” as a conclusion and courts the suspicion of a cheap or clumsy contrivance which, as we shall see, simultaneously evokes a “cop-out” and a “tacked-on”. Not only does the scene define the film for us—“altering” the film’s suggestions— but it also changes things for us—throwing into doubt the prior accomplishment of the film. It is a questionable ending that raises many questions. And being ambivalent towards the “viewpoint” that it proposes, we are uncertain about the appropriate way of understanding it and its relationship to the rest of the movie. Ebba’s “Flight” Things are never truly over until the end. The family find themselves in yet another trying situation in the final scene. The fact that dramatic events happen in swift succession in Force Majeure suggests the deliberate design of the drama, flagging up the contrivance of the events. The situation concerns the family’s bumpy coach ride down the mountains. Although they are not in immediate mortal danger, it is evident that their driver has difficulties negotiating the narrow and winding path with the mammoth vehicle. Notably, the moment enables a complex view of Ebba’s reaction. On the one hand, in several medium shots, she looks terribly stressed by the drive and becomes restless, agitated. This distances us from the character by framing her anxiety as excessive, especially in light of the passive watchfulness of the other passengers. She is right to worry but she gives way to it alarmingly quickly. On the other hand, the camera invites us to

136 

H. L. LAW

acknowledge Ebba’s experience by identifying with her affectively.28 Most of the later ride is filmed from a position approximate to her seat. We therefore have a strong sense of how she would perceive the precarious drive. From this perspective—which we take to be hers—the windscreen is enormous, extremely close, nearly as big as the frame.29 And this enlarged view magnifies the impact of the coach’s dangerous manoeuvres, its abrupt starts and stops. The effect is almost visceral (especially if we watch the film on a big screen). It feels like the vehicle might lose control at any second; every bend of the road seems to threaten an awful accident. The scene invites us to take Ebba’s distress as overwrought but understandable. But this view loses hold as soon as she shows signs of going out of control. And this is signalled by the remarkable moment when the character walks into (what is previously taken to be) her own point-of-view shot, runs to and screams at the driver, demanding to disembark immediately. She then sits near him, next to the door, perhaps to monitor his driving and prepare for her imminent departure. It is not before long when the driver makes another mistake. This time, Ebba couldn’t hold it anymore but storms out of the vehicle alone, almost in tears, seemingly having a breakdown. We observe all the above from her “optical viewpoint”, so in a sense acting as her proxy, as though she is “split”, witnessing herself unravel. The composure of this viewpoint further evokes the poise of her “normal” self, and therefore serves as a contrast to the Ebba we see out there. If our adoption of her perspective fosters emotional identification earlier, it also promotes critical distance now. And this distance encourages us to think of Ebba as not quite herself at the moment. In this way, the coach ride mirrors the avalanche scene. Not unlike Tomas, Ebba appears to have acted instinctively. And this, again like in Tomas’ case, unfortunately leads her to “desert” her family and neglect her children. The reversed scenario then seems to suggest something like this: similar to Tomas, Ebba is also liable to be overtaken by her impulse and woefully “let down” by it. Put differently, her selfless behaviour during the avalanche is no guarantee of her praiseworthy actions in other dire situations. Accordingly, Tomas’ objectionable flight should be taken as an isolated incident, and not as conclusive evidence of his moral defect. The action is regrettable but not unforgivable. After all, it is a very human possibility that we fail ourselves despite ourselves, failing our moral ideal and responsibilities, against our better judgement. In other words, the scene “redeems” Tomas—but at best partially, as we shall see below—in a more

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

137

subtle and effective way than the rescue in the snow. But is this “redemption” justified? It is important to observe some key differences between the two scenarios. While Ebba’s flight is potentially an uncontrollable action caused by a panic attack, Tomas’ is dogged by the possibility of a decision, as he lifts and promptly drops his son to pick up an item on the table before running away (see note 4). In other words, if Ebba seems less accountable for her action than Tomas is for his deed, then we also want to say that her “failing” is not on a par with his moral failure. That her flight is actually excusable, and his desertion demands further explanation. In fact, there is a sense that Ebba’s flight, especially compared with Tomas’, is not much of a desertion, as the children are not in any imminent danger in a stationary vehicle. On the other hand, the bigger-than-life threat of the avalanche calls for Tomas’ urgent attention to his family. Therefore, he is not just blameworthy for fleeing but also for not acting on this urgency. His failure here is partly the failure to act. It is then ironic that Tomas is “redeemed” by a scenario in which he does nothing. He has neither said anything about nor acted in response to the reckless coach ride.30 While, in fact, a more sensible course of action, in light of the increasingly hazardous scenario, is arguably closer to what Ebba has done, to challenge the driver or at least raise the issue with him. So, it is also ironic that Ebba’s “overreaction” is, to a considerable extent, a reasonable reaction. But we are nevertheless prompted to read it as irrational, largely due to Loven Kongsli’s persuasive performance of fidgets and fright, which are often intensified in medium close-ups. Moreover, the longer camera distance later in the scene promotes the registration of the character’s erratic bodily movements and ungainly agitation. Ebba’s instability is further pitted against Tomas’ clear-headedness. He remains calm when other passengers rush to vacate the coach upon Ebba’s exit, and takes care of his children in a reassuring manner. The episode paints an unfavourable portrait of Ebba. Tomas’ “redemption” is indeed made possible by Ebba’s fall into “disfavour”. And this points to its questionable dimension. Specifically, since the scenario erodes Ebba’s moral high ground, it seems like a humbling lesson for her; further robbing her of some of her dignity, it is also an embarrassing, if not humiliating, experience. And these feel all the more brutal for the scene follows the character’s “staging” of the rescue. It is as though she is being punished for that, for gaining the upper hand in the marriage and in the moral drama. In fact, from a storytelling perspective,

138 

H. L. LAW

it is curious, rather unconventional, that Ebba receives her “comeuppance” when Tomas is the one who has erred and strayed, and in need of reformation, moral education.31 This exposes the movie to the suspicion of favouritism towards Tomas—excusing and exonerating his wrongdoings—at the expense of Ebba. The ending of Force Majeure appears to endorse a partisan point-of-view. Inappropriate Identification? Indeed, earlier in the chapter, I have referred to the possibility of a movie to identify with the perspective of its character, in the sense of being motivated or shaped by it. Now, having examined Force Majeure’s final three scenes in some detail, it becomes evident that this idea may afford a useful way of reframing their significance. Note that such an identification admits of types and degrees. The three moments represent different positions towards Tomas. The scene inside the hotel flaunts its critical distance by mocking the character’s atonement, highlighting its theatricality. It ironises the family “reconciliation”. The viewpoint of the “redemption” scene is somewhat self-conflicting. On the one hand, the camera adopts a position that privileges the appearance of the rescue—and not its details— making possible Tomas’ heroic image. But on the other hand, the movie undermines the credibility of the rescue through a whole host of other stylistic means, making it impossible to miss the likeliness of a pretence. Finally, we have seen how the episode on the coach presents a “redemption” of Tomas to the detriment of Ebba’s moral standing. By saying this is something of the film’s identification with Tomas, I am not suggesting that it carries out his will, or that he seeks to punish her; though he might unconsciously want to undermine his accuser. But the film seems to sympathise with the character by offering a narrative solution that serves as his convenient “acquittal”. In that sense, the ending works as a wish-fulfilment. We can therefore say that Force Majeure’s position towards Tomas moves from that of critique to ambivalence to complicity. Or, put differently, the film seems to trade its loose alignment with Ebba for an identification with Tomas. And this is one reason why the final scene feels puzzling, disconcerting. It defies our expectations—developed throughout the narrative—of the film’s moral order. The ambiguity of the resolution partly arises from this subversion of viewpoint and its seeming moral inappropriateness.

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

139

Inappropriate Resolution? If resolution can be conceived as a movie’s answer to its questions, then one useful way of exploring Force Majeure’s resolution is to examine how it engages with the film’s questions and functions as their answers.32 The final scene works an answer by revisiting a key narrative question. While the rescue in the fog has already somewhat “redeemed” Tomas, the coach ride reintroduces that issue by providing another way of answering it, as though to replace the previous answer, correcting that ironic “redemption”. However, on reflection, we realise that this new answer is only an incomplete answer; it might be a justification of Tomas’ flight but remains no account of his stubborn denial of it. Yet what is most blameworthy about Tomas, and therefore most in need of an account, is the denial. Leaving this prominent and difficult question unanswered, the ending feels unsatisfying. The partial “redemption” is hardly a true redemption. And letting Tomas off the hook, the resolution risks trivialising the movie’s prior concern; its astute, if often comical, study of the character’s moral responsibility. In fact, this inquiry into individual accountability is somewhat nullified at the end by the appeal to the universal condition of human fallibility. This arouses the suspicion of both a “cop-out” (a failure of commitment) and a “tacked-on” (an unearned solution). There is a sense the resolution only answers the movie’s questions selectively or misleadingly, as though it is seeking to “rewrite” these questions for us, to the benefit of Tomas, for the sake of his “acquittal”. And this is one reason why it feels inappropriate. But the ending’s questionable moral complicity might not be indefensible. In fact, one could argue that it is part of Force Majeure’s reimagination of the disaster movie, its provocative way of partaking in the genre’s interrogation of ethical values (recall Sontag). Specifically, not only does the film depict a narrative scenario in which a character’s moral responsibility is under scrutiny but it further implicates itself in that scrutiny by enacting the viewpoint of that character through means of style and structure, making moral responsibility a subject of (its) aesthetics. In other words, not unlike Ten (see Chap. 3), Force Majeure explores ethics with film form. If this is the case, then the question is whether the movie successfully convinces us that its “identification” with Tomas is not an unthinking endorsement but a strategy to stimulate reflection. We need some indicators of the movie’s critical standpoint.

140 

H. L. LAW

Equilibrium? Let’s look at the rest of the ending. Having abandoned the coach, the passengers continue their journey on foot. Some time has passed; the day has turned darker, and colder. But they still haven’t reached their destination. In a medium close-up, we see Ebba and the daughter from the front, walking towards us, before the camera starts moving to the right slowly, as if to unfurl a picture, revealing other characters: Tomas and the son—then Mats—and eventually Mats’ girlfriend. All appear to be lost in their own thoughts. The physical interval between them, emphasised and enhanced by the lateral movement, reflects their isolation. Then the camera reverses its direction of travel. And two notable interactions ensue. First, Ebba asks Mats to help carry her daughter, instead of entrusting Tomas with the task. This is suggestive of the couple’s unresolved estrangement. Shortly after, Tomas accepts a cigarette from a stranger despite his initial decline of the offer. Seemingly unaware of his father’s smoking habit, the son asks about it. To which Tomas plainly confirms (“Yes, I do”), but only after a sigh—which also sounds like a quiet chuckle—as though being surprised by his own action, relieved by the possibility of admitting it. The camera pulls back to include the whole group in the frame. Force Majeure ends here, with a tableau of togetherness. But this time, it transcends the family and marks the coming together of a makeshift community (Fig. 5.6). In an interview, Östlund speaks of the passengers heading down the mountains “in solidarity”. But this is at odds with Ebba’s act of distrust as

Fig. 5.6  Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

141

well as the emphasis on separation that we see during the camera movement. More accurately, the moment depicts a group of strangers sticking to each other because they are stuck, in some middle of nowhere. Though the image of the characters walking towards us echoes the earlier tableau of the tunnel (see Fig. 5.5). If the family’s march in that tableau signifies that they are reaching the end of the crisis, here, still walking, at the close of the film, it is as though they still haven’t reached that end, still working their way out of the crisis. The uncertainty of their future is made evident by the family’s unsustainable “equilibrium” at the end. As we have seen, things “balance” out at the close of Force Majeure not through the reforming of Tomas but through the undermining of Ebba. The “equality” between the couple, in other words, is far from a desirable state of harmony. Rather, it entails the uncharitable recognition that they are now equally blameworthy, both having failed their family. There is a sense that this recognition is the shared guilt, the mutual understanding, that binds the couple together. But this knowledge affects them differently. If Tomas’ act of smoking hints at relief, Ebba’s silent look of regret points to resignation. What is to him a grateful reunion is to her a thankless one. He is a hero (to the children) despite his desertion and denials while she suffers from shame because she is “responsible” for getting everyone into this awful situation. (And this is particularly awful for her because shame enlarges in the presence of others.) In a way, the closing tableau is a picture of people being stuck with each other. If it registers togetherness at all, it is not a happy togetherness. In fact, it can be said that the last image is less about togetherness than self-possession. It seems to be all about Tomas. Foregrounded in the centre of the frame, walking slightly ahead of the others, he is cast as the patriarch who is leading everyone out of the predicament. And this appearance of authority is augmented by the act of smoking, which evokes the look of cool confidence and calm control. Is the ending meant to be a favourable portrait of Tomas? Östlund claims that the character’s admittance of smoking is “a positive step” (ibid.), presumably because it signals his honest acceptance of who he is, which in turn stands for his possibility of change. However, in light of the character’s unearned “redemption”— that he is not reformed but unjustly acquitted at the end—his self-­assurance here feels hollow, suggestive of misguided complacency. And that’s hardly a reason to be hopeful about the future of the family. Having the characters walking towards instead of away from us at the end (the latter’s sense

142 

H. L. LAW

of withdrawal and closure is perhaps more suited to a happy ending), it is as though the film confronts us with its uncomfortable “resolution”, its challenging moral enquires. Rhetorical Unreliability But my claims about the ending is conditional. Specifically, whether we see the hollowness of Tomas’ “positive step”, whether we recognise the complacency underneath his confidence, is dependent on whether we interpret his “redemption” as unjustified. The orientation of our reading hinges upon our critical perspective, our understanding of the film thus far. Earlier in this chapter, I suggested that the study of how a film closes involves the search of an appropriate critical viewpoint. Serving to orientate our account, such a viewpoint is instructive to the analysis of ambiguity. Our search is made possible because the end, by putting things in perspective, offers something like a comprehensive analytical position to assess the movie’s meaning and significance. However, it is crucial to maintain the possible difference between these two positions: a rewarding standpoint is informed but not guaranteed by a “full” perspective. This is the case with Force Majeure. A pertinent critical standpoint is difficult to obtain due to the film’s unstable, somewhat puzzling overall perspective. On the one hand, the movie invites us to view Tomas from a critical distance, bolstered by its uses of irony, especially through the deployment of the imagery of togetherness. But on the other hand, specifically at the end, the movie appears to display favouritism towards the anti-hero, as though acting out his wants. There is a sense that the film, as a whole, is torn between two opposing forces, oscillating between conflicting viewpoints on the character. Such a self-contradiction is not in itself problematic. What is perplexing is that not only is the stance with which the film identifies—and therefore invites us to entertain—questionable but, most importantly, the unforewarned change of stance feels like a betrayal of its previous commitment. This rhetorical unreliability is a source of ambiguity. We question the “morality”—specifically the sincerity—of the film like we question the conduct of its main character; the two critical activities are inextricably linked, and that adds to the complexity of our inquiry. Leading to more quandaries than answers, Force Majeure’s ethical investigation results in discomfiting moral ambivalence, leaving us in a difficult state of reflective uncertainty. Ultimately, we don’t know which is really “on trial” morally, the movie or the viewer.33 Perhaps both.

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

143

We are not sure whether Force Majeure is “confused” or being confusing, or maybe we have missed or underappreciated its point. The critical ramifications of our reflective uncertainty take the centre stage in next chapter.

Notes 1. Seen in this way, we can say that a prominent question of disaster movies revolves around the nature of our moral responsibility, of whether “normal obligations” still apply in exceptional circumstances, or whether these circumstances in fact call for “special obligations”. This book reflects on how individual movies present distinctive inquiries. But the exploration of genre specific questions is also a fruitful avenue of study. Chapter 4 has touched upon the investigation of human agency in film noirs, which is the central subject of Robert Pippin’s book on the genre (2012). 2. Put another way, the movie is more interested in the reach and the nature of “normal obligations”. 3. An alternative suggestion is made by Mats. But it sounds too absurd to be a reasonable account of the flight. According to this proposal, Tomas ensures his own survival in full awareness that he could later come back to rescue his family. This hypothesis rings false as it exaggerates the purposefulness of Tomas’ action. 4. Philosophers call such a situation, where an agent commits an action of moral merit or demerit under circumstances beyond his or her control, the issue of “moral luck” (see Nagel 1979). In his article on Force Majeure’s exploration of moral questions, Christopher Falzon speaks of the film “an ethical experiment in which the main character is put to the test of experience and falls woefully short. It is implied that human beings, engaged in a perilous encounter with the world, are constitutionally susceptible to failure” (2017, 295). Falzon gives a good account of the moral significance of Tomas’ flight. However, he seems to downplay what I see as an equally important aspect of the film’s ethical exploration: the character’s reluctance to acknowledge and account for his action. As a result, Falzon has a more generous view of Tomas’ moral failure than I do. 5. In fact, Tomas briefly lifts his son, perhaps intending to carry him to safety, before dropping him to pick up an item on the table. This swift gesture is easy to miss because of the commotion of the moment. But its recognition would complicate our moral understanding of Tomas. It seems to suggest an impulse to protect his son. Though it is not followed through but surpassed by the urge—or is it a choice?—to take something else with him. It is important that this item is unidentified, as its revelation may encourage

144 

H. L. LAW

us to reach an adamant moral judgement of Tomas (imagine what he picks up is a luxury watch). 6. The shot also juxtaposes Tomas’ action with the controlled avalanche, inviting a comparison. If the titular force majeure refers to the incident, we are reminded that it can be equally an attribute of the action. (The fact that Force Majeure is the international English title of the film—it is called Turist in Swedish—doesn’t make the comparison any less valid.) The film advances a metaphorical connection by putting the disastrous effects of the latter on a par with the destructive potential of the former. 7. The shot of the sunrise before the sequence seems to suggest that. Perhaps the scene, more accurately, happens on the fifth day of the vacation. 8. Östlund frequently refers to the scene as the “worst man cry ever” in interviews. 9. As Roland Barthes suggests: “By weeping, I want to impress someone, to bring pressure to bear upon someone” (2002, 182). 10. Then our interpretive effort entails less the settlement on one meaning but the gauging of the relative contribution of these elements. Uncertainty may encourage an impulse to ascertain, to treat it like an either/or question. But what is called for sometimes is the assessment of weight and significance. I shall return to this later in the chapter. 11. This is not to suggest Ebba is getting great pleasure from shaming Tomas. The experience of recounting is difficult for her too, as indicated by her emotional distress. Moreover, she may feel embarrassed about making a scene and embarrassed for Tomas’ cowardly action. 12. What the children think and feel matters a great deal to Ebba, who is established as the more caring and considerate parent of the two. She often explicitly voices her concerns about the children, making her decisions based on their needs. This is, however, thrown into question at the end of the movie. 13. The film’s final scene presents an instance where a machine seems to possess a life of its own. 14. The rest of this famous first sentence of Anna Karenina reads “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. 15. But the scene also hints at the trouble underneath the family’s attractive facade. The most suggestive detail being the couple’s little bump of the heads. This minor accident prefigures the major clash between them. 16. The recurrence of the tableau enhances its ironic possibilities. Motifs, as Raymond Durgnat notes, “change meaning each time they’re repeated, they easily carry ironies” (2002, 102). 17. He might as well say “I made it!” instead of “we made it!” earlier in the scene, considering he is the one who is on “trial” in the movie and therefore needs “making it” the most.

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

145

18. Also, the concerto has been thus far used to accompany those unpeopled images of heavy machinery working on the snowscape. That is, it is associated with the themes of control and cultivation. Keyed to Tomas’ gallant act, the music seems only to suggest the act’s comparable contrivance. 19. This points to an uncomfortable suggestion. Allowing the kids to ski in such circumstances, Ebba, like Tomas, is putting them at risk. And her doing that knowingly, as opposed to his misguided judgement, makes it more questionable morally. 20. In Force Majeure, it is the two facial close-ups of Ebba when the family is travelling to the top of the mountains. In Downhill, it is when Pete and the children have left Billie to ski down the slope alone. The fact that Pete has suddenly changed his mind about skiing—claiming he is tired and wants a cocoa—despite his excitement about it earlier in the morning and pretty much throughout the narrative, is worth commenting. There is a sense that he changes his mind in order to relieve his children from the “obligation” to ski with him. Earlier in the scene, one of the sons has finally admitted that he hates skiing. And this seems to finally trigger Pete’s realisation of his selfishness; asking his family to do what he wants to do instead of finding things they can happily do together for the holiday. This seeming realisation makes Pete a more sympathetic character than Tomas. Indeed, if Pete is portrayed as foolish in a very human sense—he makes mistakes but he is also willing to make amends—Tomas is cowardly in an objectionable way—ashamed of what he did, he therefore shamelessly denies it, pretending it didn’t happen, waiting for things to blow over. 21. His poor judgement here perhaps stems from his rush to prove himself to his family. The fact that he rises up to the occasion, even though by taking a questionable course, suggests that he might deserve a second chance. 22. See MacDowell (2016). 23. Michael Walker speaks of the “two endings” of a film: the resolution and the epilogue. “The resolution sorts out the problems the film has set up […] and the epilogue shows the stability thereby achieved” (2020, 7). 24. I am aware that what my claim evokes—”the light at the end of the tunnel” and “somebody has arrived”—are (as far as I know) English expressions. So, it would seem I am imposing these meanings on a Swedish film made by a Swedish filmmaker. But I believe my reading is justifiable. For what these expressions suggest or imply—the endurance of difficulty and the obtainment of success—are hardly cultural specific suggestions. Accordingly, when I speak of the scene in these terms, I am not imposing cultural specific meanings on it. Instead, my reading invokes the expressions as something like figures of speech, in the sense that criticism often calls for and can be enriched by the act of speaking figuratively. For a dis-

146 

H. L. LAW

cussion of the importance and benefits of exercising our critical imaginativeness, see Grant (2013). 25. Both ends of a narrative—the beginning and the ending—are not only evitable but also functional because, as Frank Kermode suggests, they “endow the interval with meanings” (2000, 190). 26. All these are also reasons why the study of film ending—a related but distinct subject—is of special interest. But of course, the study of ending as a component of film requires the sustained consideration of how a variety of individual movies end. Also, it is interesting that the study of film ending has generated a much more substantial body of critical literature in comparison to the study of film opening. A notable recent attempt of the latter is Insdorf (2017). 27. This is another way to say that close reading is predicated on the idea that the practice of reading cannot be totally, terminally closed. 28. Gilberto Perez speaks of “affective identification” as a camera’s “identif[ication] with the movement of characters whose feelings it thereby draws us into” (2019, 251). The concept is applicable here even though Ebba’s “movement” in her point-of-view shots is technically the movement of the coach. 29. By likening the windscreen to the movie screen, the film also likens Ebba’s experience to the experience of movie-watching: that is, the experience of being in the presence of a world in which one cannot intervene. The comparison highlights her feeling of helplessness. 30. And this is simply no comparison to what Ebba has done in the reversed scenario: staying with and shielding the children. In fact, the praiseworthiness of her action is not at all remarked upon in the film but taken for granted as a parental responsibility. But, if to fail morally is human, instinctively human, as the coach ride scene seems to suggest, then Ebba’s action should deserve some recognition. The film’s neglect of it seems to me symptomatic of its unfair treatment of the character towards the end, which I shall discuss soon. 31. It is a prevalent element of what Stanley Cavell (1981) calls the remarriage comedy that the reconciliation of the central couple requires the re-­ education of (at least) one of the partners. Such an education makes possible the equality between them and therefore also makes possible their life together. One could argue that Force Majeure contributes to the development of this genre (it is key to Cavell’s idea of the genre—and genre in general—that its features are open to continuous revision). But as we have seen, the “equality” between Tomas and Ebba, secured by her punishment and not his education, is only problematic. If Force Majeure is a remarriage comedy, the remarriage it presents is dark and its comedy is wry.

5  UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 

147

32. In film scholarship, the issue of narrative resolution is typically addressed in relation to closure, in studies on closure. (The connection between the topics is highlighted by the fact that both can be conceived in terms of questions-and-answers, see Carroll [2007] for such an account of closure.) As a result, these discussions may not engage with, or at least not directly explore, the appropriateness of a resolution. My analysis here, focusing on how Force Majeure answers its questions, is inspired by V.F. Perkins’ brief remark (1993) on Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959), in which he sees the appropriateness of its resolution not as a matter of answering all the dramatic questions but the satisfying answering of the pertinent ones. If this is also how the film achieves closure, then Perkins’ account further serves as a corrective to Carroll’s theorisation of narrative closure, where he proposes closure as a work’s successful answering of all its narrative questions. For detailed studies on closure in film, see MacDowell (2013) and Neupert (1995). 33. This echoes Stanley Cavell’s remark on modern art. Complicating issues of the genuine and the fraudulent, this kind of artwork is capable of inspiring profound critical uncertainty: “The only exposure of false art lies in recognizing something about the object itself, but something whose recognition requires exactly the same capacity as recognizing the genuine article. It is a capacity not insured by understanding the language in which it is composed, and yet we may not understand what is said; nor insured by the healthy functioning of the senses, though we may be told we do not see or that we fail to hear something; nor insured by the aptness of our logical powers, though what we may have missed was the object’s consistency or the way one thing followed from another. We may have missed its tone, or neglected an allusion or a cross current, or failed to see its point altogether; or the object may not have established its tone, or buried the allusion too far, or be confused in its point. You often do not know which is on trial, the object or the viewer: modern art did not invent this dilemma, it merely insists upon it” (2002, 166).

References Barthes, Roland. 2002. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. London: Vintage. Bíró, Yvette. 2008. Turbulence and Flow in Film: the Rhythmic Design. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brody, Richard. undated. Review of Force Majeure, The New Yorker. https://www. newyorker.com/goings-­on-­about-­town/movies/force-­majeure-­2. Accessed 3 Aug 2020. Carroll, Noël. 2007. Narrative Closure. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 135 (1, August): 1–15.

148 

H. L. LAW

Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2002. Music Discomposed. In Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays. Updated edition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Durgnat, Raymond. 2002. A Long Hard look at Psycho. London: BFI. Falzon, Christopher. 2017. Experiencing Force Majeure. Film-Philosophy 21 (3): 281–298. Grant, James. 2013. The Critical Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Insdorf, Annette. 2017. Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Kermode, Frank. 2000. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacDowell, James. 2013. Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema: Cliché, Convention and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 2016. Irony in Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nagel, Thomas. 1979. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neupert, Richard. 1995. The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Perez, Gilberto. 2019. The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Perkins, V.F. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York: Da Capo Press. Pippin, Robert B. 2012. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Romney, Jonathan. 2015. Review of Force Majeure. The Guardian (15 April). https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/12/force-­m ajeure-­f ilm-­ review-­ruben-­ostlund-­avalanche. Accessed 3 Aug 2020. Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1968. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sontag, Susan. 2009. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London: Penguin. Sutcliffe, Thomas. 2000. Watching. London: Faber and Faber. Walker, Michael. 2020. Endings in the Cinema: Thresholds, Water and the Beach. Cham: Springer Nature. Wilson, George M. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Threat of Insignificance

“It All Began the Day I Looked at You …” I was re-watching Fritz Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). It is about seven minutes into the movie. In a close-up, a record player is playing a love song, setting the mood of the scene. The shot lasts for a few seconds before cutting to the central couple—Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) and Susan Spencer (Joan Fontaine)—who have just set a date for their wedding. But their passionate kiss is cut short by the ringing telephone. Garrett goes to answer the call as Susan is leaving his apartment. Coming to the foreground, in a frontal shot, Garrett picks up the receiver, ready to speak. Then, suddenly—for a fraction of a second—he looks into the camera. Wait! Did I just see that? I paused the DVD to replay the scene. This time I planned to closely study Andrews’s eyes. Again, the telephone rings. Garrett picks up the call and … Aha! he has indeed looked into the camera! (Fig. 6.1). I had never noticed this glance in my prior watching of the film. Its brevity makes it difficult to detect. Neither foregrounded with a closer shot nor dwelled upon with slow motion, the look is instead absorbed into the flow of the action. And the scene promptly dissolves into the next as Garrett greets his caller. All this allows the detail to easily pass unobserved. Why is there a “secret” glance? Is it intentional? How do I account for it?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_6

149

150 

H. L. LAW

Fig. 6.1  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Re-watching the scene, my awareness of Garrett’s look had changed how I perceive the surrounding details. Most remarkably, it is uncanny that the song playing in the background starts with the line: “It all began the day I looked at you”. In light of the look, the otherwise clichéd lyrics acquire further meaning, becoming furtively self-referential. The words seem to announce, in advance, the arrival of a momentous glance, maybe inviting us to look out for it, to be watchful. Later, after conducting some research, I learned that the ballad in fact shares the movie’s title, as though to declare the importance of how things look in the narrative and establish a link between the issue of sight and the matter of doubt. The song asserts the power of appearance. But what is it, if anything, the character’s look is trying to tell us? What remains beyond and above suspicion in the movie? In fact, Garrett nearly looks into the camera again towards the end of the scene (Fig. 6.2). This glance is not as brief as the previous one, but taking place during a lap dissolve, it could similarly escape attention. Here, the eyes of the performer don’t quite meet the gaze of the camera. Instead, he avoids looking into the lens but looks past it.1 This avoidance, nevertheless, puts into sharp relief the confrontational directness of the first glance. There is the strong impression that the first look is not only projected to my direction but indeed directed to me, intended for me. But how could that be? What would that entail?

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

151

Fig. 6.2  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

My mind was full of questions. I wanted to understand what the glance is and what it means. I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t set aside my curiosity. I couldn’t help but think about it. So, it all began the day Garrett—and Andrews?—looked at me. This chapter explores the import and implication of this unsettling detail, of the uncertainty that it introduces to our understanding, and of the ways we can come to terms with this uncertainty, coming to an understanding. Our uncertainty, on the one hand, has to do with meaning: what does the look suggest? On the other hand, we are also unsure about its significance: is the look truly meaningful? If so, in what respect? And this further presses the urgent question of how much interpretative weight we ought to place on this fleeting yet arresting detail. How should we proceed with our analysis? What would an appropriate reading look like? How far should our account go in unpacking the look’s suggestion? Like the prior passages, the following discussion will take into account my viewing experience, evoking my reactions and voicing my reflections on the look (often as chains of italicised enquiries). However, my aim is not to revel a private moment—something like a Barthesian punctum—a detail that only “pricks” me.2 Nor am I resorting to the subjective for caveats to my whimsical, wayward reading. The subsequent analysis builds upon my individual understanding but it is not intended to be confessional or idiosyncratic. Not only are my observations shareable, but so are

152 

H. L. LAW

my interpretations. Garrett’s direct look is—to use V.F. Perkins’ words—a detail “for all to see, and to see the sense of” (1990, 4). The reader is invited to check what I say against what they see onscreen, to compare his or her findings with mine, to see the sense of the look in light or in spite of my reading. A main task of criticism is indeed to make personal understandings shareable, establishing the grounds for conversation. As we shall see, this sometimes requires us to articulate our uncertainty, to address it in our critical account. Recounting and probing my viewing experience, importantly, gives me an opportunity to explore a prominent meta-critical implication of ambiguity: its power to animate a drama of doubt. My doubt about the meaning and significance of Garrett’s ambiguous look initiates something like an inner critical dialogue, wherein competing understandings are pitted against each other and put to the test (think Descartes’s Meditations). And these dialogues are often formulated into the discursive dynamics of, for example, “yes … but …” and “if that is the case … then why …?” By doing so, this chapter reflects upon how ambiguity fuels our critical conviction even though—and sometimes precisely because—it keeps our understanding in suspension. Serving as a kind of productive doubt, ambiguity encourages us to dwell on it, to revisit it, in order to produce a sustained, detailed, and responsible account. Our attunement to uncertainty could make us a more careful, reflective, and diligent reader.

A Look That Seems Out of Place I haven’t actually made clear why I found Garrett’s look striking, and why it has left me in doubt. This has to do with the impression that the detail is, in some sense, out of place. We customarily call a character’s look into the camera a direct address. Direct addresses, Tom Brown suggests, are instances when “characters in movies fictions […] appear to acknowledge our presence as spectators; they seem to look at us” (2013, x). The crucial terms here are “appear” and “seem”. Fictional characters can neither “acknowledge” nor “look at” us in any familiar, traditional manner. They can only do so in some special, indirect sort of way. When a fictional character “acknowledges” or “looks at” us, what is created is only an impression of contact, an imaginary connection. This aesthetic possibility is put to meaningful purposes in musicals and comedies where the direct address is a generic convention. But even without the generic licence, a movie can develop the device as part of

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

153

its dramatic repertoire. In other words, while a character’s look into the camera disturbs the movie’s verisimilitude, highlighting its nature as artifice, the effect is not necessarily disruptive. The artifice can be integrated into the film’s expression. As Perkins remarks: “[b]ecause the [fictional] world is created in our imagination it need not suffer damage from any foregrounding of the devices that assist its construction. We can, if we will, glide over inconsistencies and absorb ruptures, or delight in them” (2005, 38). It is unclear how Garrett’s look assists the narrative, stylistic, and generic construction of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. None of the film’s generic references—the social problem picture, the courtroom drama, and the film noir—prepare us for the convention of the direct address. Having no immediate narrative consequences (e.g., being picked up by a character), the detail doesn’t seem to belong to the fictional world. While the look may come across as an acknowledgement of the viewer, it nevertheless doesn’t quite constitute an address, in the sense that it remains far from obvious what the look is seeking to deliver. (I will therefore hereafter call the detail a “direct look/glance” instead of an “address”.) Moreover, the detail has a sense of stealthiness to it. It takes us by surprise and denies us sufficient time for recognition, as though it is not supposed to be seen, only meant to be missed. Importantly, it is the one and only instance of this kind in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, while its heightened self-­awareness further sets it apart from the seamless verisimilitude of the rest of the movie. Garrett’s glance is something of an aesthetic anomaly. The incongruity of the direct look adds to the suspicion that it may have been a production error. And this view hinges on the distinction between the character Tom Garrett and the actor Dana Andrews. Specifically, the suspicion is that Garrett’s glance was an accident/a mistake during the filmmaking process. That is, the detail could have been the unwanted but avoidable result of, for instance, Andrews accidentally looking at the camera or a take mistakenly chosen by the production team. Or, it could be both.3 Put simply, the look seems like a consequence of a failed or faulty creative decision. But this view is not satisfying. Instead it is close to explaining the glance away by neglecting its effect and possible narrative significance. Production errors, once so labelled, are likely deemed unworthy of scrutiny, being exiled to the wasteland of the irrelevant and the meaningless. Is this why I haven’t read about the direct look in pre-existing literature on the film? Not only because it is missable but also because it is prone to dismissal, even when

154 

H. L. LAW

seen? To think of the glance as a mistake of the performer or the filmmakers prompts one to prematurely forgo, or permanently foreclose, interpretation. There is a deep-seated assumption to equate the production of meaning to artistic intention (narrowly conceived), so much so that it is counterintuitive to interpret what seems unplanned or unplannable. Such an undertaking would sound misguided. What is declared erroneous is robbed of its narrative significance, its claim to further reading. Because any further reading, in that case, dangerously approaches the territory of “overreading” or “misreading”. However, ambiguity sometimes indeed assumes the form of an artistic flaw or failure. Certain details in a film are ambiguous precisely because they raise the suspicion of being accidents or mistakes; it is uncertain whether they are intentional or meaningful. Worth noting though is that there are different types of flaws and different degrees of failure. And we need to engage with these aspects in order to better appreciate the ambiguity of Garrett’s direct look. Looking into the camera could be a production error, but it would not be an error in the same way as, for example, a visible boom microphone in the frame is. We would be more inclined to disregard the narrative meaning of the latter if it were to happen in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Not only is it not an established filmmaking convention, the display of a boom microphone would also radically depart from the verisimilitude achieved throughout the movie; it would err too much to the side of aesthetic failure, recalling too forcefully the production process, to be reasonably accommodated by the possibility of the fictional world. My doubt about the direct glance, by contrast, stems from its considerable degree of its embeddedness within the fiction. Straddling both the profilmic and the filmic, it creates a wrinkle rather than a rupture in the narrative. The detail feels simultaneously, perhaps paradoxically, erroneous and meaningful, autonomous but also as a part of a cohesive whole. Its nature is defined by a sense of indeterminacy.

Everything in Its Right Place The suggestion that the direct look is somewhat out of place is at odds with a prevalent critical view of Fritz Lang’s cinema. Fritz Lang is frequently portrayed as a filmmaker who exerts great command on every aspect of his direction, to the extent that his artistic ambition can unfailingly manifest onscreen as a coherent and distinctive vision. This

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

155

perspective is articulated in the work of Leo Braudy, who argues that Lang, together with Alfred Hitchcock, are the masters of what he calls the “closed film”. It is a type of movie in which “everything within it has its place in the plot of the film—every object, every character, every gesture, every action” (1976, 46). “Lang’s details”, Braudy further remarks, “form a plot in both the aesthetic and the conspiratorial sense” (48). That is, not only does every element in a Lang film serve a plot purpose, together they may work like a conspiracy, advancing some kind of clandestine scheme or strategy. One way to understand this is that certain details in a Lang film could appear incidental, incongruous or inconsequential unless a favourable viewing position is adopted, sometimes only in retrospect, which allows us to see them as carefully planted, meticulously planned parts of the plot.4 Could Garrett’s look have a plot purpose? Does it contribute to a clandestine scheme or strategy? What or who is it “conspiring” against? According to this view, everything in a Lang film is really in its right place despite its initial appearance to be otherwise. In his survey of Lang’s films from 1936 to 1960, Robin Wood unpacks the idea of “functional precision”. He writes a Lang film has something of the perfection of a polished mechanism. This is the quality that, in Lang’s achieved works […] one frequently has the sense that every shot is necessitated by its predecessor. As in a perfect machine, every shot, and every detail, gesture, movement within the shot, has a precise function in relation to the working of the whole. (1980, 600)

What is being esteemed here is the skilful composition of Lang’s movies, the tight fit between their components.5 At their best, the details of his films do not simply hang together but enhance the functions of each other. They are masterly arranged and assembled like a well-made machine. This “functional precision” is further complemented by the aesthetic “economy” of the films. In these movies, as Wood observes, “[e]verything is stripped down to essentials” (ibid.). The view that Lang’s cinema employs no embellishment but only the essentials resonates throughout the criticism of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Douglas Pye remarks on the film’s concentration on the “narrative ‘kernel’” of the scenario (1992, 104). Jacques Rivette describes the film as a series of “denials”, and one of them being the denial of mere expository information. “No concession is made here to the everyday, to detail: no remarks about the weather, the cut of a dress, the graciousness of a gesture; if one does become aware of

156 

H. L. LAW

a brand of make-up, it is for purposes of plot. We are plunged into a world of necessity” (1985, 140). Lang’s aesthetic economy is a marker of the streamlined, no-nonsense logic of his narrative. It is of special interest to my discussion that gesture and performance are frequently singled out as the epitome of Lang’s rigorous mise-en-scène. The acting in Lang’s films, Wood remarks, is “pared down to the necessary gesture, the necessary expression” (1980, 600). Joe McElhaney (2006) goes further to say: “[t]hroughout Lang, one so often has a heightened awareness that every gesture of the actor is controlled and choreographed, that nothing (and certainly not the body of an actor) escapes a relationship to the film’s overarching conception and network of meanings”.6 Put differently, Lang’s performers often resemble puppet-like figures, being orchestrated to articulate preordained suggestions.7 This seems to be the case with Dana Andrews’s performance in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. As we shall see, his acting helps create and cultivate certain misreading viewing expectations, as though working in accordance with the movie’s devious manipulation. Finally, Rivette speaks of the characters in the movie as “hav[ing] lost all individual quality, are not more than human concepts”, limited to what they literally say and do (1985, 141–2). What Garrett says and does indeed seem to be straightforward and pragmatic, serving less to furnish character interiority than to convey narrative information. As a result, unlike with Dix in In a Lonely Place (see Chap. 4), we are not encouraged to inquire into the deeper reasons for Garrett’s gestures and expressions, because they seem so transparent, almost bland. It is against this background of calibrated performance and colourless characterisation that Garrett’s direct look becomes so remarkable.

Traps for the Mind and Eye Misleading Narration It is imperative to summarise the plot of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt before examining whether and how Garrett’s look fits into its conspiratorial story and underhand narrational strategy. Garrett and Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer)—Susan’s father, who is a newspaper editor—have decided to work together to expose the fallibility of the legal system. They wish to demonstrate how easily the innocent can be condemned to death by virtue of inconclusive or circumstantial evidence. To achieve that, false clues are planted to frame Garrett for the

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

157

murder of Patty Gray. The plan is that, once he is convicted, Spencer would produce the photo documentation of the frame-up, to prove his innocence.8 Unfortunately, Spencer is killed in a car crash, with the all-­ important photos destroyed in blames. Garrett is sentenced to death as anticipated, only saved in the nick of time by a statement of fact left by Spencer. But as Garrett is about to be pardoned, he reveals his knowledge of the real name of the murder victim and therefore incriminates himself. (While it is poetic justice that the character eventually pays for the crime he has committed, this triumph of justice some how doesn’t feel justified, for the film has never prepared us for Garrett’s culpability.) Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, in other words, revolves around not one but two secret plots; one of them we are privy to since its conception, the other we only find out belatedly. Importantly, the two overlap. Tom Gunning likens the superimposition of the schemes to the figure of “palimpsest” (2000, 453). Garrett’s personal agenda is not only cloaked by but also incorporated into the campaign against capital punishment— the film’s narrative premise. It is as though Garrett’s secret has been hidden in plain sight all along; we are looking at it throughout the movie without being able to discern its significance. In fact, by letting us in on the scheme of exposé, the film creates the impression that it has already worn what is secretive and what is significant on its sleeve. It appears to place us in a position of knowledge. There is a sense that we know more and better than any of the characters. The narration is procedural, relaying the essential information of the (surface) plot. We closely follow the unravelling of Spencer’s plan as well as the key developments of the police investigation. This dramatic focus results in a powerful narrative expectation; our concern is directed towards whether the scheme of exposé works out, not who the murderer is. It is only in retrospect that we recognise the peculiar viewing position we were ensnared. In Serge Daney’s words (1981), upon our first viewing, we are “at the same time innocent and guilty. Innocent because we know nothing, guilty because we believe everything”. We fall because we are being gullible; because we believe, almost automatically, in the reliability of the narration. In this way, the film exposes the complacency of viewing by turning it, perhaps unfairly, against us. Is it part of the movie’s conspiracy? Central to the double-scheme of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, as is clear, is its carefully controlled narration. Discussing the film’s sophisticated strategies of suppression, selectivity, and schematism, Pye perceptively points out: “[t]he incompleteness of our access to the narrative is in fact

158 

H. L. LAW

constantly stressed, though we are likely to remain blind to its scale and significance” (1992, 105).9 In other words, it is not that we lack awareness of the movie’s restrictive viewpoint but we are mistaken about its nature, which led us to think that it strictly serves the relentless procedural logic of the plot. A Lang film only presents what is essential, right? We do not and cannot know the real purpose of this restriction. And that has a vital consequence to our understanding. Throughout the movie, we are given an unreliable basis by which to assess the import and implication of its elements; to judge what is relevant, what is significant, and what is suspicious. The immediate effect is that we “misconstrue” the movie’s pertinent questions; we “misread” certain details, or simply “miss” important suggestions. But what does it mean to say we overlook or misunderstand these things, considering there is no way for us—upon first viewing—to register their significance and assess their appropriate meaning? Pointing out the murkiness of the idea of the “ideal viewpoint” in film, George M. Wilson suggests that it can be what a viewer “would want and expect to see by way of satisfying his or her interest in the action” or it can be that of what this viewer “ought to see if the questions that focus his or her interest are to be answered correctly” (1986, 44). At first glance, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt seems to afford an “ideal viewpoint” in both senses. This is revealed to be false, but only at the very end of the movie. Then we suddenly realise the film has been merely promoting the “wrong” narrative expectations and providing answers that satisfy our “misguided” interest. The “ideal viewpoint” turns out to be manipulative, deceitful.10 Deceptive Appearance The question of appearance is vital to Lang’s cinema. “For Lang”, Gilles Deleuze notes, “it is as if there is no truth any more, but only appearances, of false images […] Everything is appearance, and yet this novel state transforms rather than suppresses the system of judgment” (2005, 134). The observation points to Lang’s interest in complicating matters of credibility and falsehood, of truth and the mere appearance of truth. What is remarkable is how this complication does not lead to a crisis of meaning but instead enables fresh ways of understanding. How does our interrogation of appearances lead to insights into Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, appearances can be elusive. Pye discusses how the restrictive narrational strategies pose challenges to the interpretation of performance (1992, 107–9). While it seems to us that the exposé

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

159

scheme serves as the most immediate point of reference to explain Garrett’s behaviours, especially his nervousness and detachment, there are also moments in which the character’s action and gesture strain the explanatory coherence of this framework. They hint at some unfathomed aspects of Garrett. Consider the television footage of Garrett’s trial. At one point, the character silently scribbles on a piece of paper, then tears it up while looking into the fast approaching courtroom camera. We see something like a direct look: aimed at the audience within the film but also looking in our direction (Fig. 6.3). For Susan, as her pained expression in a reaction shot makes clear, the moments suggest Garrett’s despair, perhaps his call for help. But the availability of Garrett’s countenance doesn’t give ready access to his thoughts and emotions; his bland expression resists straightforward reading. Our knowledge about the exposé scheme instead invites us to see this as a moment of inattention. The doodling betrays Garrett’s boredom or impatience with the trial, his urge to busy himself with something, anything. The character is not following the court proceedings because he foresees where things are going. The repetitiveness of his gesture reflects a restless mind in action, circling around the same thought, engrossed in it.11 But what is bothering him? In hindsight, Garrett’s culpability adds to the complexity of his appearance, introducing an extra layer of performance to his pretence. If he looks bothered here, it remains

Fig. 6.3  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

160 

H. L. LAW

impossible to pinpoint its origin. This can be an attempt to appear a wrongfully-accused man and a genuine concern about the cover-up scheme. Re-watching the film, Garrett’s actions beckon a host of possible but unverifiable explanations. Perhaps this is what Deleuze means by “there is no truth any more” in Lang’s cinema. We are instead required to appreciate the resonance and rich implications of appearances. Andrews’s performance is indispensable to the film’s exploration of appearance, to its conflation of the innocent and the culpable. Here, it is useful to recall Robert Pippin’s idea of “passive agency”, discussed in Chap. 4. A characteristic of film noir protagonists, Pippin notes, is that they act as if they are “hypnotized, dazed, or sleepwalking” (2012, 17). Rather than being the bearer of action, they react to external forces unreflectively, almost automatically. Pippin in fact praises Andrews as the exemplary performer of passive agency. In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Garrett seems to be caught in the unravelling of events: it is Spencer who initiates the plot of exposé; and later, with Spencer’s death, Garrett is left at the mercy of fate. It is only at the end that we discover the nature and degree of Garrett’s agency. He is an agent adept at performing passivity. The character’s seeming passivity is also reinforced by the unique presence of the actor. Andrews’s Garrett is reticent, unassertive, just like another regular guy. This has to do with the performer’s inexpressive and almost bland physiognomy, as well as his screen persona of normality and ordinariness. It is against this that Lang successfully dramatises the unreliability of character appearance.12 Indeed, Andrews is at his best when his image of normality and ordinariness is tested, ruptured, or subverted. A good example is his role as the brutal detective in Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950). David Thomson (2010) writes eloquently about Andrews’s “strain of moral ambiguity in his bearing”: the actor “could suggest unease, shiftiness, and rancour barely concealed by good looks. He did not quite trust or like himself, and so a faraway bitterness haunted him”. The actor is therefore suitable in depicting “an apparent hero with something to hide”; he is “ideal […] as the lying hero in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”.13 As the above discussion makes clear, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’s narrational strategies and performance style are instrumental in keeping Garrett’s culpability out of the question, and not as a plausible line of inquiry. It is as though the movie is complicit in the character’s double-­ scheme by setting up a labyrinth of “false doors, false bottoms, traps for the mind and for the eye” (Elsaesser 2000, 186).14 As a result, the film

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

161

functions like a testament to Garrett’s control until he slips up at the end. Then the contraption springs back. The ending feels abrupt partly because our alignment with him is brutally severed. (In this sense, the ending of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is puzzling in a way  that is opposite to the moral reshuffle at the close of Force Majeure.)

A Look That Is Out of Place? So what is the significance of Garrett’s direct look in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? Is it vital to the film’s “secret structure”? Or is it a wrench in the perfect Langian mechanism? The detail calls into question the design of the movie. We need to look at the moment closely and carefully, within contexts. Who Is Calling? Given the film’s rigorous procedural narration, the scene in the apartment has a curious sense of redundancy to it. The couple’s home retreat is brief and barely advances the plot. Instead, it shows what will be promptly explained in detail: in the next scene, Garrett tells Spencer and Susan about a phone call from his publisher—presumably the one we just witnessed—pressuring him to finish his book. And this is why he needs to postpone the wedding. Why does the film show us what it can, and indeed does, cover in dialogue? This is unworthy of Lang! Perhaps there is more to the scene than meets the eye? Perhaps the camera has shown something that the character does not say? First-time viewers have no reason to doubt the account volunteered by Garrett. Hindsight, however, allows one to understand the oddly emphasised call differently. It is important that the film withholds the content of the phone conversation as well as the identity of the caller. This leaves room for reading. Tom Gunning refers to it as “Patty/Emma’s apparently catastrophic entrance into his [Garrett’s] life” (2000, 455). In other words, this is when the murder victim starts blackmailing Garrett, and is therefore the secret watershed moment in the film when its plot thickens and bifurcates. But the nature of the call is not as “apparent” or definite as Gunning observes. As we shall see, it is more accurate to say that the film only encourages such an understanding, supported by a set of devices and details in the scene.

162 

H. L. LAW

Who Is In Control? Although we stay behind with Garrett at the end of the scene, our epistemic position is instead close to that of the departing Susan. The camera carefully curbed our access to the details of the call, as if working in collusion with the murderer. Garrett’s control throughout the film is indeed the control of information; the exposure of his crime is the exposure of his superior position of knowledge. “[T]he characters who perform direct address”, Tom Brown notes, “generally know more—or are in a position of greater knowledge within the fiction—than other characters” (2013, 14). Garrett’s look may not be strictly a direct address but it nonetheless appears to be a signifier of his knowingness. Crucial to our understanding of the look is the character’s smirk, with the dangling cigarette adding an air of self-assurance. In light of his prior intimate moment with Susan, the glance is charged with a sense of complacency. It may also be a playful disapproval—a “tsk tsk, shame on you!” perhaps—as the character catches us intruding on his private rendezvous. These interpretations are complemented by further suggestions upon re-watching. Our awareness of Garrett’s clandestine scheme allows us to read the direct look as a disclosure of his greater knowledge. The smug expression points to a sly, sleazy, or villainy side of the character that is alien to his otherwise upright appearance. It is as though he is tipping us a wink about his secret persona. Would it make any difference if I were to notice the direct look during my first viewing? Even if I did, without knowing the upcoming twist, would I be able to recognise its significance? Unlikely. But the detail would still create the impression that there is something off about the character. I understand that at this point of the narrative Garrett hasn’t committed his crime so there is no cover-up plan yet. My knowledge of the ending, however, has transformed my appreciation of the film, colouring my subsequent viewing. Every time I see Garrett’s direct look—and I do see it in every one of my viewings now—I feel like it is implicating me in his secret scheme, making me an accomplice in his crime. Again and again. A more complicated picture emerges if we take into account the subtle details of the scene. Garrett’s control is perhaps not as secure as it seems. The couple’s affectionate conversation is readily disrupted as soon as it commences. Upon the sound of the ringing telephone, the camera abruptly cuts from a tight framing of the couple to a wider view of them in the apartment, as though their cocoon of intimacy has violently burst open. The phone now visually comes between the couple—a metaphor for

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

163

the call’s effect on their relationship. The moment is less indicative of the pair’s cosy togetherness than of the vulnerability of this togetherness. Note how Garrett’s smirk vanishes as soon as the phone conversation starts. His self-assurance has quickly deflated. He looks worried. Who is calling? Is it Patty? Most revealing, however, is the lap dissolve at the end of the scene. The fading image represents a temporary suppression of the character’s worry, which is now relegated to the background, waiting to strike again. The slowness of the dissolve makes it also a remarkable superimposition: the shot of Garrett is overlapped with a close-up of a pair of hands (see Fig. 6.2). It looks like the character is entrapped by an enormous paw, as if the phone call embodies a malignant force closing in on him, acting as a ghostly presence constricting or controlling Garrett’s action. The threat invoked by the moment reinforces—but hardly confirms—the suggestion that Patty is the caller. But as the camera promptly reveals, these powerful hands are in fact the character’s own. They are holding a lighter, a gift from Susan. Garrett indeed has the upper hand throughout the movie. And he will later plant this lighter in the crime scene, turning a token of love into a device of duplication. Superimposing Garrett with his own hands, the movie is making the ironic suggestion that the character is both the perpetrator and the victim of his own scheme. It prefigures his self-undoing. Gunning speaks of Garrett as “the ‘author’ of the plot […,] the Mabuse figure, the grand enunciator” (2000, 455). But the film, as we have seen, also observes his fallibility, exposing his precarious position of power. Its viewpoint towards Garrett is ambivalent, moving between complicity and critical distance (this, again, makes the movie an interesting comparison with Force Majeure, see Chap. 5).15 The scene’s meticulous mise-en-scène and calibration of viewpoint point to the authorial presence of Lang. The slow superimposition is an instance where the filmmaker’s shaping influence is strongly felt. And its irony testifies to a knowing intelligence at work, an intelligence that understands in advance where the plot is heading. There is a sense that the giant paw is a visual stand-in for Lang’s puppeteering hand, asserting his command.16 But does he “author” Garrett’s direct look too? Is the movie “aware” of this detail? Ever since I noticed the direct look, my attention was naturally drawn to the character’s eyes when I watched the scene. But this time, I made the effort to free my gaze from them, actively scanning for clues of potential correspondences between the detail and the scene. It was then I discovered an obvious yet

164 

H. L. LAW

somehow hitherto overlooked feature: upon Susan’s exit of the apartment, the camera gradually approaches Garrett, tightening the frame into a medium shot of the character. The framing permits a close enough view of his countenance—enough for the direct look to be recognisable—but not too close that the feature would claim our attention. Remarkably, the camera movement stops at the moment when Garrett steals a glance into the lens. The movement and the glance appears perfectly timed, deliberately choreographed. It is as if Lang is gesturing towards the significance of the look, inviting us to look at it. Perhaps the detail is not accidental but “intentional” after all? Interestingly, it was my very absorption in the ambiguous direct look that has previously prevented me from recognising the camera’s “acknowledgement” of it. Compelling our attention, ambiguity can sometimes distract or blind us from seeing the larger picture. Intention and Care I have been trying to gauge and clarify the uncertainty of Garrett’s direct look. A prominent issue here is whether the detail is part of the movie’s design, which typically means whether it lies within the filmmakers’ control. My discussion has demonstrated the look’s contribution to the conspiratorial narration despite the possibility that it may be misconceived or accidental. There is no way, based on what is onscreen, to ascertain its nature. In fact, the glance’s potent suggestion of knowingness, its hint at character secrecy would arguably persist even if it is proved to be a production mistake. In other words, details in film can harbour unintended meaning and significance: unintended in the sense of contingent or unplanned, but in a way not necessarily infelicitous, uninteresting, or undesirable. All of which raises the broader issue about the role of intention in film interpretation. The concept of intention remains underdeveloped in relation to cinema, partly due to the complication posed by the collaborative nature of most movies, partly due to the incompatibility of the subject with the pervasive critical frameworks in the discipline of academic film studies. The concept is unhelpful if it strictly refers to the mental content of the filmmakers before, during, or after the production process, which is not only challenging to access and ascertain, but it may also have difficulties accommodating readings that conflict with it, even if they are appropriate and rewarding. Intention in this narrow sense is an external force capable

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

165

of informing, regulating, and refuting our interpretation. However, it is also possible, generally more useful, to think of intention as a matter of interpretation, that is, something to be intuited, discerned, or recovered from a film through the practice of reading.17 Intention, so conceived, is embodied by a detail, it concerns what is meant by this detail, the aesthetic reasons behind it. The challenge of Garrett’s look is that it can be simultaneously interpreted as intentional and unintended; read as a suggestive detail and a consequence of aesthetic mistake or misjudgement at the same time. This strains the concept of intention, laying bare its shortcoming as a framework for comprehending filmic details. Not everything meaningful in a work of art, Simon Jarvis observes, can be explained in terms of “intention”. He speaks of the category of “care”, which is related to “intention” but is closer to “a concern”. He notes: The blank between a stanza or the blank at the end of the line is surely, precisely, an example of something which a poet might very well care about without its being easy to say that it is the textual repository of a “meaning” which the author “intended”. (2009, 67)

The notion of care opens up an alternative way to conceive film production. There are many details in a film—partly because film is made up of so many details—that filmmakers may care about, which are not strictly intended or intended to be meaningful. For example, instead of an outcome of deliberation, Garrett’s look can be a throw-away playful gesture, improvised by Andrews on the spot, as a whimsical provocation directed at the audience. Alternatively, it may indicate a lapse in attention, an oversight by the film’s editor Gene Fowler, Jr. that temporarily fails the movie’s convention of verisimilitude. It is also possible that Lang recognised the glance as a defect but saw no necessity to rectify it due to its missability or because the merit of that specific take outweighs its irregularity. If the concept of intention emphasises the problem-solving aspect of artistic creation (to use In a Lonely Place as an example: “What do the filmmakers do to depict Dix’s possessive passion?” “By having him kiss like a vampire”), the language of care helps us appreciate the complexity of the creative process. Specifically, it invites us to see every filmmaking “problem” as an array of conceptual and practical concerns or interests which are likely at variance or in tension. Accordingly, any creative “solution” is the result of a chain of evaluative acts in which the filmmakers prioritise

166 

H. L. LAW

certain cares or objectives over others—a process of making creative preferences.18 In this way, the notion of care enhances our understanding of the authorial role of filmmakers, by drawing attention to how certain creative choices in movies are more appropriately seen as authorised— rather than straightforwardly intended—by them. A fruitful account of film production should take into consideration both care and intention.

The Doubtful Critic We typically equate meaning to meaningfulness. And since a filmmaker’s care does not necessarily  presuppose  meanings, a moment’s significance may be difficult to appreciate. This is a major challenge of Garrett’s direct look. Seeing it through the lens of care, of authorial authorisation rather than intention, I become concerned about whether I have given the glance its due significance in my reading. I wonder if my fascination—if not outright obsession—with the look has driven me to overstate its relevance and if my critical enthusiasm has prompted me to see it in outsized prominence. I fear that the mesmerising detail has indeed stolen too much of my attention, holding me captive, blinding me from the bigger picture, derailing or compromising my analysis. I am unsure how much interpretative weight I ought to place on the look. My anxiety, in other words, is the critical anxiety of “too-close-reading” and “overreading”. We can say that “too-close-reading” and “overreading” are labels for unorthodox, undesirable critical practices that seemingly distort a work’s meaning and significance.19 If “too-close-reading” exhibits a pointillist-­ like fixation, “overreading” is an exertion of excessive critical energy. Together they represent the risk of “reading into”, as opposed to the accepted procedure of “reading out of”. The direct look in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt raises a pointed awareness of this risk because its appearance of inconsequentiality looms large. It is not that the detail is impossible to read but that our reading seems forever shadowed by a sense of implausibility. The worry is that we have misunderstood its significance and consequently overemphasised its weight in our interpretation. The ambiguity of the direct look perpetuates a form of metacritical doubt. Ambiguity may divide critics because of its capacity for competing readings. But ambiguity is also capable of dividing a critic, leaving one in doubt, poised between judgements. Doubt is not a defect of understanding but a form of reflexivity. It stems from an uncertainty about the

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

167

truthfulness of what one knows, of whether what one knows is knowledge at all. That is, it is a useful (meta-)awareness of our knowledge. We have to know enough to doubt, and that makes it something like an interpretation, or, occasionally, a form of reasonable speculation (recall Chap. 3). This reasonable speculation may subsequently double back to our knowledge, enriching or discrediting it. The result is an internal drama of doubt: my reading is unsettled, coloured, deflected, and confounded by my uncertainty, constantly torn between opposing directions of understanding. And this critical tug-of-war has a double-edged effect on criticism. Doubt can dog us like a phantasm. Uncharitable, it contaminates or corrodes our understanding like a lasting shadow or echo, akin to a lingering hue or murmur. Its main tactic is not confrontation but slow, pervasive, insidious undermining, spreading a near-paranoia. Under its watch, one may start to see signs everywhere, becoming vigilant. In a sense, doubt is like a critical Superego. Not only does it pressure us to censor our interpretation but, most importantly, it presses us to perfect our reading. Doubt fuels, to borrow Denis Donoghue’s phrase, a sort of “introspective fury” (1984, 13). It prompts one to thoroughly interrogate her own understanding, give it a violent shake, and leave it trembling in harsh daylight. Our self-investigation is liable to get out of control, out of proportion. Doubt can turn unforgiving, consuming our attention. Suddenly, nothing is safe from our vengeful suspicion and fervent scrutiny. The result is a hermeneutics of prosecution—not unlike an extreme variant of the “hermeneutics of suspicion”.20 Excessive doubt can impede critical progress by animating the stifling nightmare of arrested development, bringing criticism to a standstill or a deadlock.21 It may entrap us. The paralysed critic can neither move forward with her reading nor disregard her uncertainty. Doubt may also escalate into an over-commitment that drives us to look “too” hard and go “too” far, losing a sense of proportion with regard to a work’s meaning and significance. Careless, unprofitable “over-” and “too-close-” readings may indeed follow. With doubt comes danger. Doubt’s challenge to understanding can nevertheless become an integral, beneficial part of our account. The risks mentioned earlier are also critical opportunities. Our analytical suspension forces open a space for in-depth exploration and patient questioning, facilitating the development of attentive interpretations and responsive arguments. By doing so, doubt invites us to reflect upon our reading practice, sharpening our awareness

168 

H. L. LAW

of our critical responsibility. A doubtful critic can make a better critic. (I shall return to this issue in the Concluding Remarks.) One can read Beyond a Reasonable Doubt as a cautionary tale of being credulous. By dramatising the danger of believing in what seems to be beyond suspicion, the film is an object lesson of the importance of doubt in criticism. Specifically, the lesson takes the form of a direct look which introduces an irreparable wrinkle to our understanding. In order to account for it, we are compelled to study the look closely, consulting the surrounding details as well as the global contexts of the movie. This helps us construct an appropriate scale of judgement by which to assess the meaning and weight of the look. Most importantly, the detail not only draws attention to the design of the movie but also calls it into question. It complicates the movie’s widely assumed status as a “closed film”. It is precisely because Lang’s cinema upholds the impression of total control that we should be cautious not to take it for granted. Critical doubt is sometimes necessary. My account of the film is the result of repeated viewings. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is indeed one of those films which reveals an extra dimension of meaning upon revisit.22 The ambiguity of the direct look needs to be understood in light of both our initial experience and subsequent viewings. As Raymond Durgnat aptly notes: “the second viewing adds another layer, which doesn’t invalidate the first but interacts with it” (2002, 102). Reconsideration may help rectify our flawed assessment but this is only one benefit of the practice. Our understanding of a movie is in fact accumulative, palimpsestic; each encounter adds to it. It is also worth noting that subsequent viewings can activate new modes of attention: we may end up concentrating on a different set of details onscreen or adopting a different approach to the film. It is indeed during our revisit that our attention is likely directed to the inquiry of “why is it as it is”, to the consideration of the choices involved in the making of the movie. Ambiguity encourages re-watching. My doubt about Garrett’s direct look might sound trivial to some. And there is a worry that I have taken it too seriously. Indeed, there is a world of difference between those who practice doubt and those who rush to expel it; between those who doubt too much and those who do not doubt enough. For those of us who do and do it too much, being credulous is no longer an option after the day Garrett looked at us. Its ambiguity has captivated our critical attention, making a claim on our reading.

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

169

Notes 1. Avoidance is indirect acknowledgement. Avoiding looking into the camera, Dana Andrews is acknowledging its presence. 2. The famous concept of punctum is developed by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida (2006). He writes: “A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” (27). Punctum is stubbornly private (“me … me … me”). It is unpredictable, unplanned (“accident”) as well as affecting, perhaps hurtfully so (“pricks … bruises”). 3. The difference between doing something by mistake and doing something by accident is helpfully hinted at by J.L. Austin’s anecdotal remark: “You have a donkey, so have I, and they graze in the same field. The day comes when I conceive a dislike for mine. I go to shoot it, draw a bead on it, fire: the brute falls in its tracks. I inspect the victim, and find to my horror that it is your donkey. I appear on your doorstep with the remains and say— what? ‘I say, old sport, I’m awfully sorry, etc., I’ve shot your donkey by accident’? Or ‘by mistake’? Then again, I go to shoot my donkey as before, draw a bead on it, fire—but as I do so, the beasts move, and to my horror yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep—what do I say? ‘By mistake’? Or ‘by accident’?” (1956–7, 11 n4). The distinction between mistake and accident in film, however, is often impossible to discern, for we generally lack access to the intention of a detail and to the particular way it ends up onscreen. To speak in the terms of Austin’s story: we wouldn’t be able tell whether it was an accident or a mistake if we simply see a dead and a live donkey in the field. However, one can argue that the filmmakers are in fact accountable for everything that we see on the screen. So, there is a sense that any apparently flawed or faulty detail is, to a certain extent, a mistake: the filmmaker could have corrected it but failed to, perhaps due to oversight, perhaps due to misjudgement. 4. See Wilson (1986) for a fine analysis of how the adoption of such a “favourable view” opens up exciting ways to understand Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937). 5. Elsewhere Wood refers to a film’s structural perfection as “organicity”, which is a “particularly intensive coherence, when the various aspects of a work seem scarcely separable from each other” (2006, 27–8). Likening a work to something alive, “organicity” departs from the machine-like “functional precision”. 6. This chimes in with Michel Mourlet’s remark that Lang turns his actors into “a completely neutralised vehicle for mise-en-scene considered as pure movement” (quoted in Elsaesser 2000, 189n11). 7. An example: three different characters (Tom, Susan, and Susan’s father) lower their head in a measured, emphatic way at some point during the

170 

H. L. LAW

­ arrative. The performances are similarly unnatural, contrived. Interestingly, n it is at these characters’ most emotionally distressed that they appear to be most puppet-like, as if being animated by an invisible hand. 8. The documentation can actually only prove the planting of the evidence, not the character’s innocence. 9. Some of these strategies are sketched above but the reader is encouraged to consult Pye’s account. 10. There are also misdirections on the narrative level. Tom Gunning points out, for example, the way the film hints at Spencer’s involvement in the murder (2000, 453–4). 11. Michael Fried notes our compulsion to project “a conviction of inwardness” onto fictional figures, reading the “lack of outward expression as an unmistakable sign of intense inwardness and sheer depth of feeling, […] the endowing of the figures in question with an imagined inner life comparable, if not superior, in intensity to the viewer’s own, proves irresistible” (2010, 77). 12. This is why Wood considers the actor “the ideal Lang interpreter” (1980, 600). 13. The clash between Garrett’s surface passivity and his secret scheming is one of the reasons why the film’s ending is surprising, perhaps even shocking. 14. Wood speaks of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt as “one of the cinema’s great audience traps” (1980, 607). 15. Wood talks about how Lang’s sudden detachment from its characters effectively prompts our judgement. The critic singles out the filmmaker’s “fondness for moving back from an action to long-shot” (recall the abrupt cut to wide shot in the apartment). On the scene where Garrett and Spencer plant the lighter, Wood writes: “As the two men walk away, Lang suddenly cuts back to a high-angled long-shot. Tom, who thinks he is controlling the game, is suddenly a pawn in it. The effect is ambiguous, and the ambiguity is central to Lang’s cinema: we can feel ourselves placed above and at a distance, as judges; or we can interpret the long-shot as a sudden intimation of Tom’s subjection to a destiny that, unknown to him, is working itself out” (1980, 602). Here, ambiguity is linked to a film’s perspective on its characters, a topic which we have looked at in the previous chapter. 16. Could that be actually Lang’s hand? Gunning notes the filmmaker’s hand cameos in his movies (2000, 2). 17. For a philosophical account of intention which stresses the importance of discernment, see Anscombe (1979). 18. My remark here condenses several accounts. The problem/solution paradigm is central to David Bordwell’s monograph on film staging Figures Traced in Light (2005), see especially pages 249–54. While Barbara

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

171

Herrnstein Smith draws attention to the complex “evaluative” dynamics of artistic creation (1991, 44–5), E.M. Gombrich sees this as a matter of making aesthetic priority according to what he calls the “principle of sacrifice” (1978, 81–98). 19. Readers are encouraged to consult the works of D.A. Miller’s (2016) and Colin Davis (2010) on these topics. 20. What I have been talking about in relation to doubt indeed evokes the notion of “the hermeneutics of suspicion”, first coined by Paul Ricoeur. Rita Felski (2015) has carefully examined this prevalent critical stance (see also Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s discussion of “paranoid reading” [2002]). The stance is closely linked to the practice of cultural critique, to the theories of ideology, to symptomatic and “against-the-grain” readings. Notably, Felski speaks of “the hermeneutics of suspicion” as a critical mood rather than a method; it stands for an attitude that a critic takes up towards—or, more precisely, against—a text. It assumes a work to be always more than and different from what it seems. A text is, by default, “guilty” of hiding something before it is proven “innocent” (yet no text is quite “innocent” under intensive scrutiny; one always discovers “something”). The task of critique is then to “interrogate, unmask, expose, subvert, unravel, demystify, destabilize, take issue, and take umbrage” (2015, 5). The critic acts as a policing force. I have been speaking of doubt instead of “the hermeneutics of suspicion” not only because I wish to dissociate myself from some of the questionable assumptions of the method of critique, but it also seems to me there is a crucial difference between doubt and suspicion. Adam Phillips notes: “Suspicion is a philosophy of hope. It makes us believe that there is something to know and something worth knowing. It makes us believe there is something rather than nothing” (1996, 41). What I mean by doubt has less to do with the discovery of knowledge but with what we already knew changes our practice of reading. 21. Adam Phillips suggests the difference between getting lost and being lost as that of “between the artefact you must make, and the experience you are powerless to avoid”. Getting lost, Phillips continues to say, “is our best defense against being lost; and partly because it makes us feel that we have, as it were, taken the problem into our own hands, turned […] passive into active”. Getting lost involves a deliberate “working out” of the problem at hand (2001, 173–4). Doubt may start as an experience of being lost. But one can take it as an opportunity to “get lost” in our understanding, to weigh different interpretive possibilities, to work out an appropriate reading. 22. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) is another.

172 

H. L. LAW

References Anscombe, Elizabeth. 1979. Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Austin, J.L. (1956–7). A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, new series (57): 1–30. Barthes, Roland. 2006. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Bordwell, David. 2005. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Braudy, Leo. 1976. The World in a Frame: What We See in Films. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, Tom. 2013. Breaking the Fourth Wall: Direct Address in the Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Daney, Serge. 1981. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Translated by Steve Erickson. Chronicle of a Passion. http://home.earthlink.net/~steevee/Daney_beyond. html. Assessed 31 Oct 2017. Davis, Colin. 2010. Critical Excess: Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Žižek and Cavell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Continuum. Donoghue, Denis. 1984. The Critic and the Arts. Circa 15 (March/April): 12–13. Durgnat, Raymond. 2002. A Long Hard Look at Psycho. London: BFI. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2000. Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary. London: Routledge. Felski, Rita. 2015. The Limits of Critique. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Fried, Michael. 2010. The Moment of Caravaggio. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gombrich, E.H. 1978. Norm and Form. Oxford: Phaidon. Gunning, Tom. 2000. The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity. London: BFI. Jarvis, Simon. 2009. What Does Art Know. In Aesthetics and the Work of Art. ed. Peter de Bolla and Stefan H. Uhlig. 57-70. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. McElhaney, Joe. 2006. The Artist and the Killer: Fritz Lang’s Cinema of the Hand. 16:9 (17). http://www.16-­9.dk/2006-­06/side11_inenglish.htm. Accessed 3 Aug 2020. Miller, D.A. 2016. Hidden Hitchcock. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Perkins, V.F. 1990. Must We Say What They Mean? Movie 34/35: 1–6. ———. 2005. Where Is The World? The Horizon of Events in Movie Fiction. In Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, ed. John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, 16–41. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

6  THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 

173

Phillips, Adam. 1996. Monogamy. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. ———. 2001. On Balance. London: Penguin Books. Pippin, Robert B. 2012. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Pye, Douglas. 1992. Film Noir and Suppressive Narrative: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. In The Movie Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron, 98–109. London: Studio Vista. Rivette, Jacques. 1985. The Hand. In Cahiers du Cinema, Volume 1: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, ed. Jim Hillier, 140–144. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2002. Touching Feeling. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1991. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thomson, David. 2010. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New  York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wilson, George M. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Wood, Robin. 1980. Fritz Lang: 1936-1960. In Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, The Major Filmmakers, ed. Richard Roud, vol. II, 599–608. New York: The Viking Press. ———. 2006. Personal Views: Explorations in Film. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt

Explanations come to an end somewhere. —Ludwig Wittgenstein (2009, 6e)

If ambiguity, as the direct look in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt testifies, maintains a sense of inconclusiveness, then how should an account of it suitably “come to an end”? How do we secure that “somewhere” to conclude our reading? In fact, in what sense may we speak of “an end”? The possibility of “a complete interpretation”, Stanley Cavell suggests, “is not a matter of providing all interpretations but a matter of seeing one of them through” (1981, 37). This remark observes and contrasts two understandings. On the one hand, “completeness” entails comprehensiveness. That is, the end of an account is reached when every avenue of study is exhausted. What this envisions is a reading that ends all readings. It is not difficult to see why this view is untenable.1 However, positing the existence of a “definitive” account, such a view can feel reassuring (this is arguably one reason why the “film-as-puzzle” analogy is attractive, see Introduction). This feeling of reassurance is absent in the practice of “seeing one interpretation through”, which, by contrast, doesn’t appeal to an abstract, universal notion of critical completeness. Instead, it requires us to figure out the concrete, distinctive conclusion of our analysis, by reading closer, deeper, and further—courting the possibility of going “too © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_7

175

176 

H. L. LAW

far”. On Cavell’s account, criticism cannot come to an appropriate close without taking an analytical risk. At first glance, Cavell’s model of appropriate “completeness”, of “seeing our interpretation through”, appears unsuited for the criticism of ambiguity. Although comprehensiveness is unachievable, there remains a strong sense that our reading should seek to cover ambiguity’s multitude of suggestions as much as possible, so as to appreciate its significance more fully or at least to prevent “misreading” or “under-reading”. That is, because of its very nature, ambiguity seems to demand a comprehensive account. But the commitment to encompass “ambiguity’s multitude of suggestions”, intuitive as it may sound, is somewhat misleading. As noted in the Introduction, “multiple interpretations” is an unhelpful conception of ambiguity. Not that it isn’t a feature of the concept. But what makes an ambiguity ambiguous, as this book has demonstrated, is instead a sense of interpretative suspension. Indeed, what emerges from my close readings of film is not a picture of ambiguity defined by an array of divergent, adamant interpretations, each independent of or incompatible with the others, so that we are pressed to adopt a single analytical course or a firm stance. Rather, my readings have revealed ambiguity’s capability of unsettling or undermining our understanding, pulling it into different directions. That’s why the ambiguous frequently throws our reading into question or even into seemingly irresolvable doubt, suspending our judgement. What becomes prominent then is the tension, the contradiction, or the complementariness between possible ways of seeing. We consequently feel torn or poised between suggestions, having difficulties resolving questions of meaning and significance. Such a condition is acutely activated by the direct look examined in the previous chapter. But other movies I have discussed also put a pause to our understanding in various ways and to varying degrees of intensity. For example, the editing in Late Spring implies that Noriko is seeing the vase even though she isn’t beholding it at that moment. This paradox is vital to the effect and achievement of the scene. And in In A Lonely Place, the equivocality of Dix’s gestures misleadingly encourages us to settle on whether they are loving or murderous. But such a pursuit would only flatten their significance. The pertinent question is instead what these gestures’ conflation of tenderness and violence reveals about the character’s interiority, his deeper reasons.

7  CONCLUDING REMARKS: REASONABLE DOUBT 

177

What these instances also indicate is that while ambiguity involves plural suggestions, it does not necessarily manifest in a range of distinct readings. Rather, since these suggestions are often mutually implicating, inextricably bound, they work as a whole and need to be evoked and examined as such. This prompts us to rethink “comprehensiveness” in relation to the criticism of ambiguity. More specifically, what an ambiguity requires us to comprehend is in fact its weave of suggestions. It is precisely the comprehension of this that enables us to see our reading through. By appreciating the push-and-pull of our understanding, we are in fact attending to the dynamic between our reason and doubt. It is the central claim of this book that this dynamic is at the centre of the criticism of ambiguity. This study begins by proposing ambiguity as an invitation to the inquiry into “why is it as it is”. And this question calls for the pursuit of what I call aesthetic reasons, which are, simply put, readings that concern matters of narrative meaning (in its expanded sense), effect, and achievement (see Chap. 2). As each chapter fleshes out a distinct way our analytical pursuit can take form, the nature of the “why” inquiry has also become more evident. More specifically, there is an urgency to come to terms with the pressing uncertainty that is vital to ambiguity. This uncertainty should not be readily dismissed, rationalized, or explained away but carefully worked through, perhaps dwelt upon. Our pursuit of aesthetic reason does not entail using reason to disambiguate doubt, making what is ambiguous conformable or straightforwardly accessible. A satisfying account instead requires us to acknowledge the reason for our doubt and to reason with it. The aim is to demonstrate the aesthetic reasons for why doubt is a part of a film’s expression or effect, how that enriches its meaning, and whether it deepens its achievement. Doubt can indeed launch and sustain the pursuit of reason. For example, it was my puzzlement over the character’s direct look in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt that prompted me to revisit it and to ponder over its nature and implications. And by sharpening my appreciation of the details and the design of the movie, my doubt becomes beneficial to my analysis. If my reading remains haunted by uncertainty, it is because the incongruity, the seemingly accidental nature of the glance, continues to threaten insignificance. Indeed, what my discussion also highlights is that critical doubt doesn’t exclusively concern meaning and effect. Sometimes it is the significance of a detail that is at stake: we remain unsure about its degree of importance in the larger scheme of things and consequently also the amount of interpretative weight we ought to place on it. This illuminates

178 

H. L. LAW

a salient aspect of ambiguity’s meta-critical dimension, its possibility as a doubt about our reading practice and procedure. It is more accurate to say that my initial interest in the direct look is fuelled by reason—especially by my prior knowledge of cinematic conventions—as much as by doubt. So, any appropriate exploration of the detail needs to observe this continual negotiation between reason and doubt. According to this account, it is a task of the criticism of ambiguity to find an appropriate analytical viewpoint that navigates the narrow margin between elucidation and explaining-away, between clear-eyed insight and reductive schematisation. Our critical aim is to consider ambiguity’s movement of meaning and weave of suggestions, keeping interpretative possibilities in play and in dialogue. This calls for our recognition of its complexity or self-contradiction, its potential for conflicting directions of understanding. Criticism assesses the relative strength and validity of a film’s diverse pulls of suggestions. Its business is not only to appreciate the pertinent reasons for a particular understanding but also to present any appropriate reasons for doubting that understanding. But since there exists no guidelines to how to reasonably exercise our doubt, it is our critical task to establish what a reasoned doubt means in relation to a specific work. If criticism cannot suitably proceed without taking an analytical risk, it is partly because the taking of this risk is in effect a way of taking up our critical responsibility. This responsibility to subject our reason to challenge, to reasonably consult our doubt, brings to mind what Cavell calls the practice of “checking one’s experience”, which he refers to as a vital part of aesthetic appreciation. What it means is “the sense at the same time of consulting one’s experience and of subjecting it to examination, and beyond these, of momentarily stopping, turning yourself away from whatever your preoccupation and turning your experience away from the habitual track, to find itself, its own track: coming to attention. The moral of this practice is to educate your experience sufficiently so that it is worthy of trust” (1981, 12). The practice is instructive to film criticism. It reminds us that not only should our reading account for the movie, but it should also do justice to our experience. That is, criticism involves an account of our aesthetic experience of film. And such an account at once mobilises our experience as evidence and illuminates it, placing it under scrutiny, putting it to the test. Attending to our experience of film doesn’t mean embracing it without qualification or reporting it in painstaking detail. Rather, we treat it as our guide to critical discovery, being attuned to the “track” it opens up for

7  CONCLUDING REMARKS: REASONABLE DOUBT 

179

our analysis; this “track” may not resemble any preexisting approaches to the particular film in question or to the specific type of film it belongs. In other words, it may differ from how the film is commonly or previously experienced and understood. And that’s precisely the point. Experience draws upon habits. Our experience of film is shaped, and can be therefore obscured, by our own critical assumptions and dispositions. What Cavell stresses is that we shouldn’t permit what is habitual and familiar to determine our understanding of film, “foreseeing”, as it were, its aesthetic possibilities. We need to let the movie, especially our experience of it, to teach us how to go about it, to “see our interpretation through”. When studying ambiguity, “checking one’s experience” feels all the more urgent because it is the persistence of our puzzlement that is at stake, needing to be simultaneously consulted and clarified, addressed yet also kept in check. Appealing to our analytical routines, in such cases, could be of little uses; we might remain unable to satisfyingly answer or answer to the ambiguity. The way to pursue a rewarding critical “track”, this book has argued, is by reckoning with and reflecting on our experience of doubt, by putting it in conversation with our reason, so as to educate ourselves to reasonably exercise uncertainty. It is by doing so that we can lay claim to becoming a more preceptive, more responsible critic of ambiguity. The study of the concept sheds light on the nature of film criticism. My account of ambiguity has focused on how it galvanises critical introspection, its capacity for instigating an internal drama of doubt. But isn’t ambiguity what divides critics? Doesn’t our engagement with it frequently stem from an urge to express dissent and settle disputes? In other words, isn’t ambiguity primarily an aesthetic problem pertinent to the public arena, and its criticism mostly a forum for persuading others? While all this isn’t exactly inaccurate, by stressing the “negative”, “destructive” features of ambiguity, such an understanding misses one of its most fruitful critical lessons. As the discussion makes clear, this book draws attention to a less examined aspect of film criticism: as an ongoing dialogue with movies; with our experience of movies. On this account, criticism is appreciative and reflexive as much as it is argumentative and discursive. In fact, we can say that it often involves our appreciation and reflection prior to the advance of argument and discourse. Put another way, we cannot fruitfully reason with others unless we sufficiently reason with ourselves. So, it is important to inspect how our critical reasoning works internally, as a practice integral to criticism. Moreover, our

180 

H. L. LAW

persuasion of others need not be conceived as the refutation of their reasons. The aim of critical conversation is not to eradicate disagreements but to foster helpful exchanges and debates. That is, in a crucial sense, it draws people closer. Film criticism enables the formation of critical communities. The criticism of ambiguity can serve as a bridge between people despite the concept’s divisive potential. But a successful critical community is not a community based on consensus, but one committed to the sharing of readings. Ambiguity presses us to reflect on our own uncertainty, and then—despite the threat of dissent, perhaps out of the need to dispute—to share our account with others. But sharing should be a two-way practice. It equally engages our capacity for appreciating dissimilar and unfamiliar perspectives, seeing other people’s reason and doubt, to a meaningful extent. Such a give-and-­ take exploration of critical differences would sharpen our discernment and refine our standard of discrimination. By doing so, it affords us a fresh view of what is ambiguous. Seeing criticism as an opportunity for sharing pointedly draws our attention to the fact that the end of our account should also serve as an invitation to further reading, as something like a beginning of another analysis. What this suggests is an idea of criticism as a collective effort to finesse our understanding of movies. This points to an instructive answer to the question that begins the concluding remarks. Instead of arriving at a “solution” or a “cure”, criticism seeks to deepen our aesthetic appreciation of ambiguity, exploring “why it is as it is”. We may temporarily close our reading when we have, for the purposes of our analysis, satisfyingly assessed the reasons for our experience, putting our doubt to rest after putting it to the test. The opposite of doubt is certainty, not reason. In fact, reflective doubt begets reasons which critical certainty knows nothing of. Film criticism, as this book has demonstrated, can be indeed understood as a productive dialogue between reason and doubt; the two can, and should, work together in the practice of reading. Our analysis comes to a suitable close when our uncertainty has become reasoned. That is, on a satisfying account, ambiguity is a form of reasonable doubt.

Note 1. Not least because the inclusion of all interpretations is impossible. There is also no guarantee that what seems “completed” now wouldn’t be dethroned by a future understanding, an alternative way of reading.

7  CONCLUDING REMARKS: REASONABLE DOUBT 

181

References Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. 4th edn. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Index1

A Abbott, Mathew, 58, 70 ABC Africa, 82n14 Aesthetic reason, 10–12, 54–56, 59, 62, 65–67, 165, 177 Albera, François, 82n13 Ambiguity and aesthetic reason, 10–11, 54–55, 62, 180 and coherence, 62, 74–76, 79 and the depth of meaning, 105–108 as a dialogue between our reason and doubt, 11–13, 36, 166–168, 176–180 and evaluation, 2, 16–18, 134–135 and film character, 95–97 as a form of metacritical doubt, 166–168

and the internal drama of doubt, 12, 167–168 as the movement of meaning, 39, 41, 43, 45n10 and polysemy, 2, 15 and the puzzle film, 7, 8, 14 and realist aesthetics, 4–6 as rhetorical unreliability, 142–143 and the search for pertinent questions, 12, 43, 80–81, 105, 147n32, 158, 176 and speculation, 56–60, 82n10, 129, 167 and uncertainty, 3, 11, 17, 19n11, 52, 58, 142, 151–152, 177, 179–180 as undecidability, 38, 126–128 as the weave of suggestion, 3, 177–178

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8

183

184 

INDEX

Ambivalence, 138, 142 Analytical editing, 5, 118 Anatomy of a Murder, 147n32 Andrew, Dudley, 4 Andrew, Geoff, 69, 70 Andrews, Dana, 149, 151, 153, 156, 160, 165, 169n1 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 170n17 Armes, Roy, 1 Art cinema, 1, 6, 7, 18n5 Austin, J. L., 169n3 B Barthes, Roland, 8, 18n7, 82n15, 144n9, 169n2 Bazin, André, 1, 4, 5, 9, 18n2, 18n3, 117 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, 13, 149, 153–158, 160, 161, 166, 168, 170n14, 175, 177 Bíró, Yvette, 134 Bordwell, David, 1, 2, 6, 16, 18n5, 31–36, 40, 42, 43, 45n11, 46n14, 82n12, 110n14, 170n18 Braudy, Leo, 155 Britton, Andrew, 65 Brody, Richard, 135 Brown, Tom, 152, 162 Buckland, Warren, 7 Burch, Noël, 32, 33 C Carax, Leos, 82n17 Care, 44n1, 70, 72, 124, 128, 137, 164–166 Carroll, Noël, 8, 147n32 Carruthers, Lee, 1 Cavell, Stanley, 9, 19n10, 93, 104, 108, 109n4, 109n5, 109n9, 109n12, 146n31, 175, 176, 178, 179

Cheshire, Godfrey, 51 Clayton, Alex, 19n9 “Closed film”, the, 155, 168 Close-Up, 60 Coherence, 18n6, 62, 74, 79, 81, 159, 169n5 Comolli, Jean-Luc, 110n21 Complexity, of tone, 119–123 Conjecture, 56–61 See also Speculation Convention, 5, 14, 18n2, 31, 33, 40–41, 43, 57, 58, 63–65, 72, 82n16, 84n25, 115, 123, 152–154, 165 “Cop-out” ending, 19n13, 134 Credibility, 36, 37, 89, 138, 158 Critical viewpoint, 134, 142 Cromwell, John, 110n19 D Daney, Serge, 157 Davis, Colin, 171n19 Dead Reckoning, 110n19 Découpage, 18n2 “Deep” meaning, 12, 106, 107 See also “Surface” meaning Deleuze, Gilles, 158, 160 Direct address, 152, 153, 162 Disaster films, 115–116, 139 Dispositif, 63–66, 69, 77–80, 82n13, 82n16, 84n27 Documentary, 52, 54, 56–58, 69, 72, 81n3, 82n8 documentary response, the, 57, 58, 63, 69, 75 Donoghue, Denis, 167 Doubt, internal drama of, 12, 167, 179 See also Reasonable doubt Downhill, 13, 118, 128, 129, 131, 132, 145n20 Durgnat, Raymond, 144n16, 168

 INDEX 

E Eder, Jens, 109n10 Elkins, James, 3, 9 Elsaesser, Thomas, 160, 169n6 Empson, William, 2, 3, 9, 80 Evaluation, 2, 16–18, 135 F “False POV”, the, 33, 34 Falzon, Christopher, 143n4 Faxon, Nat, 13, 118 Felski, Rita, 171n20 Film character, 95–97 Film endings, 16, 118, 133–135, 145n23, 146n25, 146n26 and viewpoint, 133–135, 142–143 See also “Resolution” Five Dedicated to Ozu, 82n14 Force Majeure, 12, 15, 115–118, 122, 123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 132, 135, 138–143, 143n4, 144n6, 145n20, 146n31, 147n32, 163 Form, 10, 33, 45n6, 50, 63, 70, 77, 97, 118, 139 Fried, Michael, 170n11 G Godard, Jean-Luc, 35 Gombrich. E. H, 171n18 Goulding, Edmund, 59 Grant, James, 11, 59, 60, 65, 146n24 Grand Hotel, 59, 60 Gunning, Tom, 157, 161, 163, 170n10, 170n16 H Harvey, James, 94, 101 Henderson, Brian, 83n22 Hermeneutics of suspicion, 167, 171n20

185

Hitchcock, Alfred, 18n2, 37, 45n7, 83n24, 155, 171n22 Holland, Norman N., 7, 45n6 Holy Motors, 82n17 Hunt, The, 14 I “Ideal viewpoint”, the, 158 Identification, 42, 71, 78, 81, 84n28, 95, 99, 130–132, 136, 138, 139 Imaginativeness, 11, 59, 60, 65, 82n10, 146n24 In a Lonely Place, 14, 87–92, 96, 98, 99, 156, 165, 176 Inception, 14 Insdorf, Annette, 146n26 Intention, 44n2, 96, 97, 99, 154, 164–166, 169n3, 170n17 See also Care Interpretative anarchy, 57 Interpretative weight, 151, 166, 177 Irony, 50, 105, 116, 118, 119, 123, 130, 132, 142, 163 J Jannidis, Fotis, 109n10 Jarvis, Simon, 165 Joker, 14 K Kermode, Frank, 146n25 Kessler, Frank, 82n13 Kiarostami, Abbas, 12, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56–58, 61, 62, 66–69, 71, 73, 76–78, 81n2, 81n3, 81n7, 82n11 Kiss, Miklós, 7 Klevan, Andrew, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45n10, 72, 89 Koker Trilogy, The, 52, 60 Kuleshov effect, The, 37, 38, 45n7

186 

INDEX

L Labarthe, André S., 5, 7 Lady from Shanghai, The, 45n12 Lang, Fritz, 13, 149–151, 154–156, 158–160, 163–165, 168, 169n4, 169n6, 170n12, 170n15, 170n16 Lash, Dominic, 44n3, 82n17 Last Year at Marienbad, 13 Late Spring, 25–30, 33–38, 41–43, 44n2, 46n12, 46n13, 62, 69, 176 Lynch, David, 14 M MacDowell, James, 110n20, 147n32 Martin, Adrian, 14, 19n12, 63–65 “Maximum ambiguity,” 6, 13 McElhaney, Joe, 156 Metalepsis, 30, 44n3 Miller, D.A., 171n19 Misreading, 154, 156 See also Overreading Motivation, the neoformalist understanding of, 32 Mulholland Drive, 14 Mulvey, Laura, 52, 58 N Narboni, Paul, 110n21 Nehamas, Alexander, 107 Neupert, Richard, 147n32 Nolan, Christopher, 14 Non-aesthetic reason, 12, 55 Nornes, Abé Mark, 28 O Offscreen, the, 31, 56, 64, 66, 68, 70, 83n18, 83n19 Östlund, Ruben, 12, 115, 120, 124, 127, 133, 140, 144n8

Oudart, Jean-Pierre, 83n21 Overreading, 30, 108, 154, 166 See also Misreading Ozu, Yasujirö, 12, 25–29, 31–36, 39, 41, 43, 44n1, 44n4, 46n14 P A Page of Madness, 13 Parametric narration/parameter, 33–34, 46n14, 59, 63, 64 Part-and-whole, 64, 78–79, 81, 83n19, 133–135, 152–156 “Passive agency,” 94, 160 Perez, Gilberto, 57, 72, 74, 77, 82n16, 109n13, 130, 146n28 Perkins, V. F., 18n8, 36, 45n9, 87, 89–91, 96, 97, 104–107, 110n16, 110n20, 147n32, 152, 153 Phillips, Adam, 171n20, 171n21 Phillips, Todd, 14 Philosophical skepticism, 90, 93, 108 Pillow-shot, the, 32 Pippin, Robert B., 92–95, 101, 107, 108n1, 109–110n13, 110n15, 143n1, 160 PlayTime, 35 Point-of-view shot, 5, 14, 32, 39–41, 51, 61, 62, 65, 69–72, 78–80, 84n27, 136, 146n28 Polysemy, 2, 15 polysemic, 2 Preminger, Otto, 147n32, 160 Pudovkin, V. I., 37, 45n8 Puzzle film, the assumptions behind, 7, 8, 11, 14, 175 Puzzlement, 2, 3, 10, 19n11, 42, 62, 79, 177, 179 Pye, Douglas, 155, 157, 158, 170n9

 INDEX 

Q Question appropriateness of, 12, 43, 80–81, 92, 105, 139, 147n32, 158, 176 difficulty of, 8, 12, 43–44, 51, 80–81, 95, 107, 129, 139, 176 Question-and-answer in relation to film criticism, 8–10, 14, 19n9, 42–44, 54–55, 63 R Rash, Jim, 118 Ray, Nicholas, 12, 87, 89, 98, 100–104, 106 Ray, Robert B., 59, 60 Rear Window, 83n24 Reasonable doubt, 36, 166–168, 177–180 Resnais, Alain, 13 “Resolution,” 57, 125, 126, 131–132, 135, 138, 139, 142, 145n23, 147n32 Revelation, 30, 67–69, 71, 77, 89, 95, 143n5 Rhetorical unreliability, 142–143 Richards, Wadia Rashna, 82n10 Richie, Donald, 29–31, 34, 36, 40, 42, 44n4, 45n11 Rils, Johannes, 109n10 Rivette, Jacques, 155, 156 Roeg, Nicolas, 13 Rohdie, Sam, 84n27 Romney, Jonathan, 135 Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 52 Rothman, William, 39–43, 46n15, 83n21 S Schneider, Ralf, 109n10

187

Schrader, Paul, 29–31, 34, 36, 42, 45n11 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 171n20 Self, Robert, 1, 7 Self-opacity, 12, 95 Seven Types of Ambiguity, 80 See also Emspon, William Shirin, 64, 66, 82n14, 82n15 Shot/reverse-shot, 5, 39, 40, 63, 65, 131 Sibley, Frank, 54, 55 Significance, 36–38, 144n10, 151, 157–158, 166–167, 176, 177 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 134, 171n18 Smith, Murray, 84n28 Smith, Susan, 109n11 Sontag, Susan, 116, 139 Speculation, 56–60, 81n5, 84n27, 108, 129, 167 See also Conjecture Stella Dallas, 72 “Surface” meaning, 8, 12, 29, 106, 107 See also “Deep” meaning Sutcliffe, Thomas, 134 T “Tacked-on” ending, 19n13, 134, 135, 139 Taste of Cherry, 81n3 Tati, Jacques, 35 Taylor, Aaron, 109n10 Ten, 12, 14, 49–59, 61–63, 65–69, 72–76, 78, 79, 82n7, 82n14, 83n19, 129, 139 10 on Ten, 54, 82n14 Thompson, Kristin, 31–36, 42, 46n14 Thomson, David, 160

188 

INDEX

Tokyo Story, 35 Tone, 13, 68, 88, 120, 147n33 Too-close-reading, 166 Tortajada, Maria, 82n13 24 Frames, 82n14 V Vase in Late Spring, The, 12, 14, 29, 69 Vaughan, Dai, 57, 63 Vertigo, 83n24, 171n22 Vidor, King, 72 Vivre sa vie, 35 W Walker, Michael, 145n23 Warren, Charles, 82n8 Welles, Orson, 5, 45n12 Where the Sidewalk Ends, 160

“Why is it as it is”, 9–11, 14, 18, 19n10, 27, 36, 43, 51, 54, 60, 63, 107, 168, 177, 180 Willemsen, Steven, 7 Wilson, George M., 18n6, 46n12, 110n20, 118, 158, 169n4 Withholding, 5, 54–56, 58, 59, 66–68, 83n18, 84n26, 84n27 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, 11, 83n23, 105 Wood, Robin, 18n7, 155, 156 Wyler, William, 5 Y Yoshida, Kijū, 45n6 You Only Live Once, 169n4 Z Zobel, Craig, 14