“Photography is truth.
Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
-Jean-Luc Godard
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”
-Jean-Luc Godard
Cinema is complicated--so complex, in fact, that just talking about it can make a hypocrite of even one of its most revered contributors, as was the case with the apparently fork-tongued Godard.
However, his contradictory remarks actually pinpoint a duplicity that is inherent to film: although it is accepted as our most accurate means of generating a true representation of the physical world, its usage is often manipulative. In what was likely a response to Godard’s oft-quoted maxim (once-quote above), director Michael Haneke made this declaration: “A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.”
A comparison of Heneke’s Cache (2005) and Nora Ephron’s romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993)--two films driven by very different motives and methods—illustrates the very different ways in which cinematographic choices are used to fulfill entirely divergent aims.
Traditionally, creating a convincing visual scenario is one of the major hurtles a director needs to clear in order to engage viewers. From this necessity has emerged a myriad of cinematographic tricks devised to cover the camera’s tracks and create a picture that is seemingly self-generated--what he French call have termed “suture”—literally, sewing viewers into the scene, and what film students call “continuity editing.”
As Mark Garrett Cooper explains in his essay “Narrative Spaces,” certain camera angles are typically used to convey information about the relationships between onscreen characters and the worlds around. By successfully creating a fictitious space that seems rationally sound, the film establishes a relationship between the narrative and the universe as a whole, luring the audience into the mentality that if the action makes visual sense, it can be taken as an extension of reality.
According to Wynn Hunter, this is what leads us to wholeheartedly believe the slightly contrived plotline of Sleepless in Seattle. In his blog entry entitled, “Why is Sleepless in Seattle so Effective?” : HYPERLINK "http://1wynnhunter.blogspot.com/" http://1wynnhunter.blogspot.com/ , Hunter posits that the answer to his question is rooted in Ephron’s careful creation of a specific narrative space.
The main characters’ exchange of yearning-filled cross-country “looks” seem to render the inconveniently unlikely storyline--that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters have fallen in love over airwaves from different coasts of the country--mere grounds for even more swooning. Because the characters continue to meet each others’ eyes frame-by-frame onscreen, and because the directions of these glances are designed to place them in the context of opposite coasts, we are sucked into a visual representation of space that leaves us convinced that this is plausible. We viewers eat those eyeline matches out of the palm of Ephron’s hand.
It is this respect for spatial information, this implied delineation of off-screen terrain that is markedly absent in Henake’s Cache. Shots are largely static, and we are never really given a vantage point that might make us sympathetic to a certain character.
While Ephron’s work demonstrates a conventional example of suture, Haneke’s work seems to be intentionally void of it—an experiment in the exposure of film as an artifice. Technically he never actually breaks the fourth wall, but rather provides us constant reminder that it is there.
The film’s very plot lends itself to a cognizance of the production process: we greet the protagonist when a cassette tape containing surveillance footage of his life is anonymously left on his doorstep. As we watch him watching his life on tape, we cannot help but become hyper aware of the parallel trajectories of our behavior. Further self-reference to the film follows. We watch him record a television show and then edit it. We see him watch the evening news. One visual motif throughout the film is what looks like walls and wall of floor to ceiling shelves filled with what appear to be books or dvds, but are easily associated with surveillance tapes. And over and over we watch him as he screens, rewinds and pauses countless minutes of film footage of his own life.
We are constantly made aware of the camera’s capabilities, and with no cinematographic evidence to the contrary, we cannot be connected to what we are watching on anything but the “filmic level.”
Sleepless in Seattle, however, creates a sense of intimacy that allows us to relate to the fictitious aspects of the film. Hunter also notes the way that Sleepless in Seattle, “utilizes narrative space to create suspense.” He describes how the film’s allure is in large part the deference of a particular visual goal. In this case, viewers are yearning for the would-be lovers to share a frame. “The suspense of Sleepless derives from the insistence on separating Annie and Sam until the last possible moment… This brilliant use of physical and spatial barriers which obstruct their ‘looks’ effectively juxtapose their discrete spaces and produce the feeling of separation which serves as an effective source of suspense for the audience.” Of course, the couple does get together in the end and viewers are satisfied by the two-shot they have been craving all along.
In Cache, however, we are given no such relief. The title of this film, translated from the french as “hidden,” might suggest that viewers will spend the duration of the film sniffing out what has been hidden. We are made eerily aware that there is a videographer occupying the off-screen space. However, this voyeur is never given a face. Furthermore, we are led to believe that this stalker has always been filming the protagonist and always will. I would venture to say that what is so ultimately unsettling about this film is the fact that after long a exercise in suspense, we are never granted that Sam-Annie two-shot.
Both of these films provide evidence of the pliability of film as a form. However, the fact that one camera technique as opposed to another can enhance both a warm and fuzzy crowd pleaser and an isolating thriller is a testament to the fact that truth in film lies in the eye of the cameraholder.
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Anne-
ReplyDeleteI think your observations about the use of continuity editing and different camera functions are very interesting and insightful. You say: "Technically [Heneke] never actually breaks the fourth wall, but rather provides us constant reminder that it is there." That is precisely what I think gives the film the strange voyeuristic - we don't get all the information, but because of the lack of off screen space and the blatant space between the audience and the characters in the film, we feel like we shouldn't be privy to the information. Instead, we feel as if we are breaching the privacy of this couple, almost as if we, in a sense, are more connected to the stalker than the family.
I really like the use of Sleepless in Seattle as a counterpoint to the unorthodox cinematography of Cache. As you point out, the clever use of eye line matching is necessary in Sleepless in Seattle to keep the audience sutured into a story as seemingly unfilmable as this (I mean, who would've thought you could show two people fall in love without ever interacting?) Whereas in Cache, the lack of suturing brings discomfort to the audience in a whodunnit story that is just as much as a mystery to the audience as it is to the characters. In particular, I really liked your observation, "Technically [Haneke] never actually breaks the fourth wall, but rather provides us constant reminder that it is there". It was a very interesting choice to make the audience aware of the filmmaking process, it almost makes it seem as if the audience is a part of the conspiracy, as if we are the surveyors. And like you said, it was the choice of the "cameraholder" that really created the suspense in the film.
ReplyDeleteThe juxtaposition of Sleepless in Seattle and Cache is a very interesting way to analyze the power of the camera. The narrative space created in Nora Ephron’s film captures our minds with the fictitious world, a world manipulated by camera angles that attract the two lovers together. But Cache lacks a narrative space, since camera placements are, to me at least, dead and inanimate. The way that shots are taken, following actions and emotions of the characters, there is a life that can be sensed when viewing a film. The camera tags along, following characters to their successes, failures, and epiphanies. By limiting the movement of the camera, it has no personality, thereby making the audience too feel impersonal. The reason why we emerged dissatisfied at the end of the showing was not because the conclusion was satisfactory, it was because we had been immersed into the world of the camera, void of life, and returned to reality. The sudden transition from death to life is too much for us to handle, causing the confusion at the end of the film. It seems as the last two comments talked about your fourth wall statement, so I also wanted to express my opinion. I thought it was brilliant, except that rather than the reminder that there IS a fourth wall, I believe we BECOME the fourth wall. As an audience, we sit and watch a film, without any movement, without any zooms, without two-part shots, etc. By using long, continuous shots that did not necessarily focus on anything, it helped the audience connect to what we were actually doing, which was merely watching. That seems really convoluted, but hopefully that all made sense.
ReplyDeleteAt times, I felt like we [the audience] were the stalkers. I think your analysis hints to my feeling regarding the way the story is told. The director is clever in a sense that we are kept away from vital information (throughout the entire movie). In a lot of films, the information that we are kept away from generally reveals itself in some climatic scene. in hidden, this sort of revelation is non-existent, and we are left guessing what the movie is all about.
ReplyDeleteI love that you have compared Sleepless in Seattle and Cache. The two films could not be more different in terms of genre, but they share a few things in common. In both films the plot is very minimal to the effect that is achieved by the film as a whole. While some would argue that the plot in Sleepless in Seattle is much more fantastic and unbelievable than that in Cache, this is not really relevant in that they both do not rely on plot alone to have an emotional effect on the viewer. Also, both films are not effective because of the actors themselves, or the relationships between characters. In Sleepless in Seattle the two leads only share two minutes of screen time! Both movies derive their meaning from the camera itself, manipulating the off screen space to create an effect of longing, or suspicion in Sleepless and Cache respectively, for the viewer. I think this is a great example to show the power of the camera in creating a feeling that a story or an actor cannot.
ReplyDeleteYou said: "Both of these films provide evidence of the pliability of film as a form. However, the fact that one camera technique as opposed to another can enhance both a warm and fuzzy crowd pleaser and an isolating thriller is a testament to the fact that truth in film lies in the eye of the cameraholder."
ReplyDeleteResponse: I wholeheartedly agree. The average moviegoer often blames or praises a movie based on the actors or sometimes the writing of the plot because it is the most visible aspect of a film. Never do you really hear any complaints or compliments given to the "camera holder." Just take the two movies that you compared in your blog post. The reasons why one loves or hates the two movies have alot to do with the way the cameraholder captures the film. For example, the reason why Cache frustrated me so is how we never saw the offscreen space become onscreen space. The cameraholder kept us at arms length the entire time of the movie. He never gave us the means to seamlessly become voyeurs and remove the fact that we were the audience at all times.