Pascal
I was very interested in your comments ( and later Daniels) on style. I
would be very interested in the article on Pasolini and the Dardennes.
As I understand it (from Deleuze) Pasolini thought that cinema in its
fullest sense was a medium of free indirect discourse. I would say this of
all narrative communication and especially narrative art. I would say it of
communication generally because I think the way humans work is that a
subject has to shift between different points of view and different takes on
the self and other just to make propositional and narrative communication
possible. To use Daniels term, I think communicative subjectivity has to be
(quasi, imperfectly, cunningly, and at times self-deludingly)
trans-subjective. I would even say that this kind of communicative thinking
is characteristic of linguistic and film thinking and actually very human.
Like cinema, language and society, humans are, as it were, transhuman.
When it comes to narrative art I think that free indirect style in film or
prose is a case of recognising a fact about narrative and using it to
develop a norm. A case of making a virtue of necessity.
I think film is still discovering what the term 'free indirect style' means
for it, and watching the Dardennes work with this in mind will give me
something to think about. I suppose if free indirect style is the proper
character of film and language in their fullest development we should be
able to watch any film with this in mind, and see its style as a matter of
modulations, restrictions and developments of the available visual and audio
discursive resources.
Another (but different) filmmaker who is interesting in this context is
Claire Denis. Beau Travail seems to work deliberately on this - a cinematic
reflection on cinematic point of view. Similar stylistic concerns are there
in a film like Chocolat too. Incidentally, after watching these on video
recently (with the question of point of view in mind), I read Melvilles
Billy Budd and found myself fascinated by the unusual indirect style in what
he calls an 'inside narrative'. I got the sense that Melville was pushing at
the stylistic limitations on point of view imposed by 19th century indirect
literary prose, and yet revelling in and playing with the limitations in
order to use them as an image of the limitations of any narrative and any
subjective and intersubjective descriptions. It is wonderful writing that
would never get past a modern editor.
As for Cassavetes, if his cinematic style is direct, I think we should
recognize that direct style in its fullest sense is mimetic, and I think
that it is the deeply mimetic character of linguistic and cinematic
communication that makes free indirect style the fullest expression of
narrative discourse anyway.
These thoughts may be a bit garbled, and jargon ridden and I have made
vague, overstated claims about language and film that really demand careful
argument. So enough.
Ross
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