@Greg X: One place where the Scorsese-Schrader counterpoint was worked out in very conscious fashion was in the Biblical quote at the end of RAGING BULLY (as I call the film).
Scorsese added the New Testament citation over Schrader’s specific and public objections. I wrote the following about that contrtemps:
“The contradiction between La Motta’s violence and his latterday conversion to reciting poetry may stem from authorial tensions between the director and screenwriter. Scorsese stated that “the thing that fascinates me is that Jake La Motta is on a higher spiritual level … as a fighter” (Kelly 32). But the higher spiritual level, the “priestly vocation” (Wiener 57) the Catholic Scorsese sought to portray, is mainly found in the end credits. The film concludes with a quotation from John 9:24-26: “Whether or not he was a sinner, I do not know; all I know is that once I was blind and now I can see.” The screenwriter, Calvinist Paul Schrader, however, saw La Motta differently. Although conceding that “there’s a pseudo-religious masochism” in the boxer’s ritual bleeding, Schrader objected to the New Testament quote: “I think [La Motta’s] the same dumb lug at the end as he is at the beginning, and I think [Scorsese] is just imposing salvation on his subject by fiat” (Schrader 57). In fact, the real-life Jake La Motta seemed to concur: “I was a bum and I lived like a bum” (1970: 1).
@Greg X: I hope we can keep up with the pace of the Internet.
As far as your most recent thread is concerned, yes, the contradictions between content and form can be very interesting and challenging. Of course, if we interpret the content to mean that “Life is contradictory,” then the form and content are actually in sync! :-)
BTW, my interview with Antonioni was titled “Life Is Inconclusive,” words spoken by the director during the course of our conversation.
I seem to recall you’ve shared that interview before, as I think I’ve read it.
—PolarisDiB
This thread brings to mind, of all things, Buffy the Vampire Slayer in that the different writers for the show each had a unique view on the arc of some of the main characters, particularly Spike. Which meant that each writer would emphasize a different aspect of Spike’s personality when they wrote an episode. Some would tend towards empathy in what they viewed as his struggle towards being a better man, others would emphisze his viciousness and unredeemability, and others his somewhat pathetic and humorous existence caught between two worlds. In the end, I think the contrasting approaches enriched the character and lent far more depth to the enterprise than would have been possible if they were all on the same page. (If you aren’t familiar with the show it doesn’t really matter since the end point is the important part.)
I also have to wonder how one judges the success or failure, or whatever lies inbetween, of a venture when there is that level of contradiction involved. Even thinking about something simpler like Springsteen’s song Born in the USA where the lyrics of the song are a somewhat bitter screed against life in the US, but they are set against a rock anthem form which led some to take the song as being a straight celebration of the US and others to take it as an indictment. The form was favored by the first group and the content by the second. One could reasonably say that the content was set ironically against the form, but one could also say that Springsteen failed to make himself clear and that by using a anthemic form he doomed his piece to being misinterpreted, or one could reasonably say that both views are correct, that the song is a success and a failure simultaneously.
Edit: Heh. You’re right about the life being contradictory and therefore form and content can be in synch in that regard Frank. Of course convincing some other people of that view may not be so easy :)
Think I’m following you now, I wasn’t sure how to read your last sentence “in those cases of course that is presumed to be intentional enrichment versus accidental advantage.” That clarifies.
- can see arguments for different viewpoints on how to understand the film and what it means based on how one feels about that ending and the characters, and some of those may go against Rossellini’s intentions or at least the outward appearance of what those intentions may have been.-
That leads me to the ending of Taste of Cherry, where you get a number of shifts in form and content: from film to video, from narrative to documentary, from diagetic sound to Louis Armstong, etc.
I think most of us respond to form. That’s where the real emotion comes from. The content has to have the form in order to really move us. Content alone usually does not move us. If you mean by content a story then I would still say it is not the story but the story-telling that moves us.
Even if the story is told in a straight forward manner – that is still a formal choice and it can move us. I’m thinking Ken Loach’s KES – a film that does away with Hollywood -type over production but still moves us because of the simple form.
And you don’t need both form and content to make a great movie. Some great movies are nothing but form. Especially a number of experimental films.
@ Greg X somewhat bitter screed against life in the US….by using a anthemic form
Rolling Stone faithfully defined the album’s spirit in its 1990 issue that called Springsteen “Voice of the Decade”: “Like Nebraska, Born in the U.S.A. was about people who come to realize that life turns out harder, more hurtful, more closefisted than they might have expected. But in contrast to Nebraska ‘s killers and losers, Born in the USA’s characters hold back the night as best they can, whether it’s by singing, laughing, dancing, yearning, reminiscing or entering into desperate love affairs.There was something celebratory about how these people face their hardships. It’s as if Springsteen were saying that life is made to endure and that we all make peace with private suffering and shared sorrow as best we can.” 2
Is there dissonance in the perception by either side?
I’m thinking, one can pose a duality or set the form/content in conflict, but the outcome is something other than dissonance for it to be great art.
Any better examples?
Well, considering that Born in the USA was played at sporting events and by the Republican party, briefly, as an unironic celebration of the greatness of the US, and the way many people would tend to really just belt out the chorus singing along to it,while other people I read or talked to would just emphasize the darker turns of the lyrics, I would say there was quite a range of feeling on the song, but that’s somewhat anecdotal.
(Personally, I don’t hold much to Rolling Stone’s opinion on the album or song, since I found it to be formally and contentwise tired and, while I appreciated his efforts in theory, the whole thing was simply painful to hear. The Boss has a good heart but not the widest range of abilities. His limitations outweighed his strengths by that point working in his larger band style.)
To your larger point, the question of duality is largely interpretive. I’m not sure what your objection to the term dissonance is in the context I was using it, which is to say that a work can set up two contradictory meanings that work off of each other without reaching resolution while still maintaining a powerful experience or meaning or a viewer willing to embrace the oppositions. My feeling is that unresolvable tension is as important to great art as harmony when it comes to the level of “meaning.”
One can always interpret away tension as being something else I suppose, and that is what often happens, but that tends to go back to the intentional unintentional argument which I don’t really find to be that useful or interesting. I look at it more as the difference between expected and unexpected, or familiar and not.
Dissonance by itself doesn’t make great art, but great art often contains dissonance or tension in its different strands of meaning.
What you Greg said about war films applys to every dark human trait. Is not a basic of art that dissonance that make beautiful what is not? That dissonance can be great in itself I think. Even useful. It could be cathartic because to feel the experiences as they are can be more traumatizing. I’m thinking in for instance in Freedom or Corridors from Sharunas Bartas (in fact a lor of references come to mind). They a dark in content but beautiful in form.
@PolarisDIB.
I watched VIsitor Q but I’m not familiar with Pinku Eiga style. Is Visitor Q representative of that style?
I don’t know about Citizen Kane. The main subject to me in that film is how we are a bunch of memories. And the form of that film do nothing more that pointing out in that direction.
The use of Born in the USA is reflective of the object or the user?
The conservatives latched onto an aspect of it ignoring the hardship parts.
I think RS got this correct: celebratory about how these people face their hardships
i.e. form and content are cohesive.
A better example for use might be Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock
Performed by CSNY it was rock n roll. Joni’s version was a dirge.
Two different forms, same content.
I would have used Reydagas’ Silent Light as an example of form and content not meshing producing a dissonance of experience.
My feeling is that unresolvable tension is as important to great art as harmony when it comes to the level of “meaning.”
Okay, there^ we disagree or I am not understanding:
Does Guernica represent for you unresolvable tension re content/form?
Re: “dissonance”
I think it may have been I who introduced the word into the discussion. I was actually thinking in terms of musical dissonances rather than cognative dissonance per se.
Re: Springsteen
“There was something celebratory about how these people face their hardships.”
. . .so, just as Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” needs it dissonant chords as much as it consonant ones, the Springsteen of “Born” needs the "celebratory’ anthemic aspects as much as it needs the “hardship” aspects.Though, certainly, one can extraxt and misunderstand or intentially misappropriate.. . .
Different album, but a number of years ago there was consideration of changing the official state song of New Jersey to “Born to Run.” Apparently in the hopes that’s the “celebratory” anthemic nature of the song would gloss over the explicit “hardship” of “baby this town rips the bones from your back/it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap.”
@M: I’m not familiar with the Pinku Eiga style but I’m amending that shortcoming on my point as we speak (the download is about halfway through now), but Pinku Eiga is brought up often in critical appraisals of Takashi Miike’s work. I used the term mostly because that sounded like an awesome catchline. Nevertheless, Miike’s genre-mixing can sometimes contrast deeply with what are otherwise really poignant characters, which frustrates some and delights others.
Genre-mixing could be another way of looking at the whole form vs. content debate.
However, someone brought up the idea of the medium itself (was that you, M?), where the “story” or “ideas” could be presented as easily in a book, but the movie is what makes it what it is as a visual form. I have to state that of all the ideas in this thread, that is the one I am the most deeply interested in, and spent quite a while thinking over. I used to want to be a writer before I got into film, and when I made the decision to become a filmmaker one thing I did think seriously and practically about is, “Pen and paper: $5. Camera and Crew: $millions. Making something that can’t be described in words: priceless.”
—PolarisDiB
@ Matt you brought about Hegel ….
Hegel: absolute correlation of content and form
Greg x: people seem more concerned with consonance than dissonance as if everything moving the exact same direction is the mark of a good filmmaker.
If form is moving in the exact opposite direction of content, there remains the correlation between form and content and that correlation cannot be dissonant in the perception.
Just sayin….
-Hegel: absolute correlation of content and form-
Yeah, but remember Hegel phrases it not only in terms of “correlation,” but also in terms of “reciprocal revulsion.” Jim Samson in Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality :
“As the ear becomes acclimatized to a sonority within a particular context, the sonority will gradually become ‘emancipated’ from that context and seek a new one. The emancipation of the dominant-quality dissonances has followed this pattern, with the dominant seventh developing in status from a contrapuntal note in the sixteenth century to a quasi-consonant harmonic note in the early nineteenth. By the later nineteenth century the higher numbered dominant-quality dissonances had also achieved harmonic status, with resolution delayed or omitted completely. The greater autonomy of the dominant-quality dissonance contributed significantly to the weakening of traditional tonal function within a purely diatonic context.”
More succintly, Duke Ellington:
“That’s the Negro’s life … Hear that chord! Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part”
Another way of looking at it:
Keats in a letter to his brother, 1817—
“I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates every other consideration.”
.
One final thought re: Springsteen and Schrader, Schrader actually contributed to both the form and the content of Born in the USA. Schrader had written the screenplay that would eventually become Light of Day, and was trying to interest Springsteen in writing a song for the film, so he sent Springsteen a copy of the screenplay, at the time called Born in the USA. Springsteen was apparently so taken by the title that he stole it and it became the germ for the song/album. Later, he wrote “Light of Day” for the film.
I was wondering whether irony could be seen as a type of “dissonance”? Cinematic irony the way I’m thinking of it could be a contrast between content and style, so the ending of A Clockwork Orange is ironic because Alex’s “rehabilitation” should be seen as something negative but the music playing connotes something positive.
Also, is content/form dissonance related to ambiguity? Instead of being simply “open-ended” (an infinite number of possibilities) due to lack of information, because the content and style send mixed messages, two (or more) competing possibilities are introduced. Not that all ambiguity is caused by this dissonance, but is some?
As for whether content/form dissonance can be beneficial in and of itself, I think it most definitely can. I think this dissonance is what makes something like Paradise Lost or A Clockwork Orange great.
Oh, and the Hegel quote is terrific.
Edit:
Greg X — “people seem more concerned with consonance than dissonance as if everything moving the exact same direction is the mark of a good filmmaker. To me, it’s almost the other way around and complex dissonance lends towards a richer experience in art since showing the seemingly inexpressible is the area where art can venture that other modes of communication often can’t without becoming hopelessly entangled in contradiction”
That’s a really great explanation.
I think, Amos, that content/form dissonance is more of a “seeming” conflict/contradiction than ambiguity necessarily, though there is certainly confusion and bewilderment similar to that of ambiguity. But there is no restriction in ambiguity, literally everything that is possible … is possible, no prejudice is shown toward one linear path or the other; with dissonance (relating to content/form), the two present separate motives (even one motive engaging the other) and this may result in irony or allegory or something like that. You mention A Clockwork Orange, and that’s a good example, where Kubrick is showing us a scene that conventionally (and perhaps, naturally, because we are human) would receive a certain reaction, but he introduces something which clashes with that emotion (such as the soundtrack) – perhaps that summons a feeling of ambiguity in some people because they are unsure what reaction they are supposed to have.
For instance …
I often have trouble “marketing” my own work (music) because there’s a very self-aware (and very evident) deconstructionist approach to the writing and mixing, and at times, noise and dissonance isn’t removed from the recording, often it is integrated to achieve some kind of challenge to the listener – not merely as something which is “psychedelic” (a term often used to describe my work, but I completely disagree with that comparison), but something which is, actually, very consonnant (to my ears) because it is complex and yet it is recorded minimally (with as few instruments as possible, and no overdubbing). And what is happening is that I compose something very basically/structurally (content) and then take that foundation and expand it until it feels “whole” to me, by this time I have fully imposed (for better or worse) my own particular style and inclinations on the work. Something which is indeterministic and unpredictable (and especially improvised) is much more desired to me and much more conssonant to me than someone else who may prefer a more premeditated and directional approach.
IMO, form is what results from developed content. That’s the only definition that is, I think, universally applicable.
@Matt Parks.
That leads me to the ending of Taste of Cherry, where you get a number of shifts in form and content: from film to video, from narrative to documentary, from diagetic sound to Louis Armstong, etc.
That film is interesting because we are in front of someone who is committing suicide but the film is so simple and make us to take a prudent distance at the same time that although we should feel sorry about the main character we are not able to establish to much empathy with him. Totally opposite to The Fire Within where everything points out to the melancholy and dispair. Though it could be said that’s precisely the point especially for the selfreferencial ending that take us out of the story.
And precisely that can be a type of great dissonance: the self-referencial nature of some films. In one hand the spectator is asked to dream the film by means of suspension of disbelief of the story being told and in the other hand the self-references work as remainders of the fiction. Persona, Funeral Parade of Roses, Contempt, Hiroshima Mon Amour…
@PolarisDIB.
…something that can’t be described in words
Exactly. And that remainds me that artistic merit is something we can’t grasp with our ordinary language. If we do it we lose it in a way as I think GregX implied.
@Amos
But irony is in general well defined isn’t? if you are ironic you say something meaning the opposite but you are at last meaning something clear.
I remember this scene of Natural Born Killers where the situation of the main (female) character in her house was depicted as a funny familiar sitcom but was very sordid in fact. The sarcasm just made more sordid the content. I don’t take it as a dissonance: everything falls into place.
It depends on the artist’s intention – some opt for balance, some are more content-driven, others prefer to focus on the form of the film, the way it’s presented, and the aesthetics of the film. Personally, I’d say both are equally important, depending on many personal factors, which are obviously highly subjective. It’s a question of state of mind and a question of intention. The form supports the content usually, and for instance, I also respect the way some directors focus on the form. Everything is acceptable for me… I think every style is interesting, expect the “boring” style. I won’t cite any work, because I think this question is quite broad.
Balance, for me, is the key of success. Some filmmakers are poets, others are storytellers. To enhance your content, you need a solid base, a solid way to present it. Something that values the content, that gives it a strong and powerful meaning. If you find an interesting balance between those two spheres, you might create a film that doesn’t seem to content-oriented or form-oriented, depending on what you really want to show to the spectator. Alain Resnais wanted to show a form-oriented film with Last year at Marienbad, that film is a trap where you can’t find a meaning to it (in fact… the meaning is that there’s no meaning, it’s a narrative labyrinth with absolutely no exits). It’s all about repetition and editing. It’s very interesting, of course, but some viewers might find that film exhausting. Some films are more content-oriented, like Les Invasions Barbares by Denis Arcand or Mon Oncle Antoine by Claude Jutra… you won’t find any form extravaganza in those films, but you’ll live more a emotional and human experience, something that comes close to you and that stimulate your own mind, you’re own life.
It is very difficult to create a work of art which can relate to many human beings, that bounds them together. Honesty and balance are the key, for me… Tarkovsky’s work is, of course, very poetic – but I find there’s a balance between the form and the content in its work. He wants to create a formal experience that stimulates our mind -dialogues, silence, slow-paced editing and camera movements. P.T. Anderson is also a director that is quite balanced in its work (Punch Drunk Love, Their Will Be Blood, Magnolia…). It’s a very subjective and broad subject, and I appreciate the fact that this topic was started. It’s important to evaluate the spheres and the cinematic experience (in this case… formal and content-oriented experience).
Content vs? Form
Content+Form
Getting back to the OP, I will use the distinction of content being the story the film is relating and form as the style of the film in relating the story. This seems to be the most basic distinction, and avoids all the confusion over content vs form – in my own mind, at least.
To me, they are an inherent unity, that when done right, can greatly enhance our experience of a film. Because film is by its very nature a visual medium, obviously many factors come into play in how the story of the film is told. Cinematography, sets and the time/place of each individual scene, editing, the way the actors are presented in terms of costume, lighting, close-ups, etc. Film is by its nature a collaborative effort, involving many disciplines and technics (here I am speaking of feature films, not experimental, which are a separate category). We need all the elements to combine in an interesting way, in terms of style, to match the story unfolding in the film. Form gives birth to the content and vice versa.
The story is the primary deus ex machina that provides the momentum of the film. Here, scripting comes in, dialogue, delivery – all those intangibles of acting style. The words scripted and then given to us by the actors, articulate the story. All the miscellaneous elements such as cinematography, lighting, placing of the camera, length of shots being ancilliary at this point. Good films have good scripts. Great films have great ones. Think of the examples among your own viewing that meet this criteria. The actors are the deliverers of the lines, and must know just how to deliver them for maximum effect. When good writing meshes with good acting, it can be a magical moment. Think Network, think Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, think A Streetcar Named Desire, or think All About Eve as some of the most obvious examples of great scripts welded with great acting. There are many more from many countries’ cinema. I am using some obvious English language examples.
But the look – style – of a film is also critical to our perception of it. If a film looks flat and uninspired in any of its important visual cues, it takes away from the story and the way the actors are presenting it.
There are many other complex factors to consider, such as the use of music or the score of a film, ambient sounds, the entire soundscape of a film. All these could be considered the form or style of the film – using a very broad defintion.
When we look at the best films – rare though they are, they do exist – that have all these elements meshing into a unified whole, then the seamlessness of the form/content becomes apparent and the so-called dichotomy becomes meaningless.
Think The Third Man, 8 1/2, 2001, Wild Strawberries, Vertigo, Stalker, In the Mood for Love as obvious picks where the style (form) and content (story) mesh in such a way that both become an invisible unity – a Hegelian unity if you will.
Unity. I love this.
Re: Natural Born Killers
Having heard so much about this infamous movie and then finally sat down to watch it, what struck me was that Stone did not simply make a movie about society turning a serial killer into a televised event, but he made the movie a televised event. That is, the movie is structured almost like flipping through channels, only the different channels have narrative continuity.
—PolarisDiB
Regarding Born in the USA, the dissonance I was referring to is simply the marriage of an anthem in the form and chorus which comes across as a celebration of the US to a protest song in the rest of the lyrics which works as a criticism of the US. One can try and resolve the conflict between those two modes in different ways and come to conclusions that support one’s feeling about the song, but the dissonance is there in that the two forms oppose each other in a fairly direct way.
The conservatives seemed to take the song as meaning; Yeah, life sometimes sucks, but you know what makes it all better? Being born in the fuckin’ U S of A! Yee-haw! Whereas liberals seemed to take the song as a straight forward irony, the lyrics giving lie to the chorus and the tone, more of a America what a friggin’ joke sort of view. Rolling Stone sought to reconcile to differences by suggesting it represents the indomitable will of the characters of the songs, they suffer but they celebrate in spite of the suffering, which seems reasonable, but it doesn’t resolve the inherent tension between the two modes, it just elides it under the claim of reality. A similar thing could be said about many Blues songs or Spirituals, but explaining that two contradictory positions can be reasonably held doesn’t remove the dissonance, it just elucidates it. Personally, I don’t think the two modes are reconcilable in a satisfactory way, I find that the opposition is too much for the song to bear and that it becomes unworkable from a standpoint of overall meaning. I can accept that Springsteen seems to hold these two views in alternating bursts of feeling, but I don’t think the song structure represents that divergence in an adequate way, feeling more like it is seeking a united view instead of an alternating view and the song doesn’t have the complexity necessary for that to work.
Interestingly, like Pete Townshend did with some of The Who’s big hits of the seventies, Springsteen later would perform the song acoustically diminishing the anthemic quality of the song making the chorus more wistful or slightly melancholic in tone which felt much more appropriate to my way of thinking in that it suggested the distance between the dream of the US and the reality of life here for many. That method didn’t erase the dissonance, but adapted it to a more workable form that felt more “true” to my ears. I certainly can’t fault Rolling Stone for their version of the song though in that the reaction to it by the country at large was as split as the song itself, so if one reads it as being about the nation at large I suppose one could reconcile the contradictions as being inherent in the country as a whole, although I think that would be pushing the song beyond its somewhat meager artistic craft and be an over-reading merely for the purpose of reconciliation.
Regardless of which view of the song one takes, the purpose of me bringing it up was merely to highlight how content and form can oppose each other. Some may believe that the song is a successful use of artistic dissonance, and others may believe it isn’t successful, nonetheless I will hold to the belief that the two modes are in fact dissonant.
Regarding Silent Light, I’m not sure I agree with you on it being dissonant. To my thinking it proposes a dichotomy between the religious community and the natural world and follows that thinking straight through to the end in both form and content. A little while ago I raised, what I felt were, some pertinent questions about the film hoping that someone who appreciates it more than me would be able to satisfactorily answer them and give a more positive take on the film, but I found no takers. Mostly people wanted to simply remove or deny the importance of certain narrative aspects of the film in favor of the feeling of the visuals or general tone as they took it to be, but that is unsatisfactory to me, and I must stick with my interpretation since, to my mind, it better encapsulates the whole of the film.
You may be mistaking me if you think I’m saying that that dissonance needs to occur between content and form though. I wouldn’t say that at all. My reference to dissonance and art was intended to suggest that it could be at any level of the work, the important part was in the irresolvable nature of some areas of the work. To be sure, I’m not suggesting that one can’t find a way to reconcile disparate or opposing ideas, but that reconciliation is always going to be a tentative one and opposed by other reasonable explanations for the same information. Hamlet continues to fascinate people because it is virtually inexhaustible in its interpretation. The characters and the language of the play have allowed new ideas and understanding to be culled from it for centuries, and no interpretation can ever be settled on as definitive due to the opposing ideas and complexity of dialogue present within the play. The greater the work of art the more difficult it is to define or limit what the work is saying as ideas compete with opposing or alternative ideas that can negate or enhance each other.
You asked about Guernica, I think it embodies dissonance on several planes. Most directly, the representation of chaos from the exquisite order of the canvas, the feelings it lends of awe and beauty in form mingled with horror and revulsion in content, on the level of image, Guernica resists a full accounting of meaning as can be gathered by reading all the different interpretations of the work from various scholars who have studied it. It is at once opaque and abundantly clear in its purpose. Is that a light or an eye at the top of the frame? Are those daggers or tongues in the mouths of the horse and woman? Is that a skull overlaid on the horse’s body? Of course the answer to those questions is that both things are true. It is a light and an eye, a dagger and a tongue, but saying both things are true doesn’t remove the dissonance, it merely recognizes it. The feelings and thoughts the work raises come from the dissonance between tongues and daggers, lights and eyes, beauty and horror, chaos and order. One can make a preliminary claim about what the work means, or how one understands it, by relating the history of the piece and the destruction of the town, but that doesn’t come close to explaining it fully. Those few areas I mention hardly begin to enter into the work of course, one would have to account for Picasso’s style of abstraction and representation, the larger meaning or feel of the images, and the materials of construction at the very least, and each of those areas, while working together towards the overall impression the piece generates, also provides some dissonance that makes the viewer, or many viewers anyway, want to come back to the piece over and over again. It is, like Hamlet, inexhaustible in its meaning due to, I believe, the tension it creates or holds in the viewers mind. One can’t take it in fully because it isn’t able to be taken in fully. There is more than one Guernica present in the viewer’s mind and those multiple images can’t fully reconcile themselves as different aspects vie for prominence.
Amos brings up irony, and in my view, yes, classical irony, not the hipster sarcasm or Alanis Morrisette version, is dissonance generally on the level of story and character. In There Will Be Blood, for example, there is the marvelous scene on the beach where Daniel is attempting to bond with his would be brother. Plainview’s method of bonding is in talking about how much he dislikes other people which is an obvious irony given how he is clearly wanting to develop a connection with someone, but beyond that it is also an irony on the level that his attempt to bond with his alleged brother is moving him farther from his would be son causing harm to his one real relationship by seeking a different one, and even beyond that on the most frightening level, his attempt to bond will lead directly to him murdering the man he is seeking a bond with which pushes him further down the path of total destruction. The dissonance here is on the level of character and narrative, and it works in that it shows us two opposing tendencies that Plainview can’t reconcile and that we will, ideally, keep turning over in our heads long after the film is over. Plainview’s dissonance then becomes ours as we seek to understand who this man is and what his actions mean.
This is the same sort of feeling Citizen Kane raises regarding Charles. The film tells us both we can’t know a man and that we can, and both feelings are simultaneously correct and irreconcilable. An even simpler example would be that of Gone with the Wind. The character of Scarlett is a woman who demands control but also wants to be dominated. She is unable to reconcile those opposing desires and the film reflects that which is why, in my mind, people are so drawn to it. Love stories often are built on a sort of internal incoherence that way. The greatest love is one that lasts forever, but is exemplified by sacrifice where one partner must die or leave. Wacky and dissonant but somehow what works for people in that they get to have both forever and its proof shown to them at the same time. Love for another becomes a purely internal force in that equation which could be said them to deny the other the love is said to be for. Such thinking may be true to life, but it is hardly less dissonant for being so.
Bob was speaking of unity, and while I agree in part, the films we consider the best have an effect on us that can be attributed to the totality of the film, I have to say this can be post hoc reasoning in that it is putting the effect ahead of the cause and assuming that since the feeling is strong the film must be as well. Look at Vertigo for example, while I won’t argue that it isn’t a great film, does this greatness come from a unity of content and form? The story in and of itself is ridiculous, I mean, really, a guy hires an old buddy who happens to suffers from vertigo to follow his pretend bride, a woman who pretends to believe she may be possessed by the spirit of another so she can eventually lead the buddy to a tower where the man is waiting to throw his real wife from the roof? That’s a great script? No, it seems to me that Vertigo is great because Hitchcock so overpowers the premise with excess that the film works precisely because it is absurd on one level. Hitchcock throws off the trappings of content on a surface level and makes the film a perverse psychological exploration of his characters. He does this through his style or form where the excess of his technique creates a world where such events seem plausible or acceptable given what we are really involved in which is what Scotty/Hitchcock sees/shows and how the other characters react to Scotty as he goes through the experience which reflects how we are experiencing the film. 2001 could be thought of in a similar way, is that script really so interesting in and of itself? Of course the films work with those scripts, so in some sense they were perfect, but when talking about a unity of form and content wouldn’t then any film that we think is great fit the description merely because we think it’s great? That may be true, but it makes the word unity a rather weak one to use since it sounds like one is ascribing deeper meaning to something that is a preference or belief without having to prove it is there.
When we look at the issue of form vs. content I think it is best the object be considered as a whole.
Something Frank said (page 3): My larger point is that form should not be reduced to only one element or technique in a complex art form like cinema. Likewise …….. content should not be reduced to dialogue.
Re: Guernica_
……. it embodies dissonance on several planes. …. the representation of chaos …… of awe and beauty in form mingled with horror and revulsion in content, ………… resists a full accounting of meaning … opaque and abundantly clear ……the dissonance, it merely recognizes it. . the dissonance between …… beauty and horror, chaos and order. ……….inexhaustible in its meaning due to…… the tension it creates or holds in the viewers mind
I would say that^ is all true. I would also suggest in Guernica, form = content. Again Hegel: : …their reciprocal revulsion (tearing away), so that content is nothing but the revulsion (tearing away) of form into content, and form nothing but the revulsion (tearing away) of content into form….
In the Simon Shama’s the Power of Art, Shama recounts how Picasso removed symbols of hope from the original sketch to bring the final painting to the essence of its full embodiment.
Since I am a huge Fellini fan, I should say that I prefer ‘form’ above ‘content’. But are you sure tha films like “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2” really have nothing to say?
To me, another example of initial dissonance, “reciprical revulsion” is multiple perspective in Cezanne’s work. Merleau-Ponty:
…It is Cézanne’s genius that when the overall composition of the picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in natural vision, to impression of an emerging order, an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes. In the same way, the contour of an object conceived as a line encircling the object belongs not to the visible we but to geometry. If one outlines the shape of an apple with a continuous line, one makes an object of the shape, whereas the contour is rather ideal limit toward which the sides of the apple recede in depth. Not to indicate any shape would be to deprive the objects of their identity. To trace just a single outline sacrifices depth—that is, the dimension in which the thing is presented not as spread out before us but as an inexhaustible reality full of reserves. That is why Cézanne follows the swell of the object in modulated colors and indicates several outlines in blue. Rebounding among these, one’s glance captures a shape that emerges from among them all, just as it does in perception.
-“Cézanne’s Doubt,” Sense and Non-Sense
Re: dissonance
Dissonance of content resolved via revulsion to form? Dissonance of form resolved via revulsion to content?
While I generally agree with ’s conclusion that “Think The Third Man, 8 1/2, 2001, Wild Strawberries, Vertigo, Stalker, In the Mood for Love [are] obvious picks where the style (form) and content (story) mesh in such a way that both become an invisible unity – a Hegelian unity if you will,” I think it is a bit simplistic to equate content with story. It seems to me that Theme is another VERY important element in the general arena of content, and that style is often in the service of Theme as much (if not more so) that story.
In saying that, I realize that we are all looking for shorthand ways to discuss this complex issue. Otherwise, we’d be writing long monographs on the topic of Form and Content in the Cinema!
greg x
Frank, I thought that was your take on it from what I’ve read that you’ve written. It is something that doesn’t get talked about enough on here, and many other places either, since people seem more concerned with consonance than dissonance as if everything moving the exact same direction is the mark of a good filmmaker. To me, it’s almost the other way around and complex dissonance lends towards a richer experience in art since showing the seemingly inexpressible is the area where art can venture that other modes of communication often can’t without becoming hopelessly entangled in contradiction. Art thrives on indirect communication.