Language of Abstraction in Film
My understanding of the language of cinema and the ways in which it bridges narrative and abstraction, to evoke emotion as well as reflection.
Film language is a vast area. It is one that I believe is deeply rooted within the human mind and the way we perceive the world around us. A filmmaker often tries to predict these patterns and this is what creates a successful metaphor or abstraction in film. When these are successfully communicated, they evoke within us, emotion and reflection on the subject matter. Film language seems to have a “hit or miss” nature, because of this pattern-recognizing trait. Abstraction and evocation is carried out through various tools. Different kinds of films make use of different tools of film language to create abstraction.
The first “genre”, dealt with for the case of this unit, was parent child relationships, which seemingly is a goldmine for film language in terms of bringing out abstraction and narrative. However, all three films we saw under this umbrella had this in different levels. Michaël Dudok de Wit’s Oscar and BAFTA winning short, Father and Daughter, focused strongly on narrative and this narrative was used to create abstraction. Each shot and each scene had scope to abstract and I feel that this made such extensive use of the capabilities of film language as a communicative tool. Alexander Sokurov’s Mother and Son had less but just as strong a narrative arc, depending more on visual metaphor for abstraction. Narrative at first directly refers to dialogue and character development, but here it is carried out through visual metaphors like body language, landscape and composition, which all lend themselves to abstraction. Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse is a far more complex kind of abstraction, partly owing to the sheer quantity of it, but it is similar to Mother and Son in its usage of visual metaphor to build narrative and subsequently, abstract. In the area of evoking emotion and reflection, it does well due to its strong visual, unspoken dialogue. Less is More really seemed to apply here as the visuals were truly evocative, trying just the right amount.
Moving into the genre of science fiction, I was completely unsure of how there can be abstraction in this genre. After watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker, the understanding occurred to me that SF uses a form of satire on human character and emotion to bring about abstraction. Solaris looks at emotions, and how they develop and behave. This seems very evident to me because the film involves many events of strong emotional scope and it deals with the character’s dead wife. Stalker looks at human character and behaviour, almost like an orchestrated psychological experiment. It is quite direct to the viewer on this point as after a while, the three people in the Zone becomes like a “what happens when” scenario. Both films were evocative in emotion, and to an extent in reflection, by virtue of their narrative. Since SF is very strongly dependent on narrative arc, this is a genre where the narrative itself lends itself to abstraction in a very direct way.
Gregory Colbert’s “documentary”, Ashes and Snow, focuses on the relationship between man and nature. It does so very directly and aesthetically, and almost every shot features people in communion with animals in a left-of-centre way. It uses a very direct kind of visual metaphor throughout the film. Aside from the understanding of the purpose, that it is examining a relationship between Earth inhabitants, the only way that the film can be interpreted is through abstraction and reflection. This is even truer considering that it was also presented in the form of an artistic installation of photography and videography (and sound) in a gallery space. This knowledge was interesting to me because is further consolidated the fact that this film, due to its suggestive and evocative nature, is to be consumed in a very different way from other films we had watched and in a different way from documentaries in general. It can’t, in fact, be called a documentary at all. It is planned, orchestrated and aims at proving a certain point. It is a compilation of suggestive visuals to evoke in us thought and understanding on the subject of the relationship between man and beast, and additionally serve as a cinematic reel with a theme, a video installation perhaps. The film is rich in evoking and has narrative to an extent, through an artistic brand of visuals and metaphors.
The Indian films were very varied in theme and each one used different tools of film language. In Sanju Surendran’s abatract portrait, Kapila, I observed a use of colour, light and shadow to create evocative and dramatic visuals, which in themselves were evocative. Abstraction here was also dependent on the narrative and the dancing was part of the larger narrative. Iram Ghufran’s public service film, There Is Something In The Air, brought out its abstraction through the voiceovers. It seemed to me to be a commentary on people’s feelings and beliefs and how religion provides them with something to lean on in hard times. This again contained abstraction through narrative. Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito also had rich use of light and shadow to create dramatic and evocative visuals. The visual strength of it seamlessly bridges its narrative with its abstraction and makes it comfortable for the viewer.
To conclude, I’ve developed a few understandings of how film language works and how narrative and abstraction are made to coexist. Narrative itself lends into abstraction in a film. Since the language of film is largely metaphorical in some way or another, metaphors in any narrative will have a scope for abstraction. Though not always, there is often no gap to bridge as Narrative and Abstraction are two sides of the same coin. Abstraction is directly connected with visual mood and theme. When these are composed in a certain intended way, they lend themselves to the narrative arc and thereby to abstraction. Abstraction in a simplistic sense comprises the implicit component of a film- what is communicated without saying, and evokes further thought and creates further meaning. Finally, it is all tied together through Suggestion. Suggestion is responsible for us unearthing new meaning in a film, suggestion is what filmmakers use to influence viewers’ patterns of perception and in the end, the first step to understanding abstraction is a suggestive visual, dialogue or the like.
