VISUAL NARRATION STRATEGIES

Analysing Kubrick’s methodology and handling of the visual narrative in film is an interesting exercise. More so than other filmmakers – Kubrick’s suspense is of primary interest to me as I embark upon my “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” studies.

I began by looking first at how Kubrick dealt with issues related to narrative structure. how he handled the conventions of visual narration; his use of voice-over, editing, sound, and shot composition. Going slightly deeper, other aspects of Kubrick’s work also inform my own approach to creating graphic design adaptations; his use of repetition, time and space in general, and narrative segmentations.

Perhaps beyond all of this, I am curious in better understanding how Kubrick infuses his films with their very own unique sense of suspense and tension. I have come to see through my own research, making and reflecting – that suspense can be built through how one handles narrative conventions. It can be constructed, maintained, and dissipated through certain mechanisms inherent in each media it is applied to; from the novel format, to the television teaser, to a poster.

He is a fascinating and relevant case study in that his methodology and handling of narrative relates exactly to my thesis interests in
He further develops my initial interest in the structure of the detective story and how it can be applied to graphic design methods. His films consistently play with using point of view to both reveal and conceal information – while far more subtly than the detective story, there is a similar sense of disconnect between what we know and what we sense. The source of the suspense in his films is born from this wonderful tension. It is Kubrick’s presentation of the narrative that imbues the final piece with an underlying intrigue – constantly playing with deliberate strategies of fragmentation to build an internal tension.

PATTERNS OF NARRATIVE and SOURCES OF TENSION:

At first glance, the suspense in Kubrick’s films seems to arise from what one might call their unnerving tone; a tone that sometimes fits awkwardly with the underlying narrative content. Part of my thesis research is to really attempt to break open this ‘tone’ and understand how it is created and controlled.

On closer analysis, I suspect there are various sources of this tone. One is Kubrick’s specific handling of point of view; both his own point of view as filmmaker, and how that plays out amidst the points of view of his characters. His films play heavily with dramatic irony and the clash between what the characters know and what we as viewers know. Another source of this suspense is the tension in his work between classical/conventional storytelling and less conventional narrative modes. In what appears to be a conventional film structure, Kubrick works with complex temporal ordering, narrative gaps and repetition of narrative incidents.



FRAGMENTATION, VOICE and SUBTEXT:

“We must distinguish between the narrator, or speaker, the one currently “telling” the story, and the author, the ultimate designer of the fable, who also decides for example, whether to have a narrator, and if so, how prominent he should be.” (Seymour Chapman; Stanley Kubrick; A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis; p 90)

The narrative fragmentation in Kubrick’s films is related to the above-discussed use of point of view. Rather than using aspects of point of view (voice-over, camera perspectives) to traditionally narrate and reveal, Kubrick deliberately fragments both the time structure and how information is presented to the viewer. He constantly plays with using the film’s very narrative structure to both reveal and conceal information from within the story. But in doing so, he simultaneously reveals and conceals his own hand as orchestrator, conductor, and designer of this fictional world.

By creating fragmentation within a film’s structure, Kubrick forces the viewer to become aware of their own gaze, of the filmmaker’s gaze – and of the filmmaker’s mark on making this film. “Both the process of fragmenting information and the film’s non-linear time structure reflexively comment on the process of filmmaking. The complicated structure makes the viewers more aware of the importance of temporal ordering in film, forcing them to reflect on the organizing function of the filmmaker and the manipulation that goes into creating a film’s narrative.” (p.172)

The handling of the character of Quilty in “Lolita” is a prime example; by making traces of this elusive character clearly visible in the foreground of the film’s structure, we become part of the game Kubrick is playing with the character, a game he plays against the film’s protagonist, Humbert. We start to enjoy the fact that Humbert is oblivious to this game we are playing with the director. This is a great source of a really pleasurable suspense and a way of transforming events into real drama; both knowing more than a character knows, and also not completely knowing what the filmmaker knows.

(Kubrick’s use of how subtext can inject a compelling tension into a film is of great interest in how it related to my current studies of subtext in Carver’s short story? What potential is there is deliberately imbuing a visual piece with such an internal tension – what can be achieved through the friction between a surface narrative and a subtext.)




ADAPTATION and POINT OF VIEW

This analysis brings up some really interesting implications on my thesis ideas regarding adaptation and methods for interpreting and generating suspense. Kubrick was a filmmaker who dealt with precisely these questions- how one creating a film adaptation of a novel can use and distort point of view as a narrative strategy.

Kubrick transforms the original stories he works with (he called it ‘corrupts’) not simply through the act of translating a written narrative into a visual narrative. In this adaptation process, he plays heavily with how point of view functions in framing narrative action. One sees this particularly in his handling of the first-person narrator - how tension is created between that allegedly reliable point of view, and the point of view of other characters in the piece. While there a different examples of how this is achieved in different films, Kubrick consistently imbued the original source narrative with an added complexity and elusiveness.



DRAMATIC IRONY/ NARRATIONAL GAPS:

Kubrick’s handling of point of view in “Lolita” imbues the film with its intrigue and tension. Above all, one sees how narrational gaps to build suspense in an already fairly suspenseful story. This is first and most fundamentally used with relation to the film’s protagonist, Humbert Humbert. He is set up as the ‘narrator’ from the start as he contributes the film’s voice-over. But much of the film’s narration actually takes place outside of Humbert’s field of vision (from the death of Charlotte Haze to the entire relationship between Quilty and Lolita). Ultimately, Kubrick sets up a false sense of point of view, the illusion that this character is controlling the fictional presentation of events, when in fact the controlling point of view is more accurately constructed by the film’s overall narrating function. This is the ultimate use (and mis-use) of the framing device of point of view; what audiences sense to function as the viewing frame (in this case the character of Humbert as narrator) is in fact a frame within a larger frame.