Momenti deliberativi

Palpable cause and effect is a very important feature of the classic narrative and we see this most prominently in connection with the characters – especially the protagonist – and their motiva-tions. The rational in us insists that all actions have a cause. Consequently, the viewer of the clas-sic narrative will more often than not want to understand characters and the events in which they are involved in the context of identifiable, and often explicable, psychological traits and motiva-tions. The behaviour of characters, the reasons why they take action, and how they respond to events, will need to fit a psychological palette that is, in part, socially and culturally determined.

Case Study Touching The Void (K. Macdonald, UK, 2003)

Let us briefly identify all the above narrative elements in Kevin Macdonald’s gripping Touching The Void (2003). This is the story of two ambitious climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who in 1985 set off to climb the, at that point, unclimbed west face of the Siula Grande mountain in Peru. They reach the peak, but on the way down Joe breaks his leg. As Simon helps to winch him down the mountainside, an insurmountable problem occurs which threatens both their lives. This leads to Simon having to cut a rope from which Joe is hanging, knowing full well that Joe would probably fall to his death. Unbeknown to Simon, Joe somehow survives the fall into a crevasse and most of the film is about his extraordin-ary struggle to come down off the mountain. Not only is this narrative classic in its construction, we can see that, from an emotional perspective, it is concerned with engaging us in the direct issue of survival.

A scene from Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003)

The narrative is a combination of interviews with the real-life characters, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, whose story this is, and reconstructed sequences involving the use of actors to play the parts of Joe, Simon and their friend Richard.

Protagonists

There are only three characters in this narrative: the mountaineers, Joe and Simon, and Richard, who mans the base camp. As Joe and Simon set off up the mountainside, it may seem that we have two protagonists. However, once the premise has been established, it becomes very clear that Joe is our main protagonist. He is the one who suffers the injury. He is the one abandoned for dead and he is the one whose struggle and journey we follow to a climax. On one level, Simon becomes an anta-gonist, one of the obstacles to Joe’s survival, in that Simon has to cut the rope and abandon him.

As they become separated, and Simon makes it back to the base camp, a subplot develops between Simon and Richard, which is used to create dramatic irony. We shall return to both these points.

Premise

Both Joe and Simon were regular climbers and had climbed in the Andes before, even if they hadn’t climbed this particular face. Their story of mountaineering was therefore a long one. However, the reason why we’re coming into their story at this point is because something specific happened, something that sparked the series of events that constitute the discourse of our narrative. This event was the fact that Joe slipped and badly broke his leg. This premise is shown in the narrative and occurs about 20 minutes into the 100-minute film. Prior to this point, the narrative establishes the characters, the setting and the situation, building in a sense of foreboding of the premise to come.

While in a cinema film it is not unusual for the premise to be revealed up to one-third of the way into a narrative, you may find TV commissioning editors less patient. For them the premise is the ‘hook’

with which they wish to grab a fickle audience within the first five minutes, before they switch to another channel.

Aims

Once the premise has been established, it is quite clear what the protagonist’s aims are. Joe is desperate to survive, exemplified by the need to come off the freezing and treacherous mountain and return to base camp before he gets hypothermia, dehydrates or falls to his death.

Simon Yates in Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003)

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Obstacles

There are a number of obstacles, many – but not all – provided by nature and circumstance. First, the leg itself. It is badly broken and is at times so painful Joe almost faints from the pain. He cannot put any weight on it. Second, Simon’s decision to cut him loose and let him fall. Here the obstacle is someone else’s decision, over which he had no influence because, at that moment, circum-stances made it impossible for them to fully understand each other’s predicament or to communicate.

Third, and perhaps the most significant, nature herself: storms, snow, ice, freezing temperatures, crevasses, darkness and the like prove formidable obstacles. All these obstacles are portrayed in vivid visual and aural detail.

Developing crisis, dramatic irony and subplot

These three elements are lumped together here because the subplot and dramatic irony are used to heighten the sense of developing crisis. Once Simon has cut the rope and saved himself, his con-tinued role in the narrative provides a subplot which gives us dramatic ironies which help to heighten our engagement with Joe’s plight. We know that Simon thinks Joe is dead, though Joe has no way of knowing that, heightening our concern for Joe. And even though Simon insists on staying at base camp a little while longer, we also see how, at crucial stages in Joe’s struggle, Richard and Simon prepare to leave base camp – the very place Joe is desperately trying to get to. In fact, at one point, Simon and Richard burn Joe’s clothes in a strange ritual of final farewell, but the dramatic irony, which causes us anguish, is that we know he is still alive. The placing of these subplot scenes with Simon and Richard at base camp within the dominant scenes of Joe’s struggle is carefully tuned to help augment the developing crisis.

The obstacles that Joe has to overcome seem increasingly difficult. First the fall, then the strug-gle out of the crevasse, the slide down the mountainside, the dangerous negotiation of the glaciers, the painful crawl across the rocky outcrop, the battle with bitterly cold nights and then the final stretch past the lake not too far from base camp. Each stage becomes more difficult and is complic-ated by the dramatic irony of our knowing that Simon and Richard have finally accepted that he is dead and are preparing to leave the base camp. Joe’s only hope of survival is to make it to the base camp with Simon and Richard still there.

Joe Simpson in Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003)

Dramatic question

The questions raised by the tension between the obstacles and the aim is stark: does Joe have the strength, the faith, the hope, the sheer willpower, not to give up and fight to survive? It is a question most will understand and believe to be legitimate in this narrative. It is a question that engages us in the drama. In this narrative, it is basic, clear and unambiguous.

Climax

We thought all Joe’s earlier obstacles were insurmountable, but there is one beautifully profound scene in the film which provides us with a clear climax where all the themes of the story are most vis-ible, where we really do feel he is on the cusp between life and death, where we get a strong sense of what the film is really about. It occurs about three-quarters of the way through the narrative.

We sense, and indeed Joe himself senses, that he is getting close to base camp because he has seen signs of this in the form of human footsteps in the gravel. However, he is not sure. In any case, in the subplot leading up to this moment, we have seen Simon and Richard burn Joe’s clothes in preparation for leaving the base camp, so, for all we know, even if he was close, they might have left by now. That night he drifts in and out of consciousness. In the interview he pauses a lot, as this was clearly a profound moment for him. This was his ultimate feeling of abandonment. Earlier in the nar-rative, he had spoken about being brought up a devout Catholic, but in a sense his situation had made him lose faith. Yet leading up to this last night, he talks about how there was something within that spoke to him, that drove him on, as if a side of himself had taken over that he had not felt before, that was separate from his usual pragmatic self. At this climax moment, even that hopeful force was drained from him as he lay in the rocks waiting to die, completely alone, spiritually and physically abandoned.

It was the smell of urine that made Joe call out into the night with the very last energy he had left in him. For that smell made him think that he might be lying in the latrine area of their base camp.

This detail of a smell forced its way into his fading consciousness and prompted his final calls into the night. Remember that the narrative has been constructed in such a way that we don’t even know at this point whether Simon and Richard are at the camp or not. These calls into the wilderness are his final efforts to survive, his final struggle against ultimate abandonment. It could go either way at this moment. Will he be heard? Is anyone there to hear him?

The climax scene in Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003) ▲

It is only at this point that we learn that Simon and Richard are still in the base camp. They have, indeed, not left yet. And they do eventually hear Joe. They find him and he is saved. From there the narrative moves swiftly to the resolution.

It is worth mentioning that during this climax scene the film takes on unusual stylistic elements, as if to heighten and emphasise the importance and significance of what is going on. In some ways it is quite a surrealistic scene, involving flashes of monochrome images of ice, water and rocks, flashes of carcasses in the rocky landscape, surreally drifting clouds, silent stars and various optical effects which contrast significantly with all the other scenes in the film.

Resolution

Joe is made comfortable in the tent and we see him being warmed up and fed. Later there is a shot of the three of them making their journey from the base camp on a donkey. In between, however, there are text titles explaining what has happened to each of the characters since the end of the narrative and the fact that Simon was criticised by fellow mountaineers back in Britain for cutting the rope in the first place, despite the staunch defence of Simon by Joe. In a way, this raises some interesting moral questions for us to mull over after the narrative has finished.

Character motivation and change

In the opening of the film, Joe is presented, partly through comments by the other characters, as par-ticularly ambitious, defiant and confident. There are also suggestions made by Richard that there was something dislikable about Joe. If there is one flaw in the film, it is that the resolution does not give us any hints about how this experience may have changed Joe. At one point, Joe does question why Simon cut the rope and though he later defended this, as indicated in the text titles in the reso-lution, it seems inconceivable that they, and their relationship, were not changed by these events.

However, it is not an uncommon feature of classic narratives that rely heavily on dramatic action and events that the changes that happen to a character are subsumed by the sheer relief of survival.

Nevertheless, the ambition that drove these two men, and Joe in particular, is clearly delineated at the beginning of the film, satisfying this need, in the classic narrative, to understand the psychologi-cal causes of character actions.

Narrator/Narrative perspective

The first thing to note about this film is that it is telling a story which happened in the past. Though epic in its themes, it is also very intimate. It is as if the author is saying, ‘Let me tell you about some-thing someone else confided to me.’ This is largely achieved through the interviews. The three char-acters tell us in detail their version of events, but it is the way these interviews are shot that give us this sense of confiding. They are very tight shots. We have no sense of location. The lighting is soft and intimate. Importantly, the eye-line of the interviewees is so close to the lens that it seems they are talking directly to us. In fact, Joe, our main protagonist, most of the time talks directly to camera.

There is no sense of a presence of an interviewer or any other character except those speaking and us, the viewer. It’s as if the author is further saying to us, ‘Come closer. See and hear it as I heard and saw it, directly from these people. Look, I’ll get them to tell you directly, just as they told it to me.’ Even though Joe is our protagonist, each character confides to us, on several occasions telling us things we know the other characters do not know, and this is another effective element in creating the strong sense of shared personal confidences.

Having established that confiding intimacy in which our characters are remembering, it then does not seem unreasonable or unnatural that the author will introduce ‘fictional sequences’ reflecting those memories. The direct intimacy of the interviews, and the characters’ remembering, seems to invite the imagery to come alive before us and it is thus irrelevant that it is technically fiction. For the narrator has established a pact with us that allows our imaginative engagement to accept actors reconstructing the events. The close connection between the imagery and what the protagonists talk about and likeness of the actors to the actual characters give us a verisimilitude with which we can fully engage, without questioning whether it lacks factual authenticity. There is a focused consistency in this perspective, which is in part what gives the film its visionary strength.

Key points

• Understand why you are telling this story and why now.

• The key ingredients and structures of the classic narrative seem to have the inherent quality of engaging, predominantly, our self-assertive emotions.

• A good place to start constructing a narrative is to identify the premise and the climax. Why is the narrative starting at this moment in the story? Where is the key moment in the film where everything could, or does, change and where your theme is most visible?

• Understand what parts of your narrative perform the functions of these narrative ingredients and be conscious of the fact that – fact or fiction – you are manipulating these elements to engage your audience’s emotions.

• Because we speak of ‘classic’ narrative does not mean that it is necessarily

‘conventional’ in construct or ‘old fashioned’. Far from it. The challenge for you is to work creatively with these elements to engage the viewer successfully.

• Understand who your main protagonist is and how this protagonist’s predicament – aims and obstacles, for example – provides you with the right context for your story.

• What changes in your story and how do we see this?

Exercises

The following exercises are based on factual events; however, details have been changed and added, as have names. Imagine that ‘Cynthia’s story’, below, is a summary of your initial research. For the pur-poses of this exploration, make reasonable imaginative assumptions. Imagine that you are going to construct a narrative and this construction is going to be the basis of further research, the planning and preparation of your production and the skeleton which you will use as a basis for all your shooting decisions. Imagine that you have been given a very tight window to work in and that shooting has to start next week.

Cynthia’s story

Cynthia Blake is 67. She is from New York, USA, and is a retired publisher. She has an apartment in New York but has not lived there for two years.

For the past two years she has been living on the luxury cruise liner, the Mary Rose, sailing with her across the world on her various cruises. She first came onto the liner when she went on a Mediterranean cruise with her late husband, Ronald, who was an author, essayist and feature writer. During their cruise, Ronald had a heart attack and died. He was buried at sea off the coast of Crete and, ever since, Cynthia has remained on board ship.

In two months’ time, the Mary Rose is about to dock in Southampton, UK, for the last time, as she is about to be decommissioned. Cynthia’s daughter, Catherine, lives in New Hampshire, USA, with her family and is coming to Southampton to pick up her mother and return to New Hampshire. They will stay in London for a few days, see a few sights, do a bit of shopping and then return to New Hampshire together. The plan is that Cynthia will stay with her daughter for a few weeks before finalising what she is going to do next. Cynthia is not sure whether she wants to return to New York to live permanently or

Note

1 For an extensive discussion of the ‘voice’ of a film, see Nichols, 1992.

not. Catherine has suggested that Cynthia buy a place near her in New Hampshire. At some point, Cynthia has to go back to her New York apartment and organise a few things and Catherine is always there to help.

The final cruise of the Mary Rose is a Mediterranean cruise. In fact, they will be passing the very area where Ronald was buried at sea. Cynthia has a very good relationship with the crew members, includ-ing the captain. She is a fairly reserved person, but not withdrawn. Durinclud-ing her two years on the Mary Rose, Cynthia has had a few of her possessions flown out by Catherine. Consequently, she has been able

The final cruise of the Mary Rose is a Mediterranean cruise. In fact, they will be passing the very area where Ronald was buried at sea. Cynthia has a very good relationship with the crew members, includ-ing the captain. She is a fairly reserved person, but not withdrawn. Durinclud-ing her two years on the Mary Rose, Cynthia has had a few of her possessions flown out by Catherine. Consequently, she has been able